Kernels in Debian

[Steve Holmes]

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I suppose the resistance to initrd might be the lack of full
understanding on how they work and how to manipulate them.  At least
that is my problem.  I know in concept how they work but I haven't
really figured out how to easily add to them; example would be adding
speakup modules to the initrd.  Perhaps the kernel-package does that?
not sure now.  

Concerning the larger screens, yes I have been passing 'vga=791' or
'vga=extended' all along with no effect.  I'm using lilo for now but I
have always been able to do that with Slackware with no problems.
With Slack, I was able to use 'vga=extended' flawlessly. I never could
get 'vga=791' to work.  After installing gnome on slackware, I got the
larger screen at boot time but not otherwise.  I probably have a
problem with display modules.  I have no fb devices show in /dev.

Personally, I like the integration os speakup in Debian so far; I had
no problems at all with getting started using my hardware speakout.  I
realize software speech is all the rage and that does not occur
natively with a Debian install.  That may improve over time.

On Wed, Oct 22, 2008 at 09:40:30AM +0800, Kerry Hoath wrote:
>
> For reasons I am unclear on people seem to be alergic to initial ramdisks 
> in modern Linux distributions.
>
> The reason initial ramdisks are used in modern distributions is so that 
> you can load modules required for boot devices, allow time for USB 
> devices to settle before using them.
>
> An initrd allows boot from raid and lvm, it also gives you a recovery  
> environment in ram that does not rely on your disk systems.
> It also allows partitions to be identified by uuid which will allow 
> drives to change ids without the system becoming unbootable.
>
> I seem to recall that kernel-package expects to build initial ram disks 
> and unless you bypass the build machinery it might not be easy to switch 
> off.
> Once speakup integrates more seamlessly into Debian and it's getting 
> better all the time then kernel package will be something worth sticking 
> with for speakup.
>
>
> I doubt it is the initrd that is preventing your large screens; you need 
> to pass the option to the kernel as part of grub configuration and then 
> run update-grub to copy it through the rest of the file.

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