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Every few years, someone pops up and says "Everything is going in X direction, this is what we'll be using/how software will look". Generally speaking they're usually dead wrong. Most famously, Andrew Tanenbaum once argued in 1992 that "... 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5".

1997 came and went, everyone was running non-free Windows 95 on their 200MHz PentiumMMX beige boxes.

How to move the cursor one character forward in vi

"A" decade?

Here's what Linus Torvalds had to say about the GNU OS in 1992

"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. Linux wins heavily on points of being available now."

If you'd like to see some old Linus vs Tanenbaum flames, check out here:

http://www.dina.dk/~abraham/Linus_vs_Tanenbaum.htm l#linus1

I'm gonna post this anonmymously so I don't get modded up or modded down, I just thought some of you would find this interesting. There is a link that leads to another mirror of this in another post, but it was slashdotted (or something else) and I couldn't get to it. Check this out, it's an interesting read! (please don't mod this offtopic, it's a great read on the subject at hand)

We all hope in a better rivalry between Andy and Linus.
They are both great minds: there can be much more value in their cooperation than in falming each other!

I am sorry, but it is agains my religion to use a Windows machine! :)

But I can do tech support on Linux or OS X.. :)

Here is a link to a nice summary of the famous discussion in comp.os.minix between Tanenbaum and Linus over Microkernel vs Monolithic System architectures.

Wow, it actually exists? I got it from here No, I dont mean to plagiarize... why would I take credit for using Ed? I'm not some sorta sadist... :(

Tanenbaum wrote MINIX, an operating system that was mildly popular in the days Linux was getting started. Tanenbaum and Torvalds had a famous debate on OS design and the like between MINIX and Linux.

Ken Brown is employed by the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute, a firm that some Slashdotters speculate is in the pay of SCO, MS, or the ilk, and is trying to find criticisms against Linux, recently making the claim that Torvalds did not write Linux, which is probably too open to interpretation. Torvalds wrote Linux to the extent that he typed it, but he did built on prior work, just like everyone else. Even Microsoft originally bought all rights to DOS from a third party and modified and licensed it to IBM for their contract.

(At least, this is what I myself have gleaned from Slashdot. Some detail is probably wrong.)

Hey The Cuhurch of Emacs is no sect.

Don't forget the Church of Emacs

"all micro-kernel based operating systems"

Lucky that Linux is monolithicthen..

I found this VI tutorial particularly easy to follow.

According to Linux legend, a revered teacher and researcher told Linus Torvalds that he "would not get a high grade" for his creation.

The "revered teacher and researcher" in question is Professor Andy Tanenbaum.

His book "Computer Network" is a bible in networking for many people. Yes, what he thought about Linux is proven wrong but we still respect him.

Btw, my favourite quote of the above conversation is:
"As an aside, for those folks who don't read news headers, Linus is in Finland and I am in The Netherlands. Are we reaching a situation where another critical industry, free software, that had been totally dominated by the U.S. is being taken over by the foreign competition? Will we soon see President Bush coming to Europe with Richard Stallman and Rick Rashid in tow, demanding that Europe import more American free software?"

It has already proven that there's an free OS(a software) that has not been totally dominated by U.S., we yet to see Bush(well, if not old Bush. :) coming to Europe with Richard Stallman and Rick Rashid. :)

"If the Linux kernel had been written for my Operating Systems class, it would have received an F."

"F" for funding. :)

For more info.

Here is a link to an introduction to Moscow SML implementation, which has alot of good beginner info. And here is a link to SML .NET info, which is what you'll need to use to code SML apps for windows.

Basically, AST had some very stuffy ideas about OS design. Torvalds just wanted a kernel people (well, himself actually, but besides that) could use and learn from now and for free. Well, the whole thread speaks for itself. Basically,

The whole point is that Linux was not meant to be written, studied and then left to rot on some CS grad's harddisk. It was meant to be used.

Do you know what a piece of dung Minix is compared to Linux in terms of usefullnes? I rather not start. It's a great teaching tool, but nothing more than that. And it's not even Free (tm).

So be glad Linus did not listen to AST. Else you wouldn't be posting from your pretty KDE/GNOME desktop right now.

I've met AST in person. He's still quite pompous and rigid about stuff. I know from first hand AST heavily resisted against Linux being installed on computers at the CWI in Amsterdam, but he just couldn't stop it. Go figure.

sorry for the offtopicness (hey it's that kind of a day again... sheesh. Oh my poor karma...)

The thing is, Linus does care about speed difference. A lot.

For example:
The Linux kernel is 'copylefted' software, patented under the GNU GPL, and thus, nobody actually owns it.
In fact, the relevant law is copyright not patent and most portions of the kernel are owned by the programmer who wrote them.

For example:
Similarly important was Linus's decision to create a highly portable [their emphasis] system.
In fact, the original kernel was very i386 specific and non-portable . The portability only came later. (Torvalds did aim for POSIX compatibility to make it easier to port codes to his kernel.)

There are many other errors in the article. Admittedly, mostly minor details but they do make me wonder about the quality of the "peer-review".

It's actually an old joke, made without attribution to boot.

For those of us who use emacs, there's a great simulation available of the vi experience. (Check out the parent directory of that URL for more of the same)

The kernel should be small and be completely seperate to most drivers...

Wheres our object orientation?

Of course the flip side of this is that it's not always possible to tell who will be considered interesting in the future. In many cases, the most interesting use of archives is to look at the work of interesting people while they were working their way up and weren't of broad enough interest to attract major attention. Nobody knew that a 25 year old patent examiner named Albert Einstein was about to become a scientific star, but because we have his personal letters we can find out what he was doing scientifically and personally.

You never know if the next great author might be posting his early, great works to some fan e-mail list because he can't get his foot in the door at a major publisher. Maybe the next great debator is getting started in flamewars on Slashdot. Maybe the next great OS designer is getting into arguments with established academics on USENET. Oh, wait, that already happened, and we can only read the argument because somebody though to archive it. Maybe the next great philosopher who will be mostly ignored for 100 years is already publishing his early thoughts somewhere on the web. You can't always tell what will be valuable to the future until well after the fact, so preserving as much as possible is still a really good idea.

A truly wonderful example of this kind of thing are the early works of JRR Tolkein. The early history of the Silmarillion is absolutely fascinating and a wonderful example of the development of a literary theme. That's a work that wasn't published for over 50 years after it was started, but some of the earliest drafts still exist. Because those drafts are available, it's possible to see how it developed. Will the same thing happen when authors write everything in Word and write over old versions every time they change anything? How about if they're still very careful about keeping copies of early drafts but the formats change so much that they can't be read anymore?

Full sources for linux [kernel] currently runs to about 200kB compressed [...] much smaller than the 386-dependent things in mach: i386.tar.Z for the current version of mach is well over 800kB compressed (823391 bytes according to nic.funet.fi). Admittedly, mach is "somewhat" bigger and has more features, but that should still tell you something.

I agree that microkernels are nicer.

Of course, that was 1992. Everyone (even Microsoft!) thought microkernels were the way to go. Flash forward 8 years, now no one will admit to being associated with microkernels (not even Microsoft!) and we now find Linus trashing Mach.

Personally, I don't blame him. His opinions are pretty well grounded. In 1992, the research indicated that microkernels would eventually leave monolithic kernels far behind, performance wise; in practice it turned out differently. In fact, I have a lot more respect for Linus since he has changed his opinion - there's nothing worse than a pompus ass who would rather continue to defend a position that had been proven wrong rather than admit that he made a mistake. I'm just pointing out the (unrealized to CmdrTaco) irony of the "anyone have the Minix logs?" statement.

Linus vs. Tanenbaum

And remember... Lensmen eat Jedi for breakfast.

Unfortunately the Linux kernel still does not comply with the principles of good kernel design highlighted in Tannenbaum's "Operating Systems Design And Implentation": the clean (and I do emphasize that that is important) implementation of a scheduler, memory managment aspects, IPC, device drivers etc.

You and Tanenbaum seem to share the belief that the architecture of the OS is the highest priority. Linus seems to focus instead on practicality and performance, although he does value architectural simplicity and elegance very highly too.

perhaps a CVS system instead of randomly throwing out tarballs....and a proper built-in kernel debugger. (Linus himself apparently dissaproves of things like this)

but in matters such as this perhaps it's time he was overruled, in order to take the kernel onto the next level

If anything, the comment could have been re-phrased better as Linus+Minix+(gnu tools)=Linux, but (apologies to Andy Tannebaum) I don't believe Linus ever used any of the minix source on his development path, since he says just that in the initial announcement of his plans.

aem