Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Ubuntu 9.10 hates kernel developers?

Ubuntu has never been the easiest distribution to do kernel development, but it looks like with 9.10 it has made things too painful. I need to build and install kernels all the time, and usually just update grub menu manually. But now with grub 2 in Ubuntu 9.10 they have wrapped the grub menu in grub-mkconfig. Why?

It would be great if the system was setup so just doing 'make install' in the kernel source put in the kernel and updated the grub.cfg, but no that would make too much sense.

P.s: they managed to break the sky2 driver somehow, the connection won't come up and negotiates the wrong speed. It turned out not to be a kernel problem; wiring issue (speed), combined with some Network Manager changes

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Not Ubuntu per se, it's the same in Debian for grub2. But I agree, it's extremely annoying.
It might be trivial to setup a inotify thingy that runs it when you add a kernel.

SEJeff said...

To build on himdel's comment, it is trivial to do that using iwatch. (which is apt-gettable).

Manish said...

Personally I feel that Ubuntu isn't for kernel hackers or developers. The best distro for them is debian.

Ubuntu is a distro for casual users or say non-techies.

SEJeff said...

@manish: I respectfully disagree. As a "technical user" (pro systems admin for ~5 years) I prefer ubuntu for one reason and one reason alone, the community.

In the late 90s when I was trying to teach myself Linux I was attempting to build a new debian kernel package. After reading the docs and tldp and searching altavista without much luck, I asked on a debian mailinglist. The resulting game could have been named, "Flame the n00b into oblivion with how awesome we are" did not sit well with me. Overall Debian has grown, but that doesn't seem to have changed much.

As a technical and happy Ubuntu user I'll continue to love Debian for the software but support Ubuntu for the community. If they had reigned in their community earlier with something like Ubuntu's Code of Conduct[1] Ubuntu would have never been started in the first place.

[1] http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct

SUBHRA said...

I asked on a debian mailinglist. The resulting game could have been named, "Flame the n00b into oblivion with how awesome we are" did not sit well with me. Overall Debian has grown, but that doesn't seem to have changed much.
CLICK