On Tue, May 9, 2023, at 2:47 PM, Zbigniew Jędrzejewski-Szmek wrote:
On Tue, May 09, 2023 at 01:31:01PM -0500, Chris Adams wrote:
> Once upon a time, Chris Murphy <lists(a)colorremedies.com> said:
> > What about the increasing growth in linux-firmware and in particular the NVIDIA
firmware requirements? My reading suggests it's significant and the future growth also
significant.
>
> Could we use a dumb framebuffer in initrd and get rid of all the GPU
> firmware from the image?
Maybe, probably, who knows… But it's not just the video. The pressure
to add more stuff and more drivers will only grow: bluetooth for keyboards
and FIDO2, sound support for voice assistance, network for remote attestation
or clevis, etc. We can push this can down the road, but it seems we need
to be ready to add move stuff before root is available anyway.
I still think we need less kernel and initramfs in order to get more by having `/`
available faster. Fast enough that the user isn't looking for or expecting
interactivity in the few seconds it should take to get to `/` being mounted.
Otherwise, next up will be embeding GNOME Shell into the initramfs because we're tired
of waiting for a real a11y and i18n environment to be available so we can prompt the user
for an encryption passphrase with appropriate rules, fonts, locale support, etc.
I can conjure up some use cases for stuffing Firefox in the initramfs. Maybe we should
just put /usr into the initramfs.
We'll just all accept 20+ second linux+initrd times to accommodate everyone getting
through the elevator door simultaneously. No problem.
--
Chris Murphy