On Sunday, 23 February 2025 18:14:21 Greenwich Mean Time Benson Muite wrote: > On Sun, Feb 23, 2025, at 9:55 AM, Samuel Sieb wrote: > > > On 2/22/25 6:50 PM, Benson Muite wrote: > > > >> > >> Fedora has a policy to support only one kernel. Projects such as > >> OpenHarmony support multiple kernels to enable reuse of components on > >> devices with a wide range of compute capabilities - in particular mobile > >> and edge devices. Is this something Fedora would consider doing? This > >> would potentially benefit spins aimed for mobile and desktop use. > > > > > > > What do you mean by multiple kernels? > > > Envisage some of the following options: > a) Enabling use of the mainline linux kernel but tuned for different > operating expectations - desktop, mobile or server For this use case, the Fedora experience is that we've been better served by working upstream to make the tuning options you need to change things that can be changed at boot time (or ideally, but not always reasonable, runtime). For example, preemption model is something that you want to tune, and can be selected at boot time; my desktop boots with "preempt=full", my throughput- oriented server with "preempt=none". What tuning options do you see need to be different between Fedora Workstation and Fedora Server, and what blocks them from being boot time or runtime tunables set by the Editions? > b) Options for > integrating other existing kernels such as GNU/Hurd or LinuxLibre > There's a lot more to this than just "supporting more than one kernel"; there's plenty that needs to be done to other RPMs than just the kernel to support a big change, unless the kernel is binary-compatible with all Linux userspace. And if it's binary-compatible with all Linux userspace (like the LinuxLibre project aims to be), then it's a trivial thing to have a separate repo for the kernel, and not impossible to fork the entirety of Fedora to make it happen. It also runs into a deeper philosophical question; what is the benefit to Fedora and its users of demanding that they make this particular choice, rather than having Fedora make it for them? There's a strong argument for saying that Fedora should ask users to only make decisions that the user can reasonably answer (like "do you prefer the look and feel of GNOME, KDE or Xfce?" or "do you want your server to be a traditional 'pet' or a host for a fleet of 'cattle' containers"), and that people who want "choice in every aspect" should look elsewhere (e.g. to Debian). Don't get me wrong - I fully understand the "fun appeal" of being able to switch out more bits of the distro; but that has to be balanced against a distro having a cohesive aim, and spending the limited volunteer time it gets on things that matter. This means that for an extra kernel choice to be worthwhile, it needs to bring in more volunteer effort improving the distro for everyone (including those who are happy with today's kernel as the only kernel) than it costs supporting it, including triaging bugs that are specific to your choice of kernel as well as the up-front costs. If you can get that much volunteer support, though, you can start out with a fork or secondary repo, and make the case for merging with Fedora once you've demonstrated that the support is there for the extra kernel. -- Simon Farnsworth -- _______________________________________________ devel mailing list -- devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to devel-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Fedora Code of Conduct: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/code-of-conduct/ List Guidelines: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines List Archives: https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/devel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Do not reply to spam, report it: https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/new_issue
