> Red Hat includes several patches in their kernel source. Most or > all of those patches are available separately, and are things you > could put into your kernel yourself if you really wanted to, but > then you'd have to work out any conflicts between the patches > yourself.
So, Red Hat is forking? Bad, bad, bad. "If I really wanted to"? You mean to say they're making decisions for me and giving me stuff that I wouldn't have otherwise and probably don't even need unless "I really wanted" it? Sounds like there's stuff going in that shouldn't, and I don't want a dirty kernel. (For another example, I've been looking at the Mandrake init scripts, and they keep mentioning something called Aurora. If they're going to add semi-proprietary stuff, stuff that isn't "traditional" Unix, I want out.)[1] Now, I may have my Linux history wrong, but if patching the kernel is leading to conflicts, it sounds like someone (or a group of someones) has lost control of the whole project, or that it's being forked by the distros, and if there is no control, from what trustworthy source do I get a decent (non-forked) kernel, along with patches that should fit in so well that I don't have to worry about conflicts? Maybe I should use FreeBSD, or maybe the HURD kernel, or maybe Debian. Some suggest Gentoo, but since I don't know its background, it is currently suspect. > Presumably most other distributions do much the same thing. Which is why I'm eventually going to run Linux distro-less and enjoy true, total freedom. However, I am still immensely enjoying vga=791! Theron [1] I did a Google search for Aurora. It is "a graphical boot sequence which does not hide the details from you, but shows them in a somewhat friendlier way." If this really is installed, it ain't working. *Everything* is hidden in Mandrake behind a graphic; even taking the graphic away (which required special priestly incantations) doesn't reveal much more, though now pressing 'I' works, giving me the interactive version. ____________________ BYU Unix Users Group http://uug.byu.edu/ ___________________________________________________________________ List Info: http://phantom.byu.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/uug-list
