Messages in this thread | | | Date | Sat, 13 Feb 2010 07:20:04 +0100 | From | Pavel Machek <> | Subject | Re: [kernel.org users] XZ Migration discussion |
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Hi!
> > > It's probably worth keeping things like the .gz files around, if nothing > > > else for older distros, systems, etc that don't have xz yet (since it's > > > still relatively new) > > > > Hardly a good reason IMHO. xz can be installed on these systems. When > > we switched to git, nobody had it and it did not stop us. > > I don't agree, it's different. Git is only used by developers, and even > not all of them. Sources are a reference. Anyone can download them to > look for anything. Switching to a specific format which really is not > common at all on older distros nor on any system looks a bit like > proprietary encoding eventhough it's not the case. But it's a way to > tell people that if they want the sources in clear text form, they > first have to find a tool capable of decompressing them. Gzip is well > defined as a standard, it's even described in an RFC and is present > on almost any system (unix or not) now. Any student who wants to take > a look at the kernel will have access to gunzip, even from an old > Solaris 8 workstation or a Windows XP desktop PC. XZ if far from > being there, and the student will not necessarily be able to install > it. And Peter raised some valid points about the hardware requirements > to run such tools ; I'm not sure the guys running Linux on their old > Sparc-2 would like XZ only a lot.
It is not just student on old workstation. I'm trying to keep Linux working on spitz PDA and kohjinsha subnotebook. Especially zaurus has about power of old sparc two... otoh it runs 4 hours on cellphone battery. Pavel -- (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html
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