On Tuesday, February 11, 2020 3:44:17 AM MST Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
On Mon, Feb 10, 2020 at 09:05:27PM -0700, John M. Harris Jr wrote:
> On Monday, February 10, 2020 12:03:25 PM MST Robbie Harwood wrote:
>
> > "John M. Harris Jr" <johnmh(a)splentity.com> writes:
> >
> > > On Saturday, January 25, 2020 2:52:05 PM MST Chris Murphy wrote:
> > >
> > >> Question and (pre)proposal:
> > >>
> > >> Can Fedora converge on a single swap-on-ZRAM implementation, and if
> > >> so, which one? Fedora Workstation WG wants to move to swap-on-ZRAM
> > >> by
> > >> default in Fedora 33, and the working group needs to pick something
> > >> soon.
> > >
> > >
> > > Using swap on zram disables the ability to hibernate, making it a
> > > non-starter for many users. If this is going to be thrown into
> > > anything, the user needs to be asked whether they want it or not in
> > > the installer, otherwise you're just taking away features.
> >
> >
> > I thought you told me that the workstation group considers hibernation
> > unsupported? (id:2368390.zU9c8gpsLA@marvin.jharris.pw)
> >
> > Thanks,
> > --Robbie
>
>
> They do, but that doesn't negate the fact that it is actually supported
> (you can hibernate your system), and using swap on zram outright breaks
> hibernation (for obvious reasons).
This discussion is mixing up two different interpretations of meaning
of "supported".
- Supported, as in, "this use case is in scope & is a release criteria"
vs
- Supported, as in, "the functionality works from a technical POV"
Thus since hibernation is declared an unsupported use case, the fact that
it might happen to work from a technical POV is merely good fortune and is
not required to stay that way, even if some people might be using that now.
IOW, if swap-on-ZRAM benefits core supported use cases, then it can be
acceptable to break unsupported use cases even if the latter currently
work at a technical POV. Enabling this kind of trade off to be made is
precisely why it is beneficial to define the scope of a product for
what is supported vs unsupported.
In this case, I mean supported as in:
Users in at least KDE can open their respective menu and choose Leave ->
Hibernate
Users can run `hibernate`
..and it just works. I'd imagine this is also the case in GNOME, though I
don't use it actively to verify on real hardware, and that it works in qemu
doesn't mean it works on metal. If it doesn't work on real hardware, that's a
GNOME-specific issue.
--
John M. Harris, Jr.
Splentity