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A 3D Animation of Kernel Source Development
fixit! writes "Have a
look at this cool 3D animation of the Linux kernel source. This is how a source browser should look like!"
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It's interesting to see that someone took the time to do this. I think that since Linux is very clean, streamlined code, it would much easier to make a 3D map of Linux than another OS such as Windows or Mac OS. Not that I wouldn't mind seeing something from the aforementioned OS's. P.S. Does anyone else think that it would be nice to have such a map printed in high detail on a large black poster?
kiss da nutzz
Something forms itself from the silent void of the empty mailing lists and the noisy chaos of the crowded mailing lists. It shapes and protects us, it entertains and challenges us, it aids us in our journey through the ether world of software. It is mysterious; it is at once source code and yet object code. I do not know the name, thus I will call it the Tao of Linux.
If the Tao is great, then the box is stable. If the box is stable, then the server is secure. If the server is secure, then the data is safe. If the data is safe, then the users are happy.
In the beginning there was chaos in Unix.
Tanenbaum gave birth to MINIX. MINIX did not have the Tao.
MINIX gave birth to Linux 0.1 and it had promise.
Linux gave birth to v1.3 and it was good.
v1.3 gave birth to v2.0 and it was better.
Linux has evolved greatly from its distant cousins of the old. Linux is embodied by the Tao.
The wise user is told about the Tao and contributes to it. The average user is told about the Tao and compiles it. The foolish user is told about the Tao and laughs and asks who needs it.
If it were not for laughter, there would be no Tao.
Wisdom leads to good code, but experience leads to good use of that code.
The master Cox once dreamed that he was a Kernel. When he awoke he exclaimed: "I don't know whether I am Cox dreaming that I am a Kernel, or a Kernel dreaming that I am Cox!"
The master Linus then said: "The Tao envelopes you. You shall create great code for Linux."
"On the contrary," said Cox, "The Tao has already created the code, I will only have to find it and write it down."
A master was explaining the nature of the Tao to one of his students:
"Is the Tao in the VM subsystem?" he asked. "Yes," replied the master.
"Is the Tao in the scheduler?" he queried again. "The Tao is in the scheduler."
"Is the Tao even in the modules?". "It is even in the modules," said the master.
"Is the Tao in the Low-Latency Patch?"
The master frowned and was silent for much time.
"You fail to understand the Tao. Go away."
The Tao is the yin and the yang. It is the good and the evil, it is everything and yet it is nothing, it is the beginning and the end.
The Tao was there at the kernel compile, and it will be there when the kernel panics.
A novice user once asked a master: "Why compile in C when C++ is more popular?"
"Why a monolythic kernel when Mach is more popular?"
"And why use ReiserFS when ext2 is more popular?"
The master sighed and replied: "Why run Unix when NT is more popular?"
The user was enlightened.
A frustrated user once asked a master: "My kernel has panicked, should I post to lkml?"
"No," replied the master, "You will only bother the Tao."
"Should I rm -rf?"
"No, you will have wasted the Tao's time."
"Well should I search the web?"
"You will search for all eternity," said the master.
"Perhaps I should try FreeBSD?"
"Then you will have disgraced the Tao."
"I suppose I could try gdb," said the user.
The master smiled and replied: "Then you will have made the Tao stronger."
A stubborn user once told a master: "I run version 2.2. I always have, and I always will."
The master replied: "You are foolish and do not understand the Tao. The Tao is dynamic and ever changing. Linux strives for the perfection that is the Tao. It flows from version to version with peace."
"So my Linux does not have the Tao, so what?" said the foolish user. "Oh your Linux is of the Tao," said the master. "However, the Tao of Linux follows the Tao of the C library. One day the C library will change, and your Linux will be left behind." The user was silent.
An angry user once yelled at a master:
"My Linux has panicked! What lousy software it is, I hate it so!"
"You are insulting the Tao," said the master. "The Tao is everywhere bringing order to hundreds of networks, aiding thousands of users, and fighting that of which we call the 'lame.' Do not disrespect the Tao; however, the Tao will forgive you."
"I apologize," said the user, "And I will be more forgiving the next time the Tao fails me."
"The Tao has not failed you, it is you that has failed the Tao," said the master. "The Tao is perfect."
The Tao decides if a kernel shall compile, or if it shall abort.
The Tao decides if a kernel shall boot, or if it shall freeze.
The Tao decides if a kernel shall run, or if it shall panic.
But, the Tao does not decide if a box will have no hardware failures. That is a mystery to everyone.
A young master once approached an old master: "I have a LUG for Linux help. But, I fail to answer my students' problems; they are above me."
The master replied: "Have you taught them of the Tao?" he asked. "How it brings together man and software, yet how it distances them apart; how if flows throughout Linux and transcends its essence?"
"No," exclaimed the apprentice, "These people cannot even get the source untarred."
"Oh, said the master, "In that case, tell them to RTFM."
A master watched as an ambitious user reconstructed his Linux.
"I shall make every bit encrypted," the user said. "I shall use 2048 bit keys, three different algorithms, and make multiple passes."
The master replied: "I think it is unwise."
"Why?" asked the user. "Will my encryption harm the mighty Tao, which gives Linux life and creates the balance between kernel and processes? The mighty Tao, which is the thread that binds the modules and links them with the core? The mighty Tao, which safely guides the TCP/IP packets to and from the network card?"
"No," said the master, "It will hog too much cpu."
The core is like the part of the mind that is static. It is programmed at a child's creation and cannot be changed unless a new child is made; unless a new kernel is compiled.
The modules are like the part of the mind that is dynamic. It is reprogrammed every time one learns new knowledge; every time one learns better code.
One is yin, the other yang. Each is nothing without the other.
A novice came to lkml and inquired to all the masters there: "I wish to become a master. Must I memorize the Linux header files?"
"No," replied a master.
"Must I submit code to Bitkeeper?"
"No," replied the master.
"Must I meditate daily and dedicate my life to Linux?"
"No," replied the master again.
"Must I go on a quest to ponder the meaning of the Tao?"
"No. A master is nothing more than a student who knows something of which he can teach to other students."
The novice understood.
And thus said the master:
"It is the way of the Tao."
A user came to a master who had great status in lkml. The user asked the master: "Which is easier: implementing new features to the kernel or documenting them?"
"Implementing new features," replied the master.
The confused user then exclaimed:
"Surely it is easier to write a few sentences in the man page than it is to write pages of code without error?"
"Not so," said the master. "When coding, the Tao of Linux opens my eyes wide and allows me to see beyond the code, to let the source flow from my fingers, to implement without flaw. When documenting, however, all I have to work with is a C in high school English."
He who compiles from the stable tree is stubborn
and unwilling to change, but is guaranteed reliability.
He who compiles from the current tree is wise but perhaps too conformist, but is guaranteed steadiness.
He who compiles from the unstable tree is adventurous and is guaranteed new innovations: some good, some bad.
He who compiles straight from Bitkeeper is brave but guaranteed turbulence.
They are all of the Tao. One shall respect the old, and debug the new; none shall argue over which is greatest.
There once was a user who scripted in Perl: "Look at what I have to work with here," he said to a master of core, "My code is interpreted dynamically, the syntax is unique and simple, I have sockets, strings, arrays, and everything I could ever need. Why don't you stop meddling in C and come join me?"
The C programmer described his reasoning to the scripter: "Scripting is to C as ebonics is to Latin. If the scripter does not grow beyond that of which he scripts, he will surely [die]. Besides, without C, how can there be script?"
The scripter was enlightened, and the two became close friends.
Can someone tell me how to get gcc tell me what flags (most important are the optimization flags) it uses. We are a few students in a project and we can't get the project to compile and link with -O3 (works fine with -O2), so we need to find out what flag is the problem.
I can't help but think that the time spent on this project would have been better spent contributing to linux. Talk about slow news day. This was almost as bad as the pancake formula
----
Squirrel
brings back memories of all those "flying through the human body" type videos.
Art meets science... amazing that someone took the time to do this just for the fun of it.
Quite creative.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
It would be nice to see major errors identified and then fixed in the movies as well.
...very interesting... but stupid.
What can I say, I don't care if it's useful or not, it's just looks damn nice.
At least the actual page itself is nice and lightweight. Might keep the server from imploding for at least a few minutes...
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
Mplayer is your friend!
...You should have seen some of the "sex on campus"
seven degrees of separation white boards from my college days!
(Yes, my "small patch" was rejected as too small to bother including)
hosting images and mpegs on a site in france, jeeze, depending on the story popularity, this site could be down in a matter of minutes ;\
I'd do it, but I'm on 56k. Can any of you broadband people with webspace please mirror the mpgs and post them in a reply to this thread? The bandwidth bills are high enough when someone gets Slashdotted, I don't even want to see what they would be like after getting Slashdotted by people downloading 4-12MB files.
For those people still hungry for karma, I'm SURE this would get you some.
5! plus 9, all divided by 2
/
TI ALG: ( 5 ! + 9 ) / 2 =
10 keystrokes
RPN: 5 ! 9 + 2
6 keystrokes
I can see this guy getting a 120Gb bandwidth bill for today.
I'm going to go ahead and test my university's bandwidth by mirroring the movies at http://www.public.iastate.edu/~omikron/linux3d/
This 3d source tree kind of reminds me of this magic eye picture.
The first 90% of the movie looked like Missile Command from the Atari 2600 days, and the last 10% looked like I was speeding towards a two-dimensional line-drawn battle-tank (also like an Atari 2600 game).
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
http://mynetpad.com/mirror/perso.wanadoo.fr/pascal .brisset/kernel3d/kernel3d.html
I like to build things and wire stuff together.
I watched the whole animation hoping that in it I would find the hidden mysteries of getting multimedia to work on my multimedia neutered Redhat 8.0 box. Oh well.
http://somacore.com/slash3d/
they really aren't worth it.
NightmareDNS =)
fixit! writes "Have a look at this cool 3D animation of the Linux kernel source. This is how a source browser should look like!"
;-)
That's all nice and cool, but could we have a 3D shooter next where you can use a BFG#### to go bughunting?
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
I caught a glimpse of Johnny Mnemonic in there!
At 25mb total it will get /.ed fast though, so please mirror it and post the link.
This would have been a lot more impressive if they had actually used java to animate the schematic instead of a static movie. Something along the lines of this...
http://www.visualthesaurus.com/index.jsp
Still cool, just not _slashdot_ cool.
Tetsuo? is that you? what happened?
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
...the colors! Looooooook at the colors! AHH! Spiders! Spiders! Spiders! Spiders! Spiders! Spiders! Spiders! Spiders! Get 'em off of me!....Git! git! Get 'em off!!!
The linux 2.4.1 animation looks more like the crystalline entity from ST:tNG. Can you see Lor in there anywhere?
note: due to the absurd size of the movies, I'm just talking about the screenshot on the page itself. My 56k modem isn't going to like downloading those movies.
Mod trolls up. w3rd.
wtf is that?
we don't do drugs.
stupid show off bastards
I shared the files in Kazaa. Look for "Linux Kernel 3D"
Lesbian Nazi Hookers Abducted by UFOs and Forced Into Weight Loss Programs - -all next week on Town Talk.
sdfsdfsdfsdf
The server will fade out sooner or later, so I put up a gnutella mirror of the first linked video "A guided tour of Linux-2.4.5: 9 MB MPEG (384x288, 2000 frames)."
magnet:245.mpg
gnutella://245.mpg
ed2k://245.mpg"
More to follow?
just another goatese.cx scam
Ok, interesting, can the author of this please explain us what exactly do the lines and colors represent?
Having a visual representation of something(anything) is always usefull or at least interesting but we the observers really need some data to interprete the image with our stupid little minds.
This is how a source browser should look like!
:
should have been
That was how a source browser should have looked like!
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
234234ewrqwer
I swear that looks like the kernel has four-dimensional dependancies there...
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
YOU'RE A JERK!
>P.S. Does anyone else think that it would be nice to have such a map printed in high detail on a large black poster?
i e/3884/
You can get something like that here http://www.thinkgeek.com/cubegoodies/posters/tech
A very specific niche comment/query...
I'm not a programmer (BASIC doesn't count, right? :p ), but I have observed the development of a few open source projects and have seen the effects of code being introduced by programmers who have valuable contributions, but interact poorly with the rest of the source (usually novices). So, veterens, could this type of map, applied to the project in question, drive home the point and help mold the newbie into better practices, or are we better off oohing and ahhhing now and moving on to the next article?
Bored with karma, be a fan/freak
The other ones:
"From 1.2.0 to 2.4.1: 12 MB MPEG (384x288, 1400 frames)":
magnet:120-240.mpg
gnutella://120-240.mpg
ed2k://120-240.mpg
"From 1.2.0 to 2.4.1: 4 MB MPEG (320x240, 1200 frames, low motion)":
magnet:120-240s.mpg
gnutella://120-240s.mpg
ed2k://120-240s.mpg
btw, untill somebody loads them in their eDonkey client the files won't show up on that network. Just there for compatibilty. Shareaza can generate them anyway.
this is damn cool... how about turning those lines into pipes where i can ruhn through in ego perspektive with a gun.. and in every piece of code charakter will be generated with the programmers names and i can shoot them all down.. fuck...
because then their hands are less tired for an evening of gay porn and "Ring around the Rosary"
I wish I had these tools when I was a teenager, I am very astounded.
This is cool. I wonder what the FreeBSD kernel looks like with this.
wanadoo.fr is a French ISP; perso.wanadoo.fr is their "free web space" domain, so at the most they'll just cut access to that site
They probably won't even notice - and it's holding up ok at the moment.
(or not)
---
That link again: Linux Kernel Poster
... there's a bug above you!
you're a sad one, aren't you?
OO..I think I spotted an error in net/sch_prio.c at line 217...back up...wait...pause..no...I was mistaken...it's right..
Work is punishment for failing to procrastinate effectively.
This is how a source browser should look like!
That's a cool link, but the grammar there makes me cry, causes physical pain to small kittens, and makes babies turn blue. It would make Jesus weep too if the proliferation of "wierd", "loose" and "definately" hadn't already.
"This is how a source browser should look" and "This is what a source browser should look like" would both be much more comforting.
The kittens would thank you graciously.
Nice one. This is wicked. Hope the authors keep having fun.
chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
For comparison, here are a few animations of Windows
getSexySig();
Slow news day?
Yes, that is interesting indeed.
I think in general there may be interesting research to be done in the area of mapping/visualization of complex data: for instance this project of mapping the internet.
Does this really help in general? Are there many cases where such visual maps would help understanding of complex data?
Think for example, it may be interesting to produce such a map of everything2, which is a sort of hyperlinked online encyclopedia, to see where the clustering is.
In astrophysics, 3D maps of the universe have been produced for some time, and the human-eye understanding of large-scale structure was at first more direct than statistical analysis--for instance, people would see the famous filaments, but stats wouldn't.
A post above quoted the possible use in spotting "usefulness" of code contributions, by looking at their interdependencies for example.
yours ever, fz.
Can someone make a screensaver outta that?. That looks cool though it doesnt make anmy sense to me
Now I know what it looks like, I want to know what it sounds like too.
Looks very cool and all. Cloud be part of a demo, with some neat music too it. It doesn't help me any to get a overview of changes. A traditional "2d"-brows through my kernel-tree with some diffs would tell me more. But I guess that was not the whole point of the project.
Really worth downloading (or streaming or whatever you prefer with your mplayer)
Hey! That's my sig you're smoking there!
its interesting to see how a computer program can look like a galaxy
Geez!
That's not actual code from the kernel source. It's an example of what kind of code gcc compiles and why it's hard to write a gcc-C parser.
The real kernel code is mostly easy to read for humans (because they have no problem with context recognition).
... but I think I'll stick with "more" for looking at the kernel sources for now.
This must be the source browser the MovieOS kernel hackers use.
Hit a nerve did I?
For centuries architects have been using 2d plans to understand copmlex 3d buildings. Kewlness aside, why do programmers always want to reverse this process?
My first computer was an Atari ST. The MWC (Mark Williams C) compiler that I bought with it came with an amazing little C demo program. It must have been 15 lines of C code tops. The Atari ST has an 680x0 cpu chip, and a linear memory model. A chunk of that memory was set aside for video, and a separate chip pumped that video memory out to the monitor. With the C demo program, you could change the base video memory pointer to point anywhere in memory, including low memory, where the operating system (TOS/GEM) resided. By doing this, you could actually WATCH the operating system in action, because each pixel on the video monitor represented one bit! You could see counters counting up, flag bits flip-flopping on and off, chunks of bits being read in from the floppy disk, etc. It is, by far, the coolest thing I've ever seen done with a computer. =) Wish I could figure out how to do it on my linux box.
My personal one liner is... "Seen on Ebay: 1000 French Military Rifles. Like new; only droped once."
I can't remember if GCC assigns attributes to symbols so it is possible to keep track of code references but to forget the data references, but that would mean chasing through the debug symbol format.
See my journal, I write things there
Finally the killer application that will convert the masses!
Better start dancing Ballmer, if you want to beat this...
And you geeks wonder why everyone else hates you.
I've been wanting to try that same thing for some time now. Ball and spring source files. I even thought Linux would be more interesting than any of my projects. You've proved all that correct! I was hoping to ray trace it though and allow grabbing and stretching/pulling via mouse. If you can output a text file for the connectivity I can do RT quickly, the challenge was going to be parsing everything. I figured this could help with code structuring - you want low connectivity for clean code. Or at least loosely connected small tangles. I suspect this would show most people that their code is more of a mess than they realize.
Wow, you mean there is something useful about wanadoo.fr. Time to take them off the firewall block long enough to at least check this out.
sees when he has nightmares.
Anyone else getting turned on by this?
CAPS LOCK IS LIKE CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL!
At least the evolution animation was flawed. The evolution would imply the linear progression, but at fork points, stable releases with lower numbers were released well after development versions of higher numbers. For it to be the most accurate, you would have to only follow a kernel series to the fork point, then switch to the newer fork and ignore releases in the stable fork. 2.0.38 was released well after 2.1.0, though the animation suggests 2.1.0 as the immediate succesor to 2.0.38
I know, it's just eye candy, but thought I'd call them on it since no one else has...
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
That he chose WMA (Windows Media Player) format for his linux kernel animation.
My rights don't need management.
Can I submit my patch as a jpeg?
Does anyone know if there infact /is/ a source browser, open source or not, that even remotely represents that gibsonian cyberspace/matrix style presentation???
/HEAVEN/ with something like that at work.
I would be in
Not bad for about 5k lines of commented code. The largest source file is the ML grammer for the C language.
For their pure expressive power I don't see why FP languages get more respect. But I guess folks like Graham would mind that.
when IBM goes to court to fight SCO. I know this is offtopic, but SCO should have read "Just for Fun" before launching their suit. So many holes...
I know what the Internet is, what the hell is this Interweb business?!
Anyone want to make a screensaver of that? :-)
My pikey KDE fileserve will probably be /.ed in about 3 minutes. Nevertheless:
Boom goes my PC!
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
I have whined for a long time that programming is the last engineering discipline that isn't automated. We still essentially write prose.
Back at CMU in the late 1980's I played around with SPICE (an electrical CAD package), attempting to build a graphical programming environment for Pascal. Eventually I hypothesized a 3D model, with axes for data & types, control flow and I/O. Using SPICE I defined software IC's and was able to connect them together. Then the output could be parsed into Pascal source. I never took it to the point of anything working, although I did get some pretty nice looking graphical 'programs' that woulda worked - for sure!!
IMHO there is still a strong potential for something like this - perhaps the advent of the "Web Services" model (which separates applications from interfaces) will encourage design of at least large scale systems using methods similar to those used for designing chemical plants (for example).
It's easier to be a result of the past, but more fun to be a cause of the future! http://www.spacefinancegroup.com/
Nice looking animations, but it is a shame that he used a custom renderer. It would be interesting to see this as a plugin to some serious viewer tool, complete with hyperlinks to display source files or a code browser at particular points in the graph.
My faith in the people of France has been restored.
Bowie J. Poag
This is really a neat project. Makes me think of all the times when our managers are breathing fire down our necks and demanding to know what we've been doing all the time.
::)
Take this project, make it generic for any (C, for now, then extending to other languages) code, add in CVS/RCS/[insert your CM tool here] hooks, then slap a 20-30 MB MPEG on the boss' desktop when he goes off.
Seriously, though, I think this could be a useful tool in evaluating complexity (risk) in a large project or just for managment of the software development in general. "Geez--looks like this corner is really dynamic. What's going on there?" or "Wow. This group over here hasn't been touched in ages. Are we falling behind here?" The CM tool hooks are the most blazingly obvious needs in my mind for such a project to work--it's the best way to get a time history of the development.
--- Standard disclaimer applies.
There's just too much information to be displayed. Its nice for showing things like how the directory structure evolved within the kernel, or how quickly dependencies grew but you can't tell one file from another, and the contents are far more important than the directory structure. In short, nothing can feasibly replace a rejection with a short explaination and request for resubmission.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
...Perl code less readable than that.
You know, after looking at it for a while I don't even see the colored pixels and lines... all I see is driver functions, memory management routines, process management code....
-Thomas
So who is making a screensaver out of this for me??
it's beautiful... brings tears to my eyes... *sniff*
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
This is just dying for a comment: :)))
Wow man! It's, like... he hacked the Gibson, dude!
-- Sig down