Quoting Simon Hobson (linux@???):

> IFF we are going to put stuff in to work around problems for one set
> of edge cases (and IMO it's debatable whether we should), then why not
> also cater for what is possibly a larger group of edge cases ? Your
> argument seems to be "this is the only set of edge cases I'm prepared
> to consider - ignore the others".

I nowhere suggested ignoring edge cases. I merely said the existence of
edge cases (severe firewalling, badly implemented hotel wifi captive
portals) needing special handling should not deter Devuan from offering
a highly useful feaure during installation.

I feel like I said 'Hey, it'd be a nice idea to offer a local recursive
nameserver option in the installer's default screens because many
systems would benefit greatly from this', and a couple of folks tried to
immediately say 'We can't do that because severe firewalling or a broken
captive portal might prevent it from functioning.'

This perplexes me because it's non-sequitur, Installing users can be
warned succinctly that some wifi captive portals won't let you reach the
login page unless using -their- DNS, and it's trivial to detect if
outside port 53 is unreachable.

OTOH, if you-all just don't want to offer that to Devuan users, it's no
big deal to me. I can fix that with one apt command and a resolv.conf
tweak, and automate that with preseeding or puppet/chef.

But IMO it'd be a missed opportunity for Devuan. (Life consists mostly
of little besides a series of missed opportunities, however. ;-> )

> And for the record, I can only recall two instances of having to
> manually enter DNS servers because DHCP didn't give me the right ones.

I mostly work with servers. Ergo, mostly fixed IP.

A good DHCP-based network will of course point clients via the DHCP
option for same to a good local recursive nameserver -- preferably yours
rather than Google's. ;->

> PS - thank you very much for your earlier essays on the various DNS
> server/resolver options.

Yr. very welcome. Some people also enjoy the fable I wrote about the
Village of Lan (after hearing one too many person use basically
meaningless terms like 'caching nameserver' and wanting to teach people
_real_ nameserver taxonomy:

http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2008q3/006880.html
http://linuxmafia.com/pipermail/sf-lug/2008q3/005293.html

Those are refindable from section 'Guide for the Perplexed' under the
the Table of Contents on
http://linuxmafia.com/faq/Network_Other/dns-servers.html