[Rule-list] About RH 8 not supporting 486

[Marco Fioretti]

Hello, everybody!

Man, one cannot go to bed early *one* night without his favourite
project being sabotaged by some corporation...  :-)

I've read (almost) all messages here and on the psyche list about this
issue before commenting. My answer and proposals for the list follow.
Before that, however, thanks a thousand to Michael for raising the
issue on the psyche list, and coming up with a solution!

Any feedback is ... due, more than welcome, isn't it?
(even because the final form of the text below will almost *have* to
end up on the web site as the "official" position of the project,
right?)

Brace yourself, this is one long message, but it is an important
issue!

	Ciao,
		Marco Fioretti

Background

        On Oct 20 2002 Michael Fratoni, the author and main maintainer
        of the RULE project installers miniconda and slinky, started a
        very interesting discussion on the psyche mailing list, asking
        why there is no more an i386 kernel in the stock RH 8.0 CDs:
        for the RULE project this is a problem, because the current
        install procedure assumes that the standard CDs do carry the
        kernel for older CPUs: in general, this is also a problem for
        everybody who needs modern Red Hat on old hardware.

Why did this happen?

        If a 386 CPU is the base line, there are really a _lot_ of
        combinations of CPU, main boards and peripherals to consider.
        Red Hat is a for profit company: it is just natural, and
        perfectly reasonable, that they focus on, optimize for, and
        support, the hardware used by the majority of their paying
        users.

Why is it bad?

        Of course, this means that running the latest Red Hat on
        obsolete hardware just a bit more difficult: the RULE project
        home page and FAQ already explain in detail why this is not an
        irrelevant or good thing.

What should Red Hat do?

        As already mentioned, there is no point in asking to RH
        official support for old hardware. We really hope, however,
        that Red Hat:

        o   will keep a 386 kernel around, both on the updates server,
        and in the official CDs starting from 8.1 (others have already
        noted that space is not really an issue here: just put a huge
        UNSUPPORTED label on it, and keep going)

        o   in general, will keep it as easy as possible for external
        developers to customize every new release for "corner cases"
        like those of interest to RULE (this second point may be much
        more important for RH than it could seem at a first glance: a
        RULE user may not bring any money to RH, but allowing as many
        future sysadmins as possible to practice RH before they can
        afford the HW for any other OS is an entirely different thing,
	isn't it? Just think to when they become old enough to sign
	their first purchase order.

What should Red Hat users do?

        Nothing, if they are satisfied with the performances of their
        box.

        Come to play with RULE if they want to make it faster: even if
        we don't say it explicitely, why optimize only old PCs? In
        other words, having a 1 GHz CPU is no excuse for not making it
        run like a 2 GHz one...

What should the RULE project do?

        Michael Fratoni, excellent as always, has already announced
        some workarounds and future plans to deal with this issue. In
        parallel, others have asked to just switch to another
        distibution as the base for the project, and/or to start a new
        one from scratch.

	My thoughts on this issue (when I say "we" I count myself in,
	of course!):

	1) I'M HAPPY THAT RH KICKED OUR BUTT, causing more people talk
           on the list these days: maybe we've been counting on
           Michael working for us a bit too much (including myself)

	2) Judging from the number of list members (~100) and from the
	   average time we talk on this list we still have not enough
	   mass/average competence/free time/whatever to create and
	   above all maintain a whole distro from scratch (if I'm
	   wrong, just tell me, and I'd be really happy!)

	3) Above all, I am still convinced that many of the reasons
	   for the project as structured today remain valid. I refer
	   specifically to the fact that many of the problems with
	   today's SW are born *before* it is packaged for this or
	   that distro. Everybody keeps telling " install the Gthing
	   from GNOME or the Kthing from KDE, and the whole mountain
	   of dependencies that come along": the packaging format is
	   marginal.

	   At the same time, there is *nothing* that integrates lean
	   applications at INSTALL time to give real functionality
	   without spending weeks reading tons of manuals. EX:
	   mutt+abook+fetchmail+procmail+w3m+(2/3 shell scripts) =
	   same functionality as Evolution or Kmail, from multiple
	   accounts to clickable URLs, but show me one distribution
	   where they are configured to work together from the first
	   login!

	   This is an area (shell scripting + advanced post-install
	   configuration) where we *can* make a difference, and which
	   is, by its own nature, highly portable across distros.

	4) **Personally**, I will continue to work for RULE on RH
	   because I have no spare HW, and because I have to use only
	   RH Linux in my paid job, and hope that Michael will keep
	   miniconda and slinky current, since without them RH on old
	   HW is impossible from the beginning. Another important
	   reason to stay with RH (IMHO) is the one pointed out by
	   Colin, i.e. to remember to an important corporation that
	   there are people who cannot afford the full thing, and that
	   RH should at the very least not make their life
	   deliberately harder.

        5) Project-wise, we can and should (as already said in the
	   FAQ) keep as much of our work as we can portable.

	6) Summarizing, I highly recommend that, at least for the
           short/medium term, we keep RH as the base distro: again,
           for very pragmatical reasons (old Winston used to say
	   "slowly but surely"), not to start yet another
           distro war on what is a side issue, after all

	7) (shameless plug) Please go to
	   http://www.rule-project.org/en/sw/dan.php and help me to
	   port the DAn tool to RH 8.0 and other distros: I'm sure we'll all learn a lot
	   about figthing bloat from it, including how much of it is
	   RH's fault, and how much comes from the pristine sources...

	8) Somebody mentioned the possible need to just recompile all
	   RPMs for i386: much ligther than creating a new distro, but
	   fully useful only after sorting out dependencies and
	   configuration as already explained. In the meantime, don't
	   forget it, and offer to the list a script to do it
	   automatically from a base RH install with gcc only, and
	   stock source CDs...



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