From: http://lwn.net/2002/0117/index.php3
Should Aunt Tillie build her own kernels?
Eric Raymond has been working for some time on a new kernel configuration
system which, someday, is slated for incorporation into the 2.5 series. This
project has seen its share of controversy over the last year, but, perhaps,
never at the level of the last week. What is the development that has set
off so many kernel hackers? It is an autoconfiguration module (implemented
initially by Giacomo Catenazzi) which figures out which hardware is present
on the system and cooks up a kernel configuration to match.
Eric has been working overtime to justify this work by way of an amusing set
of stories. For your amusement, here are the inspirational tales of Aunt
Tillie, her nephew Melvin ("Autoconfigure saves the day. Possibly it even
helps Melvin get laid"), and the 'girl geek' Penelope. Beyond the possible
improvement to hackers' love lives worldwide, the reasoning behind the work
is essentially this:
"Because the second we stop thinking about Aunt Tillie, we start making
excuses for badly-designed interfaces and excessive complexity. We tend to
fall back into insular, elitist assumptions that limit both the useability
of our software and its potential user population. We get lazy and stop
checking our assumptions. When we do this, Bill Gates laughs at us, and is
right to do so. "
There are reasons to question some of Eric's scenarios. Aunt Tillie is
almost certain to be happier with the kernel supplied by her distributor,
which includes numerous patches, has modules for an unbelievable variety of
hardware, and has been extensively tested. Building and running a kernel off
the net, even from a "stable" series, will never be without its potential
surprises.
But the hostility to the autoconfiguration idea seems to go beyond that.
Some people clearly do not want Aunt Tillie to be able to build a kernel
without learning about the process and understanding what hardware is on her
system. Some, perhaps, fear Aunt Tillie's inevitable "help me" message to
linux-kernel once the process fails. Others, perhaps, prefer a world where
only the Select Few are able to do certain things.
That latter view was often seen in arguments against the desktop projects a
few years ago, though it seems to have faded away in recent times. But
perhaps kernel hackers ("girl geeks" included) remain a more hairy-chested
bunch. If Aunt Tillie can build her own kernels, that's one less thing that
sets them, and their skills, apart.
Linux hackers in general have managed to get over this attitude in general,
and that has been an unmitigated good thing. It has been repeatedly shown
that Linux can be made easier to use without taking away the power
appreciated by more advanced users. And an easier Linux, among other things,
helps to ensure that the advanced users can work with Linux in the office as
well as at home.
So there is no harm in the creation of an autoconfiguration system for the
Linux kernel, as long as nobody is forced to use it. Even if it does not
really solve Aunt Tillie's problems, there will certainly be a class of
users that is helped by easier kernel configuration. It may even turn out
that some of those kernel hackers end up using it to quickly configure and
build a kernel for a strange system - when nobody is looking, of course.
(See also: Aunt Tillie's web site, hosted at her very own aunt-tillie.org
domain - thanks to Nicolas Pitre).
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