[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] swapfile is a huge improvement!

[From: Juha Yrjölä]

On Mon, 2006-01-16 at 11:12 -0500, Dave Neuer wrote:

> But, where a developed market for the device doesn't exist, one has to
> seriously ask the question whether simplicity and reliability are a
> substitute for flexibility and openess to experimentation, with the
> risk that the complexities inherent in a flexible,
> not-as-intuitive-as-a-phone device will sometimes cause problems for
> some users.

We're not going to start limiting anyone's experimentation.  Maemo is a
very open platform and experimentation with it rather easy.

The users can make their devices as complex they want (and possibly as
unstable).  We're responsible of keeping the software _we_ ship stable.

> > The issues regarding what happens when a swap device disappears from
> > underneath have to fixed first.
> 
> Is there a roadmap for solving that problem? Will it be solved on
> LKML, or by Nokia in-house? Or will Nokia open up the device specs &
> software more so developers can experiment with neat little tricks
> when the door opens/cards are inserted, etc. so that anyone is able to
> happily stumble upon the "right solution?"

_More_?  What on earth could you still want?  We use standard kernel
interfaces as much as possible, and the kernel source is freely
available.  Even loading and booting a custom kernel is extremely
simple:

# flasher -k /path/to/zImage -lb

User-space will get notifications about the MMC events through the
standard uevent interface.

As for where this problem might be solved, LKML is definitely the right
place.  I'm not yet personally convinced on the merits of having swap on
MMC, but anyone who is can of course start the thread.

> It's cool to me precisely because it's a computer but fits in my
> pocket, and I can do almost anything with it that I can do with my
> computer.

It's cool to me precisely for the same reason.  But, as you probably
realize, different people value different things.

Cheers,
Juha