On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 10:33:14AM -0400, Jon Masters wrote:
Yay! So then one day we can look forward to everything being built in and a user wanting to build a webcam driver having to build their own kernel too. Then we'll really have won because that user - who can follow some straightforward instructions on a website showing them how to build a driver and install it - will give up and go use Ubuntu.
I don't think anyone's argued for building an entirely static kernel. Where there's a significant advantage to building something in (and Arjan has shown that there is), we should do it. If there isn't, we shouldn't. I really don't think there's any reason the vast majority of our users would want to replace their AHCI driver, and the -hda one needs solving in some way other than "Download and rebuild ALSA" anyway.
Just because we can build our own kernels with whatever patches does not mean that all users who want to add a driver are capable of this.
If users are capable of following the documentation for building an out of tree module, they're capable of following the documentation describing how to produce a modified kernel. The ones who aren't are, I'm willing to bet, a smaller number than the users who would be attracted by increased boot speeds.