An interesting idea for you techies

[Jason]

Why not? After all, what better way to sell hard disks with faster
seek times and higher rotation speeds than to add a whole bunch of
unnessary disk access by splitting what was once one file into a
shitload of smaller files, and then passing this deed off with the
claim that it makes it "easier".

The only way its easier is if your one of those people who runs the
kernel you got in whatever box you bought (or CD you installed from).
If your capable of recompiling the kernel, your system WILL boot
faster if you avoid all the module shit. Basic laws of physics there.

One thing that *is* good about modules, however, is the fact that you
can "reset", in a way, certain parts of the kernel, allowing you to
get away with things not normally advisable. For example, if you boot
from IDE, you can unload the SCSI module, and then pull devices off or
put devices on your SCSI bus, then simply reload the module and avoid
a reboot. The truly daring can boot from SCSI and do the same with IDE
(warning, plug the cable in straight and power up the drive first,
some drive will attempt to suck voltage THRU the IDE cable if not
powered up, generally causing a reboot or worse, motherboard failure).
They can also be extremely useful for someone attempting to get a
given driver to work with an improper piece of hardware by modifying
the source to the driver.

In a box that isnt subject to these non-production conditions, modules
just slow things down. Odds are, by the time you are ready to change
the hardware, you ought to download, configure and compile a new
kernel anyways.

Rob Wehrli wrote:
> Therefore, the recompilation you speak of does not need to occur if kernel
> modules support is built-in.  Only those esoteric drivers or drivers that
> are not written/converted as modules are "compiled" in anymore.  You simply
> bootstrap the kernel and load the desired modules for a complete kernel
> feature set that meets a practical minimum size/maximum extensibility goal.

-- 
jkenner @ mindspring . com__
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