Steve Litt <slitt@???> writes:

[...]

> 3) Compile ext4 and only the most common hard drive and SSD drivers
>    into a separate and optional kernel that doesn't call an
>    initramfs, but merely runs an rc file as an init. That rc file
>    does nothing but get all the drives mounted and then exec the
>    normal init (sysvinit).

Your understanding of that is still a little faint: 'Starting userspace'
really works by

    1) Mount the root filesystem.
        2) Start a process running /sbin/init.

> Repeating: This would be an option, not the default. It would be
> optional, not required. It would work only with ext4 and the very most
> common hardware drivers.

And what precisely is "a very most common hardware driver"? Do you want
to setup a commitee voting on that (regularly, as hardware changes over
time)? And what's "a very most common filesystem"? What about other,
optional kernel features, eg, I'm running kernels compiled without ASR
and with kernel preemption disabled (and I used 250Hz as tick frequency
before switching tickless).

The sensible way to handle this is really "the distribution ships a
kernel which optionally supports everything" (via aggressive
modularization) and people who think they want/ need more control over
this part of the system can change that as they see fit (by compiling a
custom kernel). Insofar someone feels his custom kernel is of more
general use than just "run on this machine", the configuration could be
shared via internet. It's even failrly easy to share the kernel itself:
I posted a script I've been using since 1998 to build kernels for
different machines on a dedicated one and for someone who likes "shot
from behind trough the chest right into the eye" constructions, there's
always kernel-package for creating custom-kernel Debian packages.