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Zero-copy TCP has been discussed extensively on the Linux-kernel mailing list. You might want to check out this post by Linux, who disagrees with zero-copy in most cases. Another post, from someone at CMU, has a fairly good argument in favor of zero-copy, but Ingo Molnar (to get back on topic), responds to him (taking a moderate position) in this post.

Personally, I tend to fall into the camp which believes that sendfile() and other, specialized interfaces should use a copy-free approach, but there's no need to add this special case code into every single frickin' corner of the IO system.

--JRZ

Zero-copy TCP has been discussed extensively on the Linux-kernel mailing list. You might want to check out this post by Linux, who disagrees with zero-copy in most cases. Another post, from someone at CMU, has a fairly good argument in favor of zero-copy, but Ingo Molnar (to get back on topic), responds to him (taking a moderate position) in this post.

Personally, I tend to fall into the camp which believes that sendfile() and other, specialized interfaces should use a copy-free approach, but there's no need to add this special case code into every single frickin' corner of the IO system.

--JRZ

Zero-copy TCP has been discussed extensively on the Linux-kernel mailing list. You might want to check out this post by Linux, who disagrees with zero-copy in most cases. Another post, from someone at CMU, has a fairly good argument in favor of zero-copy, but Ingo Molnar (to get back on topic), responds to him (taking a moderate position) in this post.

Personally, I tend to fall into the camp which believes that sendfile() and other, specialized interfaces should use a copy-free approach, but there's no need to add this special case code into every single frickin' corner of the IO system.

--JRZ

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1. Lots of empties. But anyway, why should the VFS know about specific details of other filesystems? Does it provide an advantage to those filesystems? Give us your thoughts, please. I.e., answer the questions. In case you haven't noticed, people aren't just harshing on poor Viro -- we actually want to know the answers to some questions! I.e., we're willing to engage in constructive dialogue. Why is there a big, ugly union in the VFS rather than having all filesystems use the generic pointer? Why is not not silly to require the VFS to understand FS-specific data? For control? Or is there a valid technical reason that it's better, at the expense of making otehr filesystems do ugly hacks?
   
   
   
2. Why do you think soft-updates are better then journaling? I really want to know. Someone else said that the "generic journaling" is really just going to be a way to deal with making sure inodes and transactions play nice. Is that true? Or what? You still haven't answered the question. Will the generic journaling turn out to be Ext3 journaling, or not? If not, what will it be?
   
   
   
3. Heh. Erez Zadoklike a friend of mine named Cyrus. His FiST stuff looks interesting; I looked it over several months ago. But back to my question, Why can't the VFS be made stackable and extensible? Or to phrase it taking your reply into account, why must an add-on kit be used? Do you not want to do it in the VFS itself? Why? Why not? Can you please answer the question?
   
   
4. You patch filesystems when you patch the VFS, was my understanding. So if you change the VFS to remove the union, as you said in your answer to #1, then what would you do? If someone wrote that patch for you, and went ahead and patched all the other filesystems to make it easier to deal with, what would you do? It has everything to do with the VFS, if you remove the union. You still didn't answer the question.
   
   
5. yeah, you're not Linus. But what percentage of your patches do get accepted, and how much debate and review do they go through before hand? Open question to Linus: so, what "technical merits" must a patch exhibit before you will include it? And is there any plan to provide open future-design docs?
   
   
6. Yeah. A little. So little as to almost not matter. Your attitude is still "read Ext2." Which pretty much clashes with your answer to #4. If you don't patch filesystems yourself, then why do you always tell people that Ext2 is the reference documentation for the VFS? Presumably you're keeping it up to date with your VFS changes.
   
   
7. The VFS is being used in more places -- shared memory, for instance. As it becomes more important to more kernel systems, should it not be made more flexible and documented better? Next year, each of your VFS patches VFS will break even more stuff. If the VFS had a cleaner interface, and better design docs and roadmaps, then VFS changes would not be so much of a problem. Do you agree that the VFS needs a cleaner, more capable, less frequently changed, better documented interface? Or not? Why in either case?
   
   

I suggest looking at the links on the EDU-SIG page at python.org. Look specially at the links "How to think like a computer scientist" (is at this address), and the one called "livewires" (at here). The last one includes a module that makes even turtle graphics!.

"Now you can see that evil will triumph, because good is dumb!"

I suggest looking at the links on the EDU-SIG page at python.org. Look specially at the links "How to think like a computer scientist" (is at this address), and the one called "livewires" (at here). The last one includes a module that makes even turtle graphics!.

"Now you can see that evil will triumph, because good is dumb!"

Python (which is a great, great language) is making a big "Computer Programming For Everybody" (CP4E) push, and you can check out their education special interest group right here. I think it would probably be more appropriate for 7th-12th graders, though.

You can actually find a decent amount of material on Python for education here as well. One great thing about Python is the ease with which you can develop GUIs without using GUI builders. Not that there's anything wrong with GUI builders, I just question whether they're helpful for beginning programmers, who end up spending more time learning the interface of the particular IDE, rather than learning to program.
--JRZ

FOSE #4 ... is that dude wearing a gun?

Pictures can be found here

donfede

I was starting to think about this problem when Transmeta announced their proprietary code-morphing firmware. Would you say that firmware should also be free? If so, is there any FSF project being planned to write free firmware?

Also: what do you think about attempts to create free CPU plans such as Freedom?

Here are some other distros using partionless installs: PhatLinux, WinLinux2000, and DOSLinux. Information o nthese, as well as a great number of other Linux distros are available at linux.org. Please remember the loopback distors are slower than normal distros due to the nature of their filesystems. They are great for people wanting to try Linux, however. All you have to do to uninstall the system is delete 1 directory.

gnap -- gnome napster client

gnome-napster -- gnome napster client

jnap -- java napster client

jnapster -- java napster client

java napster -- java napster client

crapster -- BeOS napster client

gnapster -- gnome napster client

BitchX -- IRC chat client with napster plugin

Knapster -- KDE napster client

BeNapster -- BeOS napster client

Napster for BeOS

Napster for MacOSX

gtk napster -- gtk napster client

amster -- amiga napster client

iNapster -- WWW interface to napster

BWap -- standalone console unix client based on bx-nap plugin for BitchX

These are all open source and free, and will work with Opennap servers (although most right now probably aren't coded to take advantage of the Pr0n search extensions, yet. Give it some time though.

http://boudicca .tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/2000week11/1055.ht ml

Web archive HERE

Any help around with this?

The FAQ is here. Check out subscribe info here.

The FAQ is here. Check out subscribe info here.

Recently I set out to finally install RedHat. However, I could not get the Cogent eMaster 110 tx nic to work. The installer correctly identified it as tulip compliant, but something was wrong with autosensing between 10 and 100. I read the relevant ethernet howtos, but there was no clue. Then I discovered the tulip driver page with a grid of options to try, but none worked. Finally, I found posts on tux.org and beowulf.org from people who were having the same problem, but there weren't any follow-up posts from the Linux community. I tried asking for some advice on #linuxhelp and #redhat, but people mostly ignored me. This is the crux of the problem; how does the Linux community expect their OS to be widely adopted by consumers when hardware drivers are still so buggy, no one will help you diagnose or solve the problem even when you say pretty-please, and you're forced to buy a new nic out of desperation? I'm a reasonably skilled computer nerd, so I didn't panic when the install repeatedly didn't work. However, I can easily imagine a less skilled person encountering this aggravating problem and just giving up. It's time for the Linux community to stop ignoring and antagonizing potential "newbies" or else your OS will fade into sysadmin oblivion once again.

And, of course, there is the Freedom CPU project.

I've noticed a few posts asking what the advantage of rewriting the kernel in a language like C++. I don't know the answer, but in the linux kernel mailing list faq, question 1.4 states:

Why don't we rewrite the Linux kernel in C++?


(ADB [Andrew D. Balsa]) Again, this has to do with practical and theoretical reasons. On the practical side, when Linux got started gcc didn't have an efficient C++ implementation, and some people would argue that even today it doesn't. Also there are many more C programmers than C++ programmers around. On theoretical grounds, examples of OS's implemented in Object Oriented languages are rare (Java-OS and Oberon System 3 come to mind), and the advantages of this approach are not quite clear cut (for OS design, that is; for GUI implementation KDE is a good example that C++ beats plain C any day).


and


(REW [Roger E. Wolff]) In the dark old days, in the time that most of you hadn't even heard of the word "Linux", the kernel was once modified to be compiled under g++. That lasted for a few revisions. People complained about the performance drop. It turned out that compiling a piece of C code with g++ would give you worse code. It shouldn't have made a difference, but it did. Been there, done that.



And question 1.5:

Why is the Linux kernel monolithic? Why don't we rewrite it as a microkernel?


(ADB) No opinions here, just a few pointers. Linux has been implemented as a "personality" on top of a modified version of the Mach3 microkernel. This is a fully functional piece of code, known as MkLinux. The project was in part funded by Apple, and as such it was running at first on PowerPC Macs. But an x86 version is available, with fully open source code. Similarly, the Hurd (the GNU kernel) is being implemented on top of Mach3.

There is a historical Usenet thread related to this subject, dating back from 1992, with posts from Linus, Andrew Tanenbaum, Roger Wolff, Theodore Y T'so, David Miller and others. Nice reading on a rainy afternoon. It's fascinating to see how some predictions (which seemed rather reasonable at the time) have proved wrong over
the years (for example, that we would all be using RISC chips by 1998).

F-CPU (open source CPU)

FWIW, egcs-1.1.2 is generally considered to be the most recent compiler available which should work safely for just about everything, including the kernel. Heck, if RedHat uses it
as their default compiler, the advantages must outweigh the disadvantages of gcc-2.7.3.2. My own personal experiences reflect this.

I took my information from the last look at the Linus Kernel Mailing list faq at lkml faq Apparently the fact that egcs was not stable for a long time I guess influenced the decision for not having it being in more common use for kernel compiling.

• ftp://mandrake.mudspace.com/pub/linu x/mandrake (Michigan, USA) ++
• ftp://ftp.math.utah.edu/pub/linux/Mandra ke (Utah, USA) ++
• http://www.math.utah.edu/pub/linux/Man drake/ (Utah, USA) ++
• ftp://ftp.cee.odu.edu/pub/CEE/linux/ma ndrake (Virginia, USA) ++
• ftp://ftp.tux.org/pub/distributions/m andrake/ (Virginia, USA) ++
• ftp://ftp.wtfo.com/pub/linux/mandrake/ (Washington, USA) ++
• ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linu x/Dist/Mandrake/ (Pragua Czech Repubic) ++
• ftp://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/OS/Linu x/Dist/Mandrake/ (Pragua Czech Repubic) ++
• ftp.informatik.hu-berl in.de/pub/Linux/distributions/Mandrake (Berlin, Germany) ++
• ftp://msj.u-3mrs.fr/pub/linux/distr ib/mandrake/ (Marseille, France) ++
• ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake/ (Nancy, France) ++
• ftp://sunsite.uio.no/pub/unix/Linux/Mandrake (Oslo, Norway) ++
• ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/Linux/d istributions/mandrake/ (Sweden) ++
• ftp.linux.org.tr/pub/Mandrake (Turkey) ++

The strange thing is that I bet any 9 year old computers running FreeBSD have Y2K BIOS issues and will fail in what now, less than 2 weeks?

Gosh, it's a good thing that Linux doesn't allow my servers to suffer from that problem. All kernel versions after circa 1994 will be fine with known non-Y2K compliant RTC hardware.

there was a post on linux-kernel from jeff merkey,
the developer of the existing netware support
for linux.

apparently, novell seems to play games..

decide for yourself.

i copy from:

jeffs linux-kernel post

Linux Community,

For those folks who saw the Linux Today article about Novell's "Open
source plans", here's some food for thought. This is an internal email
thread from Novell discussing Open Sourcing of NDS with the principals
at Novell with us (TRG) and attempting to negotiate us to stop Open
Sourcing NetWare technology on Linux. FYI, Dave Shirk and Novell are
full of it, and are in actuality trying to "put the genie back into the
bottle" and get us (TRG) under control. Part of their strategy is to
FUD the key Linux folks to divert attention and mindshare away from what
we are doing. They are out trying to FUD the open source community into
believing they are actually going to do something, but it's really a
well planned attempt to shut us down from providing NetWare open source
technology to you guys.

They first threatened us with more lawsuits if we did not halt our Open
Source NDS projects, then Dave Shirk, the so called "open source
champion" of Novell fired Bryan Clark, the Novell marketing person who
was trying to integrate our Open Source projects with Novell. Dave
Shirk called him into an office and fired him for even suggesting that
NDS be open sourced on Linux -- then turned straight faced to the the
Linux community, stating Novell was moving towards such a direction, and
lied to us. The attached internal email threads are provided so the
principals in the Linux community know these guys are full of it.

Busted!!!! If they try to suck up to any of you, be warned, their
intention is to CONTROL what's going down with their market share.
Linux is killing Netware right now, and will easiy assimilate over 1.5
million nodes of Netware next year. This is a predatory move to "trojan
horse" Linux and neutralize the threat.

Enjoy,

Jeff

For those who want to know what might have been changed, Alan Cox posted the announcement for 2.2.13pre18 with a changelog.
His diary says he sent it to Linus for the official ok.

See the Free-IP Project. Free-IP is endeavouring to supply free (both beer & speech) cores for ASIC's and FPGA's (used in UARTS, CPUs, Ethernet Controllers, etc.). The website has only been up since July and already there are two cores available, Free-DES and and Free-6502. Free-IP cores are either patent free, or patented and released (similar to the copyleft idea).

And along similar lines there's the Freedom-CPU Prject which is developing a GPL'd 64 bit CPU and motherboard.

As for open source: over the years, I've found that generally I contribute to projects which directly affect both myself and others who share the same ideals. I wouldn't be caught dead assisting in writing some inane Quake user editor because I don't feel it positively contributes to the world at large. However, I've happily contributed to Mozilla, Rio MP3 transfer software, a now-abandoned terminal emulator for OS/2, xlockmore, and other projects (including games!) which LONG pre-date Linux and the Open Source movement. These projects have helped me feel like I'm making a difference, like I'm doing something to help my peers. I certainly wouldn't rule out assisting in kernel development, device drivers, or pure UNIX-related stuff on an idealistic basis. However....

I'd never presume to speak for women in general, but most of those females I know who program and use *NIX as much as I do don't obsessively do so. On the contrary, most men I know who program and use *NIX do so all night long, sustaining themselves on Jolt and Oreos. I'll bring myself to do that once in a blue moon, but I (like my friends) like to spend more of my free time away from computers. When I get home in the evenings, I like to spend time with my cats, tutor, direct musicals, go out dancing, or a whole slew of other things which don't directly relate to programming. Because of this, I don't usually get involved with open source projects which are time-critical (like kernel releases) or require intense debugging and pouring over technical manuals (like device drivers). I do enough of that at my day job -- and I'd rather leave that sort of work to someone who really enjoys hooking up a logic analyzer, a disassembler and an external serial console to their PC at 2AM to try and get that bizarro sound card warbling correctly with the latest bleeding-edge kernel release.

So when you ask "How do we attract more women to these development projects?" you might also want to ask yourself "Are these projects something which a woman would want to work on?"

I'll let someone else give a review of the significant computing accomplishments provided by women to the Linux and Open Source movements . . . but if it's anything like the contributions women have made to commercial operating systems over the years, it may well be true that key portions of Linux were written entirely by women!

Oh, and by the way, keep your judgements of my preferences of recreational activites to yourself. Just because I don't and won't play Quake doesn't mean I will do anything to stop you from doing so.

Read the fucking Linux Kernel Mailing List FAQ before shooting your mouth off. And if you're going to dispute it, benchmark it in a reasonable context and prove your claim.

Combining Donald Knuth's MMIX, the Freedom CPU Project and Linux might transfer us into true Cyberspace.

*sigh*
www.f-cpu.tux.org

There is some discussion on this issue from linux-kernel here.

The short version: It's possible to execute arbitrary code even if the stack is marked non-executable. Oh, and Alan Cox says Intel machines can't mark the stack non-exec anyway.

So your point may be true, but it's of limited value.

Debian is "like" Slackware except it's at least ten times as complicated to install. The packaging system may be comprehensive, but it's also monstrously complex.

With a Slackware installation, you just do the install, and then where you want things customized, you use pkgtool to rip out the 'package' and build your stuff from source. That's what "hackers" do BTW.

You never hear anybody doing any dogmatic sloganeering about Slackware. Because it's old (but the new 4.0 release uses the 2.2 kernel), established, and it works.

I also like cool things like the loopback distribution called DOSLinux. You can stick such a beast almost anywhere you need the features of a Linux OS.

It's at http://f-cpu.tux.org/.

... is archived here:
http://www.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/this-wee k/0227.html

This has been covered on the linux kernel mailing list, and is in the FAQ here The gist of it is, ext2 is fast enough on half-decent hardware

Yup, only one program at a time can lock /dev/dsp. (Unless you run ESD and esddsp that is...)

--

Was there some sort of brown-paper-bag issue in 2.2.4? I know Linus was about to go on a two-week vacation, so did he release this to fix some real showstoppers?

When I checked LinuxHQ, I didn't even see 2.2.5 mentioned yet, and the changelog at Cutting Edge Linux didn't hint at any real showstoppers. Even Alan Cox's diary didn't mention that 2.2.5 was iminent. A search of the Linux Kernel mailing list archives was similarly unenlightening. (I was looking at http://www.tux.org/hypermail/linux-kernel/latest/ ... is there a better place?)

So what's the rush? This almost feels like a development kernel patch cycle....

Tis question, and the "official" answer is in the FAQ on tux.org.

wouldn't it be nice to get that E2000 design under GPL and got a Free CPU that kickes ass in a same way as Linux does? I would feel much more like a free person then. But... it's not likely having Elbrus key people military industrial complex heritage. So, as long as it's not Free it's of not much interest really. Since I would agree that chances of Elbrus team pulling it in Russia is quite slim. If they come to the West for that they would be used and abused. Not by our community of course :-) ... And we need to put more effort into Freedom CPU project.

Since noone has actually posted it here, and several people have asked for it... Here is the announcement off of the linux-kernel mailing list.
If you are interested in the mailing list check out http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Ok, you know the drill by now. This fixes:

- yes, people told me about the new and improved ksymoops. Much better,
no need for C++, and this one actually seems to compile and work
reliably.
- ntfs fixes
- the vfat thing _really_ works now
- NFS fix for deleting files while writebacks active.
- ppa/imm driver updated
- minor mm balancing patches
- Alan took the gauntlet and cleaned up some CONFIG_PROC_FS stuff.

More on Monday,

Linus

.. is at http://gwyn.tux.org /hypermail/linux-kernel/1999week02/0049.html