Interview With WOLK Creator Marc-Christian Peterse

Jeremy Andrews writes "KernelTrap has spoken with Marc-Christian Petersen, who originated the WOLK project in March of 2002. WOLK is the Working Overloaded Linux Kernel, a large set of nearly 450 useful patches applied against the current stable 2.4 Linux kernel tree. The project has recently expanded to offer a second 'secure' patchset, this one against the older stable 2.2 tree. In this interview, Marc-Christian Petersen tells the history behind WOLK and discusses many of the patches included."

Comments

Re:What about the newbies

[CanadaDave]

It's so easy to compile the kernel from source. Redhat has a nice PDF tutorial about this somewhere on their website. Sorry I can't get the link for your right now. It is actually a chapter in their user manual I think. I learned how to do this when I was a newbie and it wasn't too bad...even for a newbie.

Production servers

[cpeterso]

Actually, I disagree. I have found the WOLK kernels to contain a lot of the fixes and features we needed all in one convenient package. Of course, I stress tested the WOLK servers before putting them into the production server room. I would highly recommend anyone that is curious in the WOLK kernels to use them in a production environment.

(First) fork?

[netsharc]

Is this the first big "unofficial" fork of the Linux kernel? We've had different trees, but those have been maintained by people who are very close to kernel-development (I only know of AC, but I belive there are more), but this tree seems to have come out of nowhere? I hope this isn't the event that marks the beginning of Linux following of the old Unix history.

I guess that's the idea of a modular and open-source kernel, you can add things you want, remove things you don't want, but somehow adding patches from "outsiders" make me feel I'm not running a *real* Linux system - The way Linus Intended(TM).

OTOH, My LFS system is unique, with changes that make it different to standard Linux systems - including patches in the kernel - and I love the thing, so I guess there's no need to feel "guilt" over it.

Things I'd like to see in the kernel...

[Bollie]

This is just my personal wishlist:

1) A standard hardware acceleration layer for 2D and 3D cards, something we can ask the NVidia people to add to their drivers and code equivalents for other cards.
2) Wine intergration. Routing Win32 messages through the kernel would be kinda nice.
3) Java acceleration. Hooks for some standard Java functions: this would help a lot in some specific embedded situations.
4) ACL support for ports and stuff (like the security patches).
5) A standard "driver package" format containing the kernel module, user-mode tools and installation instructions for binary only (yecc) drivers. (One driver fits all distros!)

I've been working with Linux-based systems since '97 and I have to say, it's just getting better and better. I'm sure a lot of the above is would actually not be good in most kernels, but since one of Linux's strong points is scalability, I'd really like to see Linux take on the desktop, handheld and server market!

Re:Things I'd like to see in the kernel...

[Pemdas]

All of these are IMHO, of course...

1) A standard hardware acceleration layer for 2D and 3D cards, something we can ask the NVidia people to add to their drivers and code equivalents for other cards.

I agree with this, and hope that the future holds running XFree86 (or Berlin or whatever) on top of the standard Framebuffer/DRM interface. It's already possible to run XFree86 on the framebuffer driver, but the system needs to have kinks ironed out; most of that work is happening on non-x86 ports, though.

2) Wine intergration. Routing Win32 messages through the kernel would be kinda nice. 3) Java acceleration. Hooks for some standard Java functions: this would help a lot in some specific embedded situations.

No. Just no. There's no significant gain to be had from putting any of that in the kernel. Furthermore, this is userspace stuff. The fact that the kernel has good stuff in it doesn't mean everything should go into the kernel...

4) ACL support for ports and stuff (like the security patches).

I've mixed feelings about this. It seems that the current security model is fine for the typical user, even though ACLs are really wonderful for larger servers with more nebulous administration structures. Overall, though, I think you're right, this stuff should get in eventually.

5) A standard "driver package" format containing the kernel module, user-mode tools and installation instructions for binary only (yecc) drivers. (One driver fits all distros!)

This is a complete don't care for me. If it comes with a binary-only module, I don't buy it. I'm still running a Matrox G400 at home as a result. Generally, I think kernel developer sentiment is turning more and more negative towards binary-only drivers--I wouldn't expect the community to do much, if anything, to make it easier for such developers.

Catching up with Macintosh of 1996

[yerricde]

Compressed caching is the introduction of a new level into the virtual memory hierarchy. Specifically, RAM is used to store both an uncompressed cache of pages in their 'natural' encoding, and a compressed cache of pages in some compressed format. By using RAM to store some number of compressed pages, the effective size of RAM is increased, and this way the number of page faults that must be serviced by very slow hard disks is decreased.

This is exactly the technique that Connectix's "RAM Doubler", a replacement for the Macintosh System 7 virtual memory manager, used way back in 1996. I wonder if Connectix has a patent on it.

SuperMount has the ability to access your cd's/floppies on the fly without need to mount / umount them every time.

Mac OS has automounted removable media since 1984.

It's good to see that Linux is progressing as a kernel for a workstation OS. But even its major proponents admit that it has some catching up to do. WOLK is a step in the right direction.