At 09:49 AM 10/23/96 -0400, der Mouse wrote:
>> I still think it would make your code easier to read and maintain if
>> you just gave up on trying to make one kernel boot on anything.
>
>Well, yeah.  It'd make it even easier if we just gave up on sun4m
>machines.  It's a question of what benefits are worth the effort
>necessary to achieve them.
>

True. 

>> I know Aaron finds that important, but I don't think many people
>> actually benefit much from having one kernel for all sparc boxes.
>
>Well, for what it's worth, _I_ appreciate being able to build a kernel
>sufficiently generic that it'll work on any SPARC, or at least any
>SPARC that NetBSD works on at all...

Try explaining the different kernels to a newbie. 

"No, don't FTP that kernel, get this one, because you have a 4c, ok?"

"I thought I had a SPARCstation 1?"

Also, one kernel that can boot multiple archs can be handy in the (rare)
case where an admin wants to move a set of drives from one machine to another.
Perhaps if he is upgrading from a 2 to a 5, for example. All he would have
to do would be to get a generic kernel (or leave one lying around) and 
boot that one on the new machine. 

Flexability. I always tell people that a good OS lets you easily do things
that the designers never thought of (contrast this with Win95).


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