Qi - why only 3 partitions on SD card?

[Cédric Berger]

On Fri, Sep 25, 2009 at 22:00, Paul Fertser <fercerpav at gmail.com> wrote:

> Qi is really simple and (almost) clean, and it can boot kernels. I
> don't understand why you think one should want to maintain huge and
> complex u-boot instead of small simple Qi. It boots kernels -> good
> enough. KISS
>

Personally I do not want to keep huge u-boot. But I think Torfinn
talking about fixing u-boot comes just from some previous posts where
people just said something like (sorry for reformulating with my
understanding) "if QI is not ok for you just use U-Boot, it can
multiboot, so why do you complain". But then it would imply that
U-Boot has to be maintained.
Torfinn just let the choice open for devs since he said he would
(could) not do it himself.
>
>> Now, will any developer step up and fix Qi (or U-boot) so that it
>> will be usable for users?
>
> If you're ok with initramfs solution (and i haven't yet seen a single
> point why it's not ok) then it seems it's not a matter of fixing Qi,
> rather a matter of implementing an initramfs menu...

I completely agree with that, and really would like such a solution. I
thought it would have come sooner (people did talk about trying to
make a little multi-boot quite a while ago !).



And I do agree with Torfinn. I do need to be able to access different
partitions. But I really tried hard and different timings for clicking
Aux, but at the very best I can choose the good partition only once
over 10 trials.

And when using u-boot, I did have 5 partitions where I could install
and test different configurations/distros. I do not anymore, but do
not either play as much with my freerunner.
It is not as simple as "And in fact if anybody of those talking about
bootmenu, multiboot and
such really needed it he would have done it himself long time ago".
I am not sure I would have been able to do this quickly and correctly
enough. (and once again some said they were looking at this, and they
are more competent than me).
Also there are a lot of other things needing work. If everyone had to
do everything himself we would no go really far. Granted I might feel
a little bad saying that since I did not code anything for the
freerunner, but hence  the "FreeRunner will remain a gadget for
developers only" ...