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Date: Mon, 5 Sep 2005 01:31:29 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: RFC: i386: kill !4KSTACKS
From: "Sean" <seanlkml@sympatico.ca>
To: "Willy Tarreau" <willy@w.ods.org>
Cc: "Alex Davis" <alex14641@yahoo.com>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org
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On Mon, September 5, 2005 1:01 am, Willy Tarreau said:

> But how do you think Linux has penetrated the enterprise market ???
> We all have put dual boots on every windows machine we had access to,
> eventhough this was clearly forbidden. And after repeatedly showing
> to the staff that you saved their day with your Linux, they finally
> start to get interested to it. One of my best customers has finally
> bought about one hundred RHEL3 licences to replace amateur installs
> on production machines. They would never have looked at it without
> us braving unauthorized dual boots.

And how impressed would they have been if you had to install a bunch of
binary drivers to get the job done?   Do you think all the problems that
are associated with binary drivers would not have bitten you or your
company?

What you're talking about did happen, but it didn't happen on laptops, and
it didn't happen with binary drivers.   It happened naturally when Linux
grew mature enough to support servers without the need for binary-only
hacks.

Trying to accelerate the acceptance of Linux on the desktop with binary
hacks is simply counterproductive.

> I think we should not worry about it, but we should not deliberately break
> it in a stable series when that does not bring anything. The fact that
> Adrian proposed to completely remove the option is sad. It's in the
> windows
> world that you can't choose. In Linux, you make menuconfig and choose what
> suits your needs.

That's the beauty of open source; nobody is being deprived of a choice. 
Anyone can simply patch their kernel with 8K support if that's what they
need.   But as has been aptly pointed out by others in this thread, 8K
stacks aren't really needed at all, even for NDISwrapper.

4K stacks were NOT invented to hassle binary-only driver owners, they were
created to solve problems associated with 8K stacks..  Leaving the 8K
stack option in the kernel signals that it is a _good_ option.  That just
isn't true, so the option should be removed or at least marked BROKEN.

Cheers,
Sean


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