Re: ideas 3

[Joerg Sonnenberger <joerg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Aug 11, 2004 at 12:48:52PM +0200, Ed wrote:
> ................................................................
> 
> I think it could be good to include a way to save mixer volume levels across 
> reboots. I think FreeBSD 5.3 already does this, but I don't know if DF has 
> already ported that.

You can already do that. Just set mixer=yes in /etc/rc.conf.

> ................................................................
> 
> I would suggest to promote the broad adoption of bzip2 format for release 
> parts, packages and distfiles. This because bzip2 has some big pro over gzip: 
> BSD-licensed and better compression.

Once we have our own package system, I'd prefer that too. The BSDl argument
against gzip is mood, we could easily adopt OpenBSD's compress, which merges
gzip, compress and bzip2, based on the libraries.

> ................................................................
> 
> I know that DF is still "under construction", but I would suggest to think 
> about strip-ping the system/kernel for a complete release. This should cut 
> down the space needed on the disk and in RAM.

I'd like to keep it the current way as long as we don't have newer binutils.
Otherwise back traces are pretty useless or at least harder to decipher.

> ................................................................
> 
> What about creating a few kernel config files for common systems ?
> NetBSD does something like that with GENERIC, LAPTOP, SMALL,...
> 
> I thought that DF could use these:
> GENERIC	already in use by default; include most things
> LAPTOP	include laptop specific things like cardbus/pcmcia
> 		remove strange thing like SCSI or RAID drivers

cardbus is in GENERIC, SCSI is used by USB and FireWire. RAID support
might actually exist in some chipset, not sure about it.

> SERVER	include things like SCSI/RAID
> 		remove audio, CardBus/pcmcia, wifi, ...
> DESKTOP	include audio
> 		remove SCSI/RAID, CardBus/pcmcia, wifi,...

WiFi and as a requirement CardBus are found in both types and the point
about laptops apply even more.

I don't think it is really worth it, if someone worries about the 3 MB
or so, you can build a really customized kernel.

> Well, I think you got the idea...
> 
> ................................................................
> 
> Now that you are working on pkg management tools I'd like to see a special 
> focus on HTTP only transfers. FTP is a big problem for firewall and NATted 
> users (especially active ftp) and also needs a lot of sockets on the server.
> 
> I'd like to see HTTP as default method to fetch distfiles and packages.

It might be possible in the future to prefer HTTP, but normally you don't
have a chance to select either.

> ................................................................
> 
> And now a special thing for a special project: KGI4BSD.
> I know that DF is going to be a multi-year project focused on innovation and 
> so I think you should consider to adopt KGI4BSD to provide unique features.
> FreeBSD is not pushing it and so the project is going slowly, but I think
> that the active DF community could adopt it and make a success of it.
> 
> http://people.freebsd.org/~nsouch/kgi4BSD/content-news.html

It has been suggested already and for now we have enough subsystems to work
on. If there actually is someone willing to improve it, the situation is
entirely different.

Joerg

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> 
> Bye.
> 
> 
> 	Ed
> 
>