On Wed, May 23, 2018 at 07:49:35AM -0700, Guenter Roeck wrote:
I want to be able to swap kernel versions without having to update the root file system. That doesn't work if I have to use v4 configuration files for v4.4 and older kernels, and v5 configuration files for v4.9 and later kernels (besides, as I mentioned, that the v5 configuration files I found were all incomplete). In my opinion, thre should be exactly one configuration file for a given device, and there should be no need for users (or distributions) to hunt for the correct version of the file.
I think it's fine for there to be new firmwares with corresponding new configs, and that it's fine for those to have some minimum kernel version requirement (though desirable to avoid it). The firmwares could be enabling completely new or different features, that's one of the advantages of making the firmwares replaceable, and it's reasonable for that to result in config changes. What's not fine is for a new kernel to require that you change anything about the firmware and config setup on your system.