Messages in this thread | | | Subject | Re: proper place to discuss kernel 'bloatedness'? | From | Wayne Schlitt <> | Date | 31 Jan 1999 23:53:23 -0600 |
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In <36B47C02.6E09F73C@sire.ddns.org> Robert Wuest <rwuest@sire.ddns.org> writes: > Chip Salzenberg wrote: > > Well, actually, it is. Anyone who can afford any computer at all > > can afford a few gigabytes these days. > > That's not necessarily true. I work with a bunch of guys who make very > little money and are always scrounging parts to enhance their machines. > $200 for a disk drive is two weeks salary. > > [ ... ] but keeping it as small as possible is very __important__ for > Linux's expansion onto the desktop in developing nations and hence, > important for developers to keep in mind. Just a thought.
If the size of the kernel and the resources consumed by the OS is really *that* important, might I suggest using something line Minix? The author of Minix didn't make the mistakes that Linus made and kept out a huge amount of needless bloat from becoming part of the standard OS. I believe that Minix still runs on an 8086 with two floppies. Minix, like WinNT, also uses a microkernel, which is a modern OS design technique, rather than the 1950ish kernel that Linus built.
Oh, uhm, I guess I should put a :-> in here somewhere...
Seriously though, unlike Minix, Linux was never intended to be the "smallest useful OS", rather, it is "what Linus wants it to be". I really doubt that you will be able to convince him that the size of Linux is a real problem, or that it is headed in the wrong direction. I really like the glee that Linus shows when he gets a patch that *removes* large amounts of code. It is obvious that he wants to keep Linux lean and mean, but that doesn't mean it should be tiny.
I also respect Andy Tannenbaum for knowing what he wanted his OS to be, and that was to be a very minimalistic OS which could be run on really cheap hardware and small enough that comp sci students could understand it in a semester class. He might have said a few things that he may now regret, but I doubt that he regrets the direction he kept Minix going in.
-wayne
-- Wayne Schlitt can not assert the truth of all statements in this article and still be consistent.
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