I'm going to reorder this for clarity. On 1/31/19 9:50 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
If I need a file system that isn't installed,
How does a non-expert user know that this is the problem? There's no such error message, AIUI. AFAICT it merely says "unknown FS".
But I'd also be inclined to RTFM for information like that, too. What manual? How do you know what to look for?
my approach would be to look to see if it was included in the kernel package
How would they do that? FWIW, as a Unix user for 31y and Linux user for 23y here, I'm not sure that *I* would know how to do that. TBH it stretched my knowledge just to get the freebie demo DVD of SLE12 that I got in my job interview to multi-boot alongside Win7, Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch on my testbed machine. I had to manually partition, manually set up a chainloaded bootloader -- stuff I've never had to do for any other distro.
(which it sounds like it would be),
How do you know that? Do you think a non-expert would know that?
and then to look at why it isn't auto-loading.
How would one get that far in the troubleshooting sequence to work out that this was the problem?
That seems like common sense to me.
I can assure you, no, it is not! :-)
What doesn't seem like common sense to me is to load it on millions of installations where it isn't needed
Then all modern OSes must dismay you, because that is how they work: including tens of thousands of drivers that 99% of people will never need, just so that they are there and the software works for the 1% who need them.
because a hundred (thousand, whatever small percentage use OS/2 in dual-boot configs with openSUSE)
Yes, I think it probably _is_ a very small proportion. OTOH, *SUSE is one of the oldest distros, and OS/2 is one of the oldest PC OSes, dating back to 1988 IIRC. Hardcore OS/2 users are old-timers. They are the sort of market *SUSE might appeal to. To be fair, I doubt we'll attract many new switchers from OS/2 now. I doubt there's anyone left.
can't be bothered to uncomment a line in a blacklist file.
What I am getting at is that to come to this conclusion requires an elaborate process of elimination that I suspect I could not complete myself, and I am not a newbie. So, if the issue here is removing old code that is not likely to be needed, then the real problem is not "what do we remove/disable" but "how to we give meaningful error messages that this is what has been done?" -- Liam Proven - Technical Writer, SUSE Linux s.r.o. Corso II, Křižíkova 148/34, 186-00 Praha 8 - Karlín, Czechia Email: lproven@suse.com - Office telephone: +420 284 241 084 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-factory+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-factory+owner@opensuse.org