Now that Linux 2.1.x is pretty far down along the development
road, the time has come for me to add my personal wish list
of features. It would be great to see the following stuff go
into the Linux kernel if at all possible:
* Please, *pretty please* :*) make the noblink patch a standard
part of Linux. This is perhaps the only custom patch that some
of us apply to our standard kernels. This patch transforms the
annoying blinking feature into a solid cursor which is more
visible and more pleasant on the eyes. Even FreeBSD has a solid
cursor for a default! Before you ask me; no, I haven't the
slightest clue where the latest version of noblink for the 2.1.x
kernels is.
* The HFS filesystem for reading Macintosh disks really needs to
go into the kernel for further testing. It already has support
for both reads and writes (it's in BETA!), and it works
beautifully on the Mac disks that I've tried. You can find HFS
at http://www-sccm.stanford.edu/~hargrove/HFS/.
* The read-only alpha test version of NTFS for Linux. Many of us
use Linux and Windows NT together on the same machine, and it
would be great to see this feature standard, even if it's
still read-only. NTFS is available at
http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~loewis/ntfs/index.html.
* A high-speed parallel port Iomega Zip driver is needed! I believe
there's one at http://www.torque.net/linux-pp.html. It's called
the curtin driver, or something like that. It's compatible with
the parport support available in Linux 2.1.x. The author even
claims that it's more stable than the Iomega driver included in
the standard kernels!
Thank you very much for taking the time to read these suggestions!
Keep up the good work with Linux development.
--Arthur