From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Dan Cross <cross@math.psu.edu>
Message-Id: <200111261848.NAA11804@augusta.math.psu.edu>
To: 9fans@cse.psu.edu
Subject: Re: [9fans] OT: linux complexity trends
In-Reply-To: <20011126175643.1EC1F199D7@mail.cse.psu.edu>
Cc:
Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 13:48:31 -0500
Topicbox-Message-UUID: 2a094906-eaca-11e9-9e20-41e7f4b1d025

In article <20011126175643.1EC1F199D7@mail.cse.psu.edu> you write:
>That's been recently discussed.  dhog is working on it for the next release.

I guess I'm having a hard time understanding the point.  Memory being
as cheap as it is [*], why not just keep the drivers loaded all the time?
Is this to avoid inter-driver conflicts or to better support PCMCIA
devices or something?

I guess the argument for the installation floppy still holds, but it
strikes me that it'd be comparable to just link a new kernel for a given
configuration, as opposed to gathering together the correct collection
of loadable modules for putting on the floppy....

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't get it.

	- Dan C.

[*] As an example of how cheap RAM is these days, I was at a computer
show in Queens a couple of weeks ago, and realized for the first time
in my life that I could, with the amount of money I could get out of an
ATM machine in one transaction plus the change in my pockets, walk up
to someone and say, ``Hi!  Let me have 4 gigabytes of RAM, please!''
Then I realized the guy who was selling it had no teeth, and thought
better of it.  Computer shows at a race track??  Run away....