RE: [gentoo-user] Re: LVM, /usr and really really bad thoughts.

[Mike Edenfield]

> From: Dale [mailto:rdalek1967@×××××.com]

> This has been one of my points too.  I could go out and buy me a bluetooth
> mouse/keyboard but I don't because it to complicates matters.

I had a long reply to Walt that I (probably wisely) decided not to send, but
the basic point of it is also relevant here. My response to his (IMO
needlessly aggressive) email was basically this:

Why *shouldn't I* be able to go but a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse if I
wanted to? Those things *work perfectly fine with udev*. And why wouldn't I
want to use the *same* solution for all of my various machines, even if that
solution is "overkill" for half of them? Just because my laptop doesn't need
bluetoothd support in udev doesn't mean using udev there *is bad*. (I don't
need 80% of what's in the Linux kernel but I still install one...)

I am not in any way denigrating the work he's doing. I think it's awesome
and I've tried to help where I can. But I'm pretty fed up with people like
him acting as if the current udev solution is the end of the world. I've
heard it called everything from "design mistake" to "out of control truck
full of manure".

I have three PCs in my home running Gentoo. Two of them would boot correctly
using Walt's new solution (mdev and no /usr mounted at boot) and one would
not. *All three of them* boot correctly using udev. 100% success > 66%
success, so clearly the udev solution is a perfectly legitimate solution to
a real world problem. At work, those numbers are likely different, and
Walt's solution might be a working approach -- if udev didn't already work
fine in 100% of those cases, too.

Instead of asking why everyone else should be "forced" to use the udev
solution *that already works*, you should be focusing on explaining to
everyone else the reasons why it is worth the time and effort to configure
*something different* for those same machines. There was a reason why people
stopped using static /dev, and devfs; maybe there is a reason why people
should stop using udev, but thus far that reason seems to be "initramfs
makes us cranky."

There's no need to get mean-spirited just because you choose a different
audience that freedesktop.org as the target for your solution. It just makes
you look petty and childish. Produce an alternative to
"udev/initramfs/single root" that works, provide (accurate) details on the
differences, and let users pick which one they want.

--Mike