Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Mon, 17 Jun 1996 00:06:48 -0400 | From | Mark Hahn <> | Subject | Re: Pruning the tree |
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> I think a reduction of over 20% and close to 1.1 MB is a major > difference and certainly worth "the trouble," especially when we think > of the future. What happens when we add more ports. What about porting > to IBM Mainframes!
1.1 MB is peanuts! we're talking a measly 5 minutes of download, and that's only if you lack the wits to use patches!
> It seems to me that what is at issue here boils down to the > convenience of the kernel developers. If a Linux Guy wants to download > the whole distribution, please do. Why should everyone have to?
on the contrary: if you can't afford the 5 minutes to download or 17 cents to store on disk, then arrange for some secondary, pruned distribution. AND USE PATCHES! wasting a millisecond of Linus's time for petty convenience is ludicrous!
WAIT! before you reply, think about it! try to write a script to generate new pruned distributions. write one that tries to _really_ save space by pruning out drivers, since those are the large components. come up with a solution for maintaining the integrity of versions that are pieced together, since this will surely happen. finally, ensure that this will not cause a flood of wailing newbies on linux-kernel, which, btw, has over 1900 recipients.
> possibilities. I believe there must be a good solution. Look at the > X11R6 Distributions.
uh, yeah, months between distributions, often binary, and they expire in an unsubtle manner. don't go there.
besides, have you actually ever gotten a source distribution and compiled it? isn't imake fun? note also that the kernel has n! potential versions, for n ~= 100, whereas X has about a dozen basic categories of cards, and people usually ignore the options that would produce perhaps 20! configurations.
regards, mark hahn. -- operator may differ from spokesperson. hahn@neurocog.lrdc.pitt.edu http://neurocog.lrdc.pitt.edu/~hahn/
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