[MiNT] Another point of view on the /kern debate

[Mario Becroft <mb@gem.win.co.nz>]

I think the argument is valid that large, non-essential features such as
the /kern filesystem would be better as loadable modules. It's much easier
for a user to add or remove such modules than to recompile the kernel.

But who is going to do it? It seems to me Guido and other MiNT developers
already have a lot of work on their hands. We can all talk about how it
would be nice to have this or that, but the reality is somebody has to
write the code.

I think it is better to implement /kern as Guido is doing it than to not
implement it at all because of a theoretical debate about the best
implementation.

I see the point about keeping the kernel small for use on older machines
and I personally use MiNT on such machines. But this is taken care of
since the kernel can be re-compiled without the new features. Not ideal,
maybe, but *much* better than not having new features at all.

I just hope that Guido and other developers doing so much good work on
MiNT are not put off by all this arguing. You at least have my support.

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| Mario Becroft           * Tariland, New Zealand Atari User Group      |
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