Re: [Bugme-new] [Bug 7495] New: Kernel periodically hangs.

[Arjan van de Ven <arjan@infradead.org>]

On Sun, 2006-11-12 at 10:59 -0500, Patrick McFarland wrote:
> On Sunday 12 November 2006 10:21, Adrian Bunk wrote:
> > On Sun, Nov 12, 2006 at 03:16:38PM +0100, Arjan van de Ven wrote:
> > > > > We KNOW it can't work on a sizable amount of machines.  This is why
> > > > > it is a config option; you can enable it if YOUR machine is KNOWN to
> > > > > work, and you get some gains. But it's also understood that it often
> > > > > it won't work. So any sensible distro (since they have to aim for a
> > > > > wide audience) disables this option ...
> > > >
> > > > Nowadays, many distributions only ship CONFIG_SMP=y kernels...
> > >
> > > that's a calculated risk on their side (and they know that); they're
> > > balancing not functioning on a set of machines off against needing more
> > > kernels.
> >
> > This might soon affect the majority of Linux users, so it's a case that
> > has to be handled...
> 
> I actually agree here. Linux needs to be easier for people to use, not harder. 
> Isn't there a way for bootloaders or the kernel early on figure out if the 
> machine supports SMP, and if it doesnt, load a uniproc kernel instead?

this is what OS installers have been doing for a decade or so.

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