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| 5/25 |
| 2005/1/5-7 [Computer/SW/OS/Linux, Computer/SW/OS/Solaris] UID:35563 Activity:very high |
1/5 So who else thinks that Linux Kernel Development has gone haywire?
WTF is up with this movement from an 8k to a 4k stack in the kernel
that breaks tons of existing drivers that are ported over from
Windows? And wtf is this crap doing on production distros like
Fedora? Don't they realize that if you're going to have a large
install base that you can't arbitrarily do crap like that anymore?
\_ I agree that they are lame and have always have been, but
Fedora isn't a production distro. That's RHEL.
\_ So in other words RH just became even dumber than they used to
be by foisting Fedora on the user community and charging
for the bugfree version.
\_ Fedora is a development platform; that's how it is positioned.
If you don't want a development platform, run RHEL, or
debian or whatever. It's not being "foisted" on you. -tom
\_ No shit sherlock. But the problem is that usually what
happens in Fedora is just reflected in RHEL. RH being
the dumbass company that it is obviously doesn't
do anything like do a real-world usability test on
its distro so going from one major release to the next
results in all your binaries being broken. Also,
a lot of end-user end up using Fedora because they
stopped distributing RH, so in effect it is being
foisted on the userbase with the said userbase
complaining about things being broken.
\_ you're a moron. -tom (really)
\_ you're tom. -idiot
\_ Ouch, now THERE'S a harsh insult.
\_ I'm not sure what part you are objecting
to, but RH's pricing structure for EL has
driven lots of people to use Fedora Core
as a production OS. Many times it is hard
to justify the added cost of installing
EL and a customer choses to deploy FC.
You don't really have a choice but to
support FC as a application developer.
It isn't really practical to tell a customer
to install Debian 3.0R3 or something.
\_ yeah but the bug free version is GPL also. you can try to
use CentOS or one of the other RHEL redistributions.
unfortunately they still suck as a consumer OS.
actually <DEAD>scientificlinux.org<DEAD> looks interesting.
\_ They break drivers all the time anyway as far as I could tell.
You're supposed to stick with some old kernel for a long time for
actual consumer use. But why would you need drivers for Linux?
It's not like you can play games or really do anything anyway.
\_ Well, unfortunately since Sun did such a bad job maintaining
market share us EDA folks are being forced into Linux. Now
we have to do do crap like recompile the kernel just so the
stupid display driver works.
\_ Yeah I use that stuff at work. As long as other people are
responsible for making it all work I don't really care.
\_ I compare the adoption of linux by corporate america to the
ubiquity of windows. Some mid-level managers and idiot salespeople
who thought it gave them cache foisted it upon the world where it
went batshit crazy and drove us all insane.
\_ I actually prefer Linux to, say, Solaris or HP-UX. It has
its limitations, but overall it is cheaper, faster, and
easier to maintain in many ways.
\_ ditto. -- SUN guy
\_ No offense, but Solaris is a far better
operating system. Just because for a long
time Solaris didnt ship with perl and you
have to build you own tcpdump doesnt make
it otherwise. If you get involved in the
innards of operating systems, this is pretty
clear. There are some SysV things that
arent ideal, but if you are trying to debug
low-level things, it is pretty clear.
\_ Not to mention that drivers actually work
in Solaris...
\_ Linux has far more working drivers than Solaris.
Solaris just works on the very limited hardware
Sun provides. -tom
\_ I work for SUN and I've been fighting on driver
issue everyday. And I can tell you flat out
that you may think driver works on Solaris, but
Linux is the only way to go. People would
write Linux drivers, but SUN relys on 150 people
in Beijing to crank out those things one by
one. As hard as those Chinese monkey works,
they can never match the speed which hardware
comes up.
\_ You must live in some other universe. I work
for Sun and we have the hardest time getting
drivers to work for even simple stuff like
gigE nics (ex E1000 driver on S10 was a
nightmare for a long time). And you can forget
about AGP in most cases. Some big shots felt
AGP was the shits so no support in Solaris.
There were several cluster deals we couldn't
bid on b/c there was no AGP support in Solaris.
\_ hey, would you mind if I contact you?
-another SUN guy (id 152093)
\_ I think you may be missing the forest for the trees
here. How many people spend their time debugging
``low-level things?'' How many people just want
the system to come with a modern version of perl?
Once you reach a critical threshold level of
stability (which Linux hit some time in 1999 or
so) comparing OS internals dick size becomes
pointless.
\- if you want to say linux is more useful
because i can surf my p0rn and play my mpegs
"better" that's fine. useful to me !=
better os design. it's not a matter of
how many people do this. it's more like
looking to a kernel crash dump tells you
a lot about what is under the hood.
\_ In the REAL world, most people write
applications that run on the OS. I
can almost understand that Sun doesn't
want to ship MySQL or PostgreSQL w/
Solaris, but WHY IN PARTHA'S NAME
did they wait till S9U3 to ship wget
in /usr/sfw and S10 to add gcc? I
shouldn't have to go to some website
to download badly packaged freeware.
Every single Linux distro comes with
this stuff pre-installed. Oh yeah,
instead of chkconfig and isc dhcpd
I get svcadm and sun dhcpd which are
complete CRAP.
Linux has its own problems, but one
HUGE advantage of Linux is that you
can tell your customers to get RHEL
3 ES or SuSE Pro, install it in
server config and then install your
software on top of it. The same RPMS
every time, in the same location,
it makes it easy to test, debug and
support. Unlike Solaris where you
have to ship all your 3d party pkgs
you don't have to worry about keeping
up to date with DBI.pm fixes, PostgreSQL
security patches, wget vulnerabilites
&c. The OS vendor takes care of that
so you can concentrate on your app.
\_ and for your information, MS Windows hit
that threshold by year 2000 with Windows 2000.
Despite you may not think that way.
\_
\_ I don't. Solaris + Native Sun HW is definitely a lot
easier to setup and better integrated than Linux. Solaris
x86 on the other hand makes zero sense. Sun HW also used
\_ let me tell you something. The biggest mistake SUN
ever made was terminate its Solaris x86 program back in
2000. Since then, Linux took off.
-SUN guy who is trying to sell Solaris10
everyday.
to be quality, of course since the U-Sparc 5/10 days
this is no longer true. HP-UX is basically dead, has been
since the late 90s. I just think it's really lame that
in the year 2004 I have to recompile the stupid kernel
to get something like UDMA to work. In some ways, Linux
sucks because it's just a rehash of 30 year old tecnology
on cheap commodity hardware. I mean, shouldn't there be
something better than what's essentially just glorified
UNIX? In all the years with Linux I haven't really seen
anything that really was groundbreaking in terms of
kernel dev. I mean, wtf was Torvaldis smoking when he
decided he was too lazy to implement a modular structure
to the kernel, and why hasn't this been corrected in the
15 odd years that Linux has been around?
\_ What Torvalds was smoking when he decided he was too lazy
to implement a modular structure in the kernel:
http://csua.org/u/ale
You may bitch, but history shows him to be correct.
\_ "correct"... Linux has become more modular over time,
and other OSes haven't sacrificed their modular design
at the altar of Linus. What exactly was he "correct"
about? That linux beat minix? Big whoop.
\_ Hah, exactly my point. It's like saying that
the Chinese had stopped charging families for the
bullet they execute prisoners with. Going from
the Americans had stopped genociding people
for human rights, freedom and democracy. Going from
crap to not so crappy isn't exactly innovation.
\_ the bigger picture is not about technical superiority.
and i was hoping you guys notice that when Windows captured
98% of the OS market while argueably it is the worse
major OS on the market right now.
\_ No, the point was that Windows 98 was backwards
compatible with Windows 95 which was backwards
compatible with Windows 3.11, etc. Now Linux
version 2.6.6 isn't even fucking compatible with
Linnux version 2.6.5. That's progress?
\_ Man, this whole thread could be summarised as: OP is upset that
Linux community doesn't care about 3rd party drivers, and many
CSUAers continue to deride Linux for not being enough like
X \in { BSD, Solaris, DomainOS, ... }. |
| 5/25 |
|
| csua.org/u/ale -> people.fluidsignal.com/~luferbu/misc/Linus_vs_Tanenbaum.html minix Subject: LINUX is obsolete Date: 29 Jan 92 12:12:50 GMT Organization: Fac. Informatica, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam I was in the US for a couple of weeks, so I haven't commented much on L INUX (not that I would have said much had I been around), but for what i t is worth, I have a couple of comments now. As most of you know, for me MINIX is a hobby, something that I do in the evening when I get bored writing books and there are no major wars, revo lutions, or senate hearings being televised live on CNN. My real job is a professor and researcher in the area of operating systems. As a result of my occupation, I think I know a bit about where operating are going in the next decade or so. Examples of such systems are UNIX, MS-DOS, VMS, MVS, OS/360, MULTIC S, and many more. The alternative is a microkernel-based system, in which most of the OS ru ns as separate processes, mostly outside the kernel. The kernel's job is to handle the message passing, int errupt handling, low-level process management, and possibly the I/O. Exa mples of this design are the RC4000, Amoeba, Chorus, Mach, and the not-y et-released Windows/NT. While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually design operating systems, the debate is essentially over. The file system and memory managemen t are separate processes, running outside the kernel. The I/O drivers ar e also separate processes (in the kernel, but only because the brain-dea d nature of the Intel CPUs makes that difficult to do otherwise). That is like taking an existing, working C program and rewriting it in B ASIC. To me, writing a monolithic system in 1991 is a truly poor idea. When it grew up it became an 800 8 Then it underwent plastic surgery and became the 8080. It begat the 8 086, which begat the 8088, which begat the 80286, which begat the 80386, which begat the 80486, and so on unto the N-th generation. In the meant ime, RISC chips happened, and some of them are running at over 100 MIPS. Speeds of 200 MIPS and more are likely in the coming years. What is going to happen is that they will gradually take over from the 80x86 line. They will run old MS-DOS programs by interpreting the 80386 in software. MINIX was designed to be reasonably portable, and has been ported from th e Intel line to the 680x0 (Atari, Amiga, Macintosh), SPARC, and NS32016. It will get all the peop le who want to turn MINIX in BSD UNIX off my back. But in all honesty, I would suggest that people who want a **MODERN** "free" OS look around f or a microkernel-based, portable OS, like maybe GNU or something like th at. nl) PS Just as a random aside, Amoeba has a UNIX emulator (running in user space), but it is far from complete. If there are any people who would l ike to work on that, please let me know. To run Amoeba you need a few 38 6s, one of which needs 16M, and all of which need the WD Ethernet card. minix Subject: Re: LINUX is obsolete Date: 29 Jan 92 23:14:26 GMT Organization: University of Helsinki Well, with a subject like this, I'm afraid I'll have to reply. Apologies to minix-users who have heard enough about linux anyway. nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes: I was in the US for a couple of weeks, so I haven't commented much on LINUX (not that I would have said much had I been around), but for what it is worth, I have a couple of comments now. As most of you know, for me MINIX is a hobby, something that I do in the evening when I get bored writing books and there are no major wars, re volutions, or senate hearings being televised live on CNN. My real job is a professor and researcher in the area of operating systems. Sorry, but you lo ose: I've got more excuses than you have, and linux still beats the pant s of minix in almost all areas. Not to mention the fact that most of the good code for PC minix seems to have been written by Bruce Evans. Re 1: you doing minix as a hobby - look at who makes money off minix, and who gives linux out for free. Make minix freel y available, and one of my biggest gripes with it will disappear. Linux has very much been a hobby (but a serious one: the best type) for me: I get no money for it, and it's not even part of any of my studies in the university. Re 2: your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix. I can only hope (and assume) that Amoeba doesn't suck like minix does. With a less argumentative subject, I'd probably have agreed with most of what you said. From a theoretical (and aesthetical) standpoint linux looses. If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still isn't. If this was the only criterion for the "goodness" of a kernel, you'd be r ight. What you don't mention is that minix doesn't do the micro-kernel t hing very well, and has problems with real multitasking (in the kernel). If I had made an OS that had problems with a multithreading filesystem, I wouldn't be so fast to condemn others: in fact, I'd do my damndest to make others forget about the fiasco. yes, I know there are multithreading hacks for minix, but they are hack s, and bruce evans tells me there are lots of race conditions 2 PORTABILITY "Portability is for people who cannot write new programs" -me, right now (with tongue in cheek) The fact is that linux is more portable than minix. It's true - but not in the sense that ast means: I made linux as confor mant to standards as I knew how (without having any POSIX standard in fr ont of me). Porting things to linux is generally /much/ easier than port ing them to minix. I agree that portability is a good thing: but only where it actually has some meaning. There is no idea in trying to make an operating system ove rly portable: adhering to a portable API is good enough. The very /idea/ of an operating system is to use the hardware features, and hide them b ehind a layer of high-level calls. That is exactly what linux does: it j ust uses a bigger subset of the 386 features than other kernels seem to do. Of course this makes the kernel proper unportable, but it also makes for a /much/ simpler design. An acceptable trade-off, and one that made linux possible in the first place. I also agree that linux takes the non-portability to an extreme: I got my 386 last January, and linux was partly a project to teach me about it. Many things should have been done more portably if it would have been a real project. I'm not making overly many excuses about it though: it was a design decision, and last april when I started the thing, I didn't th ink anybody would actually want to use it. I'm happy to report I was wro ng, and as my source is freely available, anybody is free to try to port it, even though it won't be easy. I apologise for sometimes sounding too harsh: minix is nice enough if you have nothing else. Amoeba might be nice if you have 5-10 spare 386' s lying around, but I certainly don't. minix Subject: Re: LINUX is obsolete Date: 30 Jan 92 13:44:34 GMT Organization: Fac. The limitations of MINIX relate at least partly to my being a professor: An explicit design goal was to make it run on cheap hardware so students could afford it. In particular, for years it ran on a regular 477 MHZ PC with no hard disk. You could do everything here including modify and recompile the system. Making software free, bu t only for folks with enough money to buy first class hardware is an int eresting concept. Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 6 4M SPARCstation-5. Re 2: your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix. I can only hope (a nd assume) that Amoeba doesn't suck like minix does. Amoeba was not designed to run on an 8088 with no hard disk. If this was the only criterion for the "goodness" of a kernel, you'd be right. What you don't mention is that minix doesn't do the micro-kernel thing very well, and has problems with real multitasking (in the kerne l). If I had made an OS that had proble... |