[TUHS] Re: Unix install & "standalone" package

On Thu, Sep 07, 2023 at 10:05:37AM -0600, Warner Losh wrote: Yeah, this is why most of the Linux distributions always use an initramfs, at least by default, because it handles all (or at least most) of these complicated sitautions automatically. So this leads to people assuming that Linux "requires" using a initramfs, when it would be more accurate to say that most Linux distributions makes it super easy to use an initramfs, and much more difficult (because the documentation is a bit scattered, and many may be somewhat out of date) to do things without an Linux distribution-engineered initramfs. And the other clear difference between Linux and FreeBSD is that things like initramfs tends to be distribution-specific, so there is competition between distributions to see who can make a simpler/easier installer and boot sequnce, and so market forces tends to strongly encourage developers (who after all, tend to be experts and who don't need the installer and boot up automation), to improve things much more aggressively. (And since there are product managers involved, often features and time to market often trump issues like technical debt.) The downside with this approach, though, is that distributions tend to reinvent the wheel multiple times, and the initramfs infrastructures are different. So learning how things work in say, Debian, isn't going to help you understand the fine details of how Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux works except at a very basic, high level. And the same is most definitely true if you compare the installers between Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc. FreeBSD has the advantage that it has a much more centralized development model, especially as it relates to kernel/libc integration, the installer, and the boot loader path. But while there is a certain amount of competitive forces of FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, et. al., improving and simplifying the boot loader, from an outsider looking in, it would appear that those forces aren't quite as strong, and the level of convergence beween the *BSD seems to be at least as strong, if not stronger, in some areas, than between Linux distributions. Cheers, - Ted