[Kay Sievers]

On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 11:23 PM, Bill Nottingham <notting at redhat.com> wrote:
> G.Wolfe Woodbury (redwolfe at gmail.com) said:
>> > The kernel nowadays comes with built-in support for the vast majority of
>> > all common storage hardware anyway, because AHCI is pretty universally
>> > established. Outside of servers non-AHCI controllers practically don't
>> > exist anymore.
>>
>> This is simply not true.
>>
>> There are hundreds of thousands of older desktops that are not
>> technically servers that have lots of older interfaces.
>>
>> To say that non-AHCI controllers don't matter is to place a dignificant
>> barrier to use or adoption of Linux or Fedora.
>
> AHCI dates to before when RHEL 5 was released in 2007. We also build
> in ATA_PIIX, which covers a large number of generations before that.
>
> Does hardware exist that's not covered by this? Of course. However,
> I'd also bet that those installing Fedora on that hardware are those
> that are capable of rebuilding an initramfs if they move an existing
> system to such hardware.

Right, the common hardware we should cover very well, even with a
host-only initramfs.

People who are able shuffle disks from one hardware to the other will
be able to create a generic initramfs, either before moving things
around, or with the rescue system on the new one.

We still do not encode any disk location/property/serial number/path
into the initramfs, and we will be able to find the disks/rootfs, even
when we move the disk(s) around.

Because people mentioned that: none of that was true for Windows,
which is very picky about any topology or driver change regarding the
disk. A simple port change or haredware reconfiguration on Windows
often rendered the disk unbootable, even on the same machine.

Kay