importance of having DEVFS in Gentoo

Had a buddy here at work install Gentoo, and he chose dev-sources
which gave him 2.6.7-gentoo-r11. I have r7. Turns out that he *had to
include* dev fs to be compiled into the kernel. The menu states
OBSOLETE, but when Gentoo boots it gives you a warning message if you
don't have it. Without it he could only use terminals (xterm,
gnome-terminal) in X if he was root.

The terminal (gnome-terminal) that he invoked was essentially dead
and was not functional. It loaded a blank, white screen with a
blinking cursor. Took about 5 minutes to figure what he needed in the
Gentoo forums: he needed dev fs. Quick kernel reconfigure, recompile,
copy to /boot, and lilo execution. After a reboot and loading Gnome,
his problem was solved..