Re: [PATCH] x86/kconfig/32: Make CONFIG_VM86 default to n and remove EXPERT

From: Linus Torvalds
Date: Thu Jul 09 2015 - 15:21:04 EST


On Thu, Jul 9, 2015 at 11:51 AM, Arjan van de Ven <arjan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> I would rather do BOTH the default n AND the EXPERT

That basically makes it impossible for "normal people" to test it. You
have to mark yourself as expert, and then get the rest of the
configuration right. Not a good idea.

The kernel config is probably our biggest problem for getting people
to test. Building the kernel? Easy. Installing it? "make install; make
modules_install". Not that hard, unless your distro has screwed it up
(which has happened, I'm looking at you, Ubuntu).

But making a config that is sane? Not easy. Let's not make people have
to mess with their configurations any more than they have to. It's too
painful.

The one thing we might want to do is to rename the config option,
simply to make sure that people who do "make oldconfig" will actually
see the new question and hopefully pick the new default rather than
just getting their old "y" without even seeing it. Call the option
"LEGACY_VM86" or something, perhaps?

Linus
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