DebianSlug and Debian/NSLU2 (Was: Newbie questions)

>> Rod Whitby wrote:
>> Note that DebianSlug and the debian-installer image will eventually
>> become the same thing (when nslu2-linux is able to get all it's latest
>> kernel patches accepted by Linus and Debian), and nslu2-linux and the
>> Debian kernel team are working closely together to make that happen.
>> We have two kernels (the SlugOS kernel and the official Debian arm
>> kernel) and we are working to make them into a single kernel that can
>> be used by both sets of users.

> h8dc wrote:
> Fascinating! Care to offer a ballpark prognostication as to when that
> might be? "This year" or "sometime next year" would be perfectly
> acceptable answers. :-)

It's not a fast process.

We need to re-base the patches against the latest Linux kernel, then
submit them for comment on the linux-arm-kernel mailing list, then ask
the IXP4XX maintainer and the ARM maintainer to approve the patches
(there is usually a couple of rounds of improvement or changes in this
step), then wait for the ARM maintainer to push these to Linus for
inclusion at kernel.org (there is only a two week window per kernel
version for this), then wait for the Debian kernel team to include that
new version of the kernel which contains those patches.

We also need to do some work to make sure that the Debian/NSLU2
(debian-installer) image has the same recovery, upgrade and
boot-from-alternate-root-options (like flash sticks and nfs rootfs) that
DebianSlug (SlugOS) currently has before we can consider them merged.

Note that no matter which firmware image you use (DebianSlug or
Debian/NSLU2), you can still use exactly the same resulting Debian
installation on your hard disk.  You can even swap between DebianSlug
and Debian/NSLU2 kernels (as long as you swap the corresponding kernel
modules at the same time).  So going with one or the other does not make
it easier or harder to use Debian on an NSLU2 (once you've completed the
initial Debian installation).  It's only the initial installation of
Debian (via the debian-installer, or via debootstrap) which is different
(apart from the fact that the Debian/NSLU2 kernel doesn't contain all
the latest patches).

I personally currently use DebianSlug and the debootstrap procedure, but
now that we have released the DebianSlug binary image I will start to
spend more time on the merge.  Other NSLU2-Linux developers use the
Debian/NSLU2 kernel.  There is no one single answer.

It's a trade-off between ease of installation (Debian/NSLU2) versus
having a full NSLU2-Linux set of kernel patches installed (DebianSlug).
 Both may need to progress forward independently, even while we are
trying to merge them (since the path to merging involves pushing thing
through the official kernel.org release).

-- Rod


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