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From: David Woodhouse <dwmw2@infradead.org>
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To: esr@thyrsus.com
Cc: Charles Cazabon <linux@discworld.dyndns.org>, linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org,
        arjan@fenrus.demon.nl
Subject: Re: Aunt Tillie builds a kernel (was Re: ISA hardware discovery -- the elegant solution) 
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Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 11:40:05 +0000
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esr@thyrsus.com said:
>  He hard-compiled in that driver.  lsmod(1) can't see it.

man dmesg.

Others have asserted that this kind of autoconfigure facility for 
non-technical people isn't necessary.

I assert that it is actually harmful, and will make their life more 
difficult.

My father's computer runs Linux. He doesn't need to recompile his kernels 
or do any maintenance - I don't even trust him to run up2date for himself. 
It's all he can manage to dial up and look at a web page so I can grab his 
current IP address out of my logs, log in and do the rest.

If I get a bug report from him, it's not particularly coherent or useful. 
Yet because he has a kernel binary which is identical to the one used by
many other more technical users out there, I can often match what he 
complains about with the more useful bugreports in Bugzilla.

If he (or even I) compiled a custom kernel for him rather than using the 
distro one, I wouldn't have a whelk's chance in a supernova of working out 
WTF he was on about.

--
dwmw2


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