Date: Tue, 4 Oct 2011 13:39:06 +0200
From: Natanael Copa <ncopa@alpinelinux.org>
To: "Walter Dnes" <waltdnes@waltdnes.org>
Cc: Alpine devel <alpine-devel@lists.alpinelinux.org>
Subject: Re: [alpine-devel] Can Alpine be built with glibc and mdev?
Message-ID: <20111004133906.3ba5e4bd@ncopa-desktop.nor.wtbts.net>
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On Mon, 3 Oct 2011 22:11:32 -0400
"Walter Dnes" <waltdnes@waltdnes.org> wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 03, 2011 at 08:16:20AM +0200, Natanael Copa wrote
> 
> > I would say that the main problem you have with a non-udev gentoo is
> > that xorg and much desktop stuff depends on libudev to work
> > properly, so an Alpine Linux desktop uses udev as well.
> 
>   What's wrong with xorg.conf?

Nothing really. But i think you need libudev to get hotplugging of
mouse/keyboard and screens to work properly.

>  And as for "desktops", are you
> referring to garbage like KDE-Mail which requires an SQL database?
> I'm neutral re KDE and GNOME... the pox on both their houses.  I
> don't run desktops, I run applications.  ICEWM is more than
> sufficient.

With "desktop" I mean xorg + any window manager. What I mean is that I
think that hotplugging usbdisks with udev will show a nice icon in
thunar or whatever filemanager you use. Without udev you will probably
need open a terminal and manually mount your usb disk.

What I'm trying to say is that i think mdev will work, but some features
that you expect from a modern linux system (specifically
hotplugging stuff) will not work.

It is not that hard to download alpine and test what works and what
does not work.

>   If somebody wants to load up their machine with a bunch of stuff
> that requires initramfs, or a /usr on the same physical drive as /, no
> problem for me.  However, if the lead developer for a necessary linux
> subsystem tweaks it so that it *DEMANDS* either /initramfs or a sinle
> huge C:\ drive *FOR ALL USERS OF ALL DISTROS*, I get unhappy.  That's
> why I'm looking for solutions that avoid this.

I fully understand this and I agree.
 
>   Reading the Alpine wiki, I see that "(previous versions of Alpine
> were based on Gentoo)".  It would be ironic if I could convince the
> Gentoo devs to base the next version of Gentoo on Alpine.

Newer alpine uses not emerge and portage. It uses its own build system,
aports. You don't have USEFLAGS and its a binary distro.

But since Alpine Linux uses openrc, you could try use the patches for
openrc and busybox-initscripts and try apply that on your gentoo.
Shouldn't be too hard.

-nc


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