[Ksummit-2008-discuss] A suggestion for Linux 3.0

[bruce robson]

I'm having to actually send this from hotmail as sending from my computer
was rejected with the error
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> To: ksummit-2008-discuss at lists.linux-foundation.org
> Subject: Re: [Ksummit-2008-discuss] A suggestion for Linux 3.0
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> Mauro Carvalho Chehab wrote:
> 
>> On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 18:31:44 +0200
>> Jean Delvare  wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Alan,
>>>
>>> On Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:55:31 +0100, Alan Cox wrote:
>>>> Having spent ages wading through old broken ISA drivers some of which
>>>> clearly have no users as they've not worked for years I want throw in
>>>> another proposal for the kernel summit
>>>>
>>>> At some point soon we add all the old legacy ISA drivers (barring the odd
>>>> ones that turn up in embedded chipsets on LPC bus) into the
>>>> feature-removal list and declare an 'ISA death' flag day which we brand
>>>> 2.8 or 3.0 or something so everyone knows that we are having a single
>>>> clean 'throw out' of old junk.
>>> I don't get the idea. If some drivers are old and unused and we want to
>>> delete them, let's just delete them. No need to wait for 2.8. But I
>>> fail to see why we should remove all ISA drivers because some ISA
>>> drivers are broken. I still use at least one ISA driver (3c509). Do not
>>> forget that one strength of Linux is that it runs fine on old hardware.
>>> I would certainly like it to stay that way.
>> 
>> I agree with Alan's proposal.
>> 
>> Kernel still runs on old hardware, but this doesn't mean that you'll be able to
>> actually run any current distro on it. I used to have one of the latest desktop
>> from ISA days (1998? hmm.. maybe older) with a hybrid ISA/PCI bus, a pentium
>> pro and 80M SRAM (originally, I bought it with 16M) and 1.2 Gb hard drive. 
>> 
>> The the last time I tried to use that machine (a few years ago), I couldn't find
>> any distro with a newer kernel 2.6 that performed fine (and capable on
>> installing on its disk), even with a light X11 running on it. For it to work
>> with some performance, I needed to use a 2.4 based distro (those distros
>> "ready" for 2.6, launched during late 2.5 kernels). That distro were able to
>> install on my disk, and allowed me to have a 2.6 kernel on it. It took an entire
>> night to compile). After the job, I was almost without free space.
>> 
> 
> Mauro Carvalho Chehab is wrong about not being able to run a current distro on
> old hardware. I have an Intel ClassicR+ computer that dates from approx 1993
> and am I running Debian Testing/Lenny on it. It isn't running an X-Server
> but I do run X-Client programs that I display on other clients.
> 
> Lenny isn't actually Debian's current release. Lenny will be Debian's next
> release and is currently in Beta.
> 
> This computer has an Intel 486 DX/2, 32MB of main memory, on-board video,
> 5 1/4 and 3 1/2 inch floppies, SCSI CD writer, ISA bus with Adaptec
> aha1542 SCSI card and Intel ether express 16 network card. The BIOS doesn't
> support ACPI, APM, PNP or drives over approx 500MB. I'm using EZ-BIOS and a
> 4GB Disk.
> 
> I installed Debian Lenny in about April 2008 and have kept it up to date with
> Debian fixes since then. I have had a few problems with installing
> and running Linux on such an old machine, but produced fixes for all of them
> *   CD didn't boot (Isolinux errors) on 486 with Adaptec SCSI
>     http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=465320
> *   multicast wasn't working in the eexpress driver
>     http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=10577
> *   kernel 2.6.25 wouldn't boot on 486
>     http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=488022
>     This bug was filed by someone else so I'm not the only one running 
>     a Debian Beta on old hardware.
> 
> I am against the suggestion that all ISA drivers should be removed from
> the kernel.
> 
> Bruce Robson

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