+
Official early userspace
+
+ Main source package is initramfs-tools.
+
+
+ Co-developed with Ubuntu and hence sharing all the pain^Wfun of the
+ software and that special relation.
+ In any case a huge step forward after the very special initrd-tools.
+
+
+ initramfs-tools paved the way for pluggable initramfs generators.
+ But, early userspace shouldn't be visible to users.
+ Todays dev sits in dracut. With better maintenance inside the team
+ very likely candidate for 7.0 Debian.
+
+
+ Upcoming challenge: secureboot.
+
+
+
Extra features
+
+ Always aim to get patches merged upstream. But many big features
+ that users want added are not merged upstream for a long
+ time. Kernel team expects features to be upstream first, then
+ backported.
+
+
+ But there have been exceptions:
+
+
+ -
+ OpenVZ and VServer - being reimplemented upstream with cgroups
+ and namespaces
+
+ -
+ Xen - now upstream
+
+ -
+ aufs - needed for Debian Live
+
+ -
+ PREEMPT_RT - gradually being merged upstream; new option in
+ amd64 and i386 packages
+
+
+
+