From: Matt Mackall <redacted>
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2008 17:24:26 -0500

On Wed, 2008-07-30 at 14:35 -0700, David Miller wrote:

quoted

This change means you can't configure nearly all of the features on
your ethernet card.  You can't even configure the link parameters
without ethtool support.

Which is big fat don't-care for the vast majority of users. Various
popular distros don't even install the tool by default.

Are you even aware that the ethtool layer gets invoked by simply
enabling IP forwarding or bridgining, in order to disable LRO
offloading which conflicts with such uses?

And I disagree with your asserion that the tool doesn't get installed
by default by distros.  I can't find one single system here that
doesn't have /usr/sbin/ethtool available.

I guess it depends upon your definition of "various".