Posted by
michael
on from the oh-christmas-tree dept.
BigFire writes "Professor Tanenbaum responds to the slashdot effect and a small critique of Ken Brown's forthcoming book in his followup. A small gem is where he disclosed that Ken Brown can't multiply simple positive integers."
Tanenbaum is being disingenious
by
Roland+Piquepaille
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· Score: 2, Insightful
In his email, Linus said that Brown never contacted him. No email, no phone call, no personal interview. Nothing. Considering the fact that Brown was writing an explosive book in which he accused Linus of not being the author of Linux, you would think a serious author would at least confront the subject with the accusation and give him a chance to respond. What kind of a reporter talks to people on the periphery of the subject but fails to talk to the main player?
Hmmm, duh!
How many "explosive" books on Diana were published without giving Diana a chance to respond in the book?
Dragging someone's name into the dirt in a book and not including an interview of that person in the book is the hallmark of a trashy book. But then, we all knew it, since it's a Microsoft PR ploy ultimately, so no surprise there.
Changed opinion
by
Dasein
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You know, I think I had AST wrong. I'd seen the thread where he bashes Linus for not doing a microkernel design and thought that maybe it was sour grapes.
His exchanges on this subject have changed my opinion on that. He's been nothing but kind toward Linus, generous with his time, and well-spoken.
If anything good come out of this whole mess, maybe it's that AST really got to show us what he's really like instead of all of us just assuming that he was bitter about the MINIX/Linux history.
-- You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Re:Changed opinion
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 0, Insightful
His exchanges on this subject have changed my opinion on that. He's been nothing but kind toward Linus, generous with his time, and well-spoken.
Perhaps this is because ten to fifteen years have elapsed since then and he's had time to cool down?
Re:Changed opinion
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pankajsethi
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I agree that a lot of people in academia have superinflated egos, but the ones who are at the top are because of their earnest desire to learn and explore new realms of their beloved fields. If Tannenbaum was narrow minded to get entangled in micro-kernel vs. macro-kernel, he wouldn't be where he is right now.
Remember that research is more about asking questions, engaging in discussions, acting as a devil's advocate to prove yourself wrong, and dealing paradoxes then it is about answering them. I'm sure nobody around here as any doubt about contribution Tannenbaum has made to computer sceience can be surpassed only by few.
He so totally rocks and has been my inspirtation since my undergrad days and has written a few books that I will never part with.
Re:Changed opinion
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dan_sdot
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· Score: 5, Insightful
You know, I think I had AST wrong. I'd seen the thread where he bashes Linus for not doing a microkernel design and thought that maybe it was sour grapes.
Well, its good that you made such an informed judgement on his character so early. I think that way to many/.ers are doing that. They read one thread that was linked to a couple days ago, and just because it was an argument with Linus, he must be the bad guy. Remember that, after all, he was being very polite in that discussion and in the end Linus had to apologize for being too hotheaded. He simply strongly believes that microkernels are the best approach.
So please,/.ers, stop thinking that you have to have an opinion on everything, even the things that you don't really know about.
Re:Changed opinion
by
Omnifarious
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· Score: 4, Insightful
I sort of thought that way about him after I read the initial argument, though I still had a lot of respect for his books. But, after reading his first article about the Brown book, I didn't feel that way anymore. It was clear to me that his comments in the middle were him gleefully taking advantage of the fact that he (deservedly) had a wide audience to point out that he still considers monolithic kernels a poor design choice and to give reasons why.
I detected no note of bitterness or anger over Linux's success. Though I did find some of his comments about Minix licensing to be slightly revisionist. I found people's comments here to be more amusing.
I sometimes think that people who do not have a scientist mindset mistake heated debate among scientists for petty emotional rancor. The latter does happen, but heated debate is not a definitive indicator.
Re:Changed opinion
by
iabervon
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Linus is an engineer, and is wants to make a system that works really well. Tanenbaum is an academic, and wants to make a system which is informative. Both have been wildly successful at their respective goals.
The microkernel argument was an academic argument, of the sort that which is not held for the purpose of winning it, but of coming to an agreement on the relative merits of different approaches. As for winners, Linux obviously continues to be a monolithic kernel. But it should not be ignored that you can now add filesystems to a running kernel as modules, and even build them outside of the kernel tree. At this point, Linux is essentially a microkernel design running as a monolithic kernel for performance reasons as an implementation detail. A future version could offer the option of running the filesystems in userspace if you want. (That is, running all of the filesystems in userspace with the kernel fs API; there's already support for having filesystems in userspace if you want.) I wouldn't be surprised if people having weird problems would be advised to try the "ext3.userspace" option, and if you could avoid tainting your kernel with "nvidia.userspace".
Re:Changed opinion
by
be-fan
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Please, respond when you know what you are talking about.
Someone in an academic environment supposed to be open to idea's and non baised. Most though have ego's including Tanenbaum which blind them. Who said academics are supposed to be biased? Most are very biased towards their own ideas, and push them whenever possible. Its a natural part of the competitive system that allows academia to advance.
Funny, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, and As/400 have uptimes that measure in years if you do not include security patching. Even funnier is the fact that, with a microkernel OS, lots of downtime due to security-patching is unnecessary, because critical services run as easily restarted userspace tasks. There is no doubt that Linux, Solaris, *BSD, etc, are highly stable, but they are something you trust your server to --- a microkernel like QNX is what you trust your nuclear reactor to!
MacOSX is less stable than a macrokernels like Linux according to those who use it as a server. MacOS X has a monolithic kernel. Mach and BSD both run in kernel-space, with messaging replaced by direct function calls wherever possible. That was one of the chief changes between NeXTStep and OS X.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Can't help it, but whenever I read something from Tanenbaum, I am thinking "oh my, is this guy arrogant".
That's the point the professor was trying to make
by
StevenMaurer
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· Score: 4, Insightful
This isn't being disingenious, that is a highbrow critique.
If the author was serious then he would have given his "target" - Linus - at least some chance to respond. He didn't. Therefore he isn't a serious author.
Professors generally don't go saying directly, 'that author is such a luuusor dude!' And authors who write trash books about Di aren't exactly people to take seriously either.
Your mistake is to imagine that moderators read at threshold 0. Neither have they read the moderating faq, and frequently not even the article.
Re:Raises some interesting questions
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kfg
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Of course that's the obvious funny answer. I'm sorry you beat me too it.
Of course the real, and obvious, reason that they did not talk to Linus is because they did not want to.
Things that make you go (as they obviously have for the good professor), "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm."
KFG
Re:Linux is Obsolete
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dan_sdot
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· Score: 5, Insightful
So I guess Prof. Tanenbaum can give higher grade than "F" to Linus now.:)
Actually, I still don't think that he would. He still affirms that the point of view from which he looks at OS design is academic. He emphasizes that he is a PROFESSOR, not someone trying to make a production grade operating system. As are many academics, he is a purist and thus believes in a conceptually optimized design (microkernel) rather than a practical design (monolithic kernel). So, if Linus was still in his class, the "F" would probably stand, because Linux does not follow all the conceptual guidelines that Tanenbaum feels so strongly about. This argument was never really a big deal in the first place, it was just a classic arguemnt between a realist and a purist.
Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing
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njcoder
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· Score: 2, Insightful
"What the Slashdot/unix/GNU/whatever community really should consider is how they can truely counter the 'lets convince the stupid masses' policy of Microsoft. (yeah I know I sound elitist, thats because I am..) "
My opinion, the easiest way to do this is sugested in your statement. The key is unix, not linux. Meaning linux is in the unix family. Promoting unix as a whole as an alternative to microsoft, especially in the server areas is important.
There are different types of unixes from proprietary to the bsd's to the linuxes. Promote the adoption of unix as an alternative and it gives linux more room to grow.
While it's not always the case, a lot of places where linux is making in roads is in replacing commercial unix installations. This is a short sighted strategy. Unix right now is competing with Windows server platforms. If linux takes over all the unix servers, then it will be linux competing with Windows server platforms. Meaning it won't be in any better position than it is now.
Though if we could foster support for greater unix deployments including bsd and linux in addition to the commercial unixes that have been there for years, windows servers would really have competition.
Re:Little Help?
by
LordK3nn3th
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You know, not everyone comes to slashdot for just OS and linux news. It's "news for nerds", yes, but some people are more interested in parts other than the creation of linux.
--
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
Re:We should set up better Open Source Marketing
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Clover_Kicker
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· Score: 4, Insightful
>Therefore the only effect Tanenbaum (and Slashdot) gets from this >document is self-defence and mutual knob-polishery. Not that >Tanenbaum is entitled to have his say and defend his honor, but there >you go.
I don't think Tanenbaum loses sleep worrying about the commercial sucess of Linux:)
I think he was mostly trying to prevent looking like a dick for being associated with that book. Mission accomplished!
Perhaps today he's preaching to the choir, but look at it this way: One of the world's most respected computer scientists just TRASHED the integrity of the guy who interviewed him. I'm sure the whatchamacallit institute will be a long time living this down. And Tanembaum provides lots of nice quotes for the profesional marketers from Red Hat/IBM/Novell/whatever, computer columnists, etc.
Re:His comment on Slashdot:
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kfg
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· Score: 5, Insightful
I'm posting this as AC since I'll most likely be modded down for touching a "hero" of the Linux revolution:
I've always rather gotten the impression that he was something of the anti-christ of the Linux revolution, and that that's why he has to waste so much time explaining that he and Linus are not enemies.
. ..very very pleased with himself for having written Minix and fostered the development of Linux.
And says so in the very paper in question.
The trouble is that Minix, which was meant to be an academic OS to study. ..
And says so in the very paper in question.
. ..was never good performance-wise. ..
And says so in the very paper in question.
. ..and wasn't really good for learning the architecture of an OS either.
Here I'm sure he'd disagree with you, however, since you leave out why it "wasn't really good" you protect yourself from criticism.
Minix knew success because it was "this other, free Unix for i386" (and some other architectures like the Atari ST), and people could goof around with it for free.
And says so in both papers in question.
That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts.
And explains that such is not the case in the paper in question.
. ..but somehow Tanenbaum feels entitled to think of himself as a pillar of computer science and computer history, and act accordingly.
And not only says so in the paper in question, but points to references should one chose to follow them up. Not to mention the fact that if he were not popularly regarded as such among the computer science community said paper whould have no had raison d'etre in the first place.
Now I shall watch myself be modded down as a troll by Slashdotter who have never met, read about, or listened to him...
As a general rule I find it more responsive to posts such as yours to, well, respond, rather than mod down something just because I might find it unpalatable. An unpalatable point of view is not the same thing as a troll.
I have never met the man, nor listened to him, but I have both read him and read about him. He is a public figure in the computer science community, just as is Linus.
He impresses me, as he appears to impress the orginal poster, as just the sort of intelligently sarcastic "prick," in the Swift/Dickens/Twain/Leacock mode, that I rather enjoy dealing with.
Of course you have to consider the source of that last statement (as one might well consider the source of any), as I myself have been accused, on occasion, of being such a man, and may be merely feeling an affinity of kind.
KFG
Re:His comment on Slashdot:
by
mst76
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· Score: 5, Insightful
> I'll most likely be modded down for touching a "hero" of the Linux revolution:
Tanenbaum is hardly seen as a "hero" in the Linux community, of those who know him at all, most only remember the infamous "Linux is obsolete" flameware on Usenet.
> It's quite well known that Proff Tanenbaum is somewhat of a prick, very very pleased with himself for having written Minix and fostered the development of Linux.
How is this well known? I've never read anything about him boasting about having fostered the development of Linux. He does point out areas where the early Linux was inspired by Minix, but I don't think anyone would dispute that.
> Minix knew success because it was "this other, free Unix for i386"
It was the "free Unix for XT". One of the reasons for Linus to develop Linux was that Minix didn't take advantage of any of the advanced features of the 80386. AST refused almost all suggested improvements, his motivation being that he wanted to teach it in a one semester course.
> That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts.
Tanenbaum is a university professor. His achievements are his publications in peer reviewed journals, and citations to these publications. Since he has lots of both, he's been pretty successful.
Battle of the Philosophies
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puntloos
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· Score: 3, Insightful
You're right, and indeed I said 'unix' not 'linux'. The whole thing that is both the strenght and the weakness of the 'alternative to windows' is its very nature, the design Philosophy. Open Source most notably. The problem is, everyone has the right and the possibility to make their custom version of an application or even core structure, tweaked to their needs, and this is a Marketing disaster.
Open Source fights itself
If I promote Linux I would have no time to promote OpenBSD, even though in principle I have no reason to dislike openBSD, Im just more familiar with Linux.
The key thing that makes these systems competition to Windows is the way they are designed. Open the source completely thereby both creating a greater likelyhood of dumb mistakes being caught but on the flipside removing the whole 'security by obscurity' concept.
One thing Id like to re-emphasize is that there is Too Much Preaching to the Choir in our circles. I know why I like Linux (etc), Slashdot likes Linux but there are plenty of ignorant (not necessarily because of stupidity) middle-management types that need to be convinced by less formal and more 'shouty' methods.
Linux has far too few scantily clad ladies at the booths in conventions, and too many people who look like Andrew Tanenbaum
Re:His comment on Slashdot:
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
Now I shall watch myself be modded down as a troll by Slashdotter who have never met, read about, or listened to him...
You should get modded down for this statement alone. Let your post stand on its merits, don't trick stupid moderators into moderating it up solely because of reverse psychology.
Re:Multiply small integers
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
It's the same as when people snidely point out that a typo "obviously" means the guy is too stupid to know how to spell. Same deal. Universities, Usenet, and Slashdot, for example, are full of this kind of childishness. C++ programmers, BTW, love this kind of shit, which kinda makes sense when you think about it.
Re: microkernels the best approach
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Actually, his argument is that a microkernel would make a better early-90s graduate-level compsci project than a conventional monolithic kernel.
He's basically bashing Linus for doing an academically uninteresting project. (Keep in mind that as a professor, he's got the complete UNIX source code at his fingertips - he didn't need a free unix.)
And he was right, but that hasn't stopped damp pantied fanboys from tarring-n-feathering him over the years for arguing with the Great Linus.
Re:Little Help?
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nathanh
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Who is Professor Tanenbaum? Who is Ken Brown?
Tanenbaum (AST) is a Professor who worked at AT&T and has written many textbooks aimed at university students. AST's most famous book - Operating Systems: Design and Implementation - includes a UNIX-alike operating system called Minix that he wrote himself. Minix includes binaries and source code for the kernel, C library, C compiler, and all the utilities. AST wrote Minix and the book to teach students how operating systems are written. Any computing science student who attended a decent university in the past decade has probably had at least one of AST's books as a required text.
Minix ran on an 8086 and didn't have modern virtual memory (VM) features. When the 80386 came out there were some unofficial patches to make Minix/386. These patches added virtual memory and paging and memory protection, turning Minix into an useful OS. AST refused to add these patches to Minix, rightly arguing that they would make Minix too complex for a student to understand. Minix was a teaching tool, not a general purpose OS, even though Minix/386 was a pretty good general purpose OS. Unfortunately the license back then didn't permit forking. Despite these limitations, Minix had a very large user community. .
When Linus came along and announced Linux a lot of people realised that GNU (basically all of UNIX except for the kernel) and Linux (basically none of UNIX except the kernel) when combined would produce a UNIX-alike operating system. Just like Minix but with VM and the more relaxed GPL for a license. There was no Linux news group so all the discussions were on the Minix news group.
AST put his two cents in on the Linux kernel. He correctly pointed out that the Linux design was a 30 year old monolithic design; not elegant or modern. Linus argued back that monolithic kernels are more practical. AST said Linus would fail his OS class, if Linus was his student. That's the infamous AST/Linus flamewar. It wasn't very hot, as far as flamewars went. AST was right, so was Linus. They just had different perspectives.
Ken Brown is an ignorant idiot who is selling a book claiming that Linus didn't write Linux. He argues that noone could write something so complex as a UNIX-like kernel without stealing code. Ken is under the delusion that writing a UNIX needs a huge team of people working for many years. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that the first UNIX was written by Ken Thompson on a computer so ancient that your wrist watch has more computing power. For "research", Ken Brown spoke to AST. Notably he did not speak to Linus Torvalds. AST is pointing out that Ken is lying in his book; AST has pointed to several examples of single authors who created a UNIX-like kernel, AST included.
The confusion might be that Ken Brown doesn't understand that Linux is just a kernel. The first "Linux" that you ran back in 1991 was actually GNU/Linux. Linux comprised less than 2% of that system. RMS and his team had been working on GNU for nearly a decade by that stage (longer if you count emacs). Linux The Kernel was a small piece of the puzzle. An essential piece, but certainly writable in 6 months by a bright and talented person. These days, Linux is an incredibly tiny piece of a "Linux distribution". Ken Brown might think that Linus is laying claim to the entire system. Of course, Linus has only ever claimed credit for the first kernel. Recent kernels have very little "Linus" in them. And the distro you have on the desktop is less than 1% Linux anyway.
The other theory is that Ken Brown is being paid by SCO/Microsoft/LatestPariah to create FUD over the legal origins of Linux.
I prefer my own theory. Ken wants attention. Saying something ridiculous gets easy attention and increases book sales. We're playing right into his hands by giving him the time of day. It gives him false credibility by creating a "controversy" when in reality there is no controversy. Just Ken saying ridiculous things with no evidence to back them up. It's like all those authors who write books on Noah's Ark, or the location of Atlantis. They must have a huge grin on their face when somebody pays attention to them.
Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels
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be-fan
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Hello? 1992 called, they want your version of Linux back. Fast-forward to 2004, and my SuSE 9.1 install has a 1.4MB kernel with its 53MB of driver modules sitting in a seperate directory.
-- A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The more I read of Tanenbaum and his work the more I admire him. The fact that he is a Fellow of two prestigious societies says alot about his contributions. Tanenbaum is a classic academic; he knows where to pick his fights - on the science. He attempts to stay above personalities, but doesn't flinch when it comes to calling bullshit on some dickhead (my words) who is out to smear someone for money.
-- "Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
Re:Andy's just trying to...
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prostoalex
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· Score: 2, Insightful
His books are an integral part of Computer Science curriculum at any good university, so it's not like he's pimping some poorly-written fresh-out-of-the-press novels.
Re:Linux is Obsolete
by
Halfbaked+Plan
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· Score: 2, Insightful
But was Linus ever in his class? I thought it was more a hypothetical comment.
Tanenbaum was engaged in an intellectual arguement. That so many zealots interpret it as a political arguement reflects badly on the zealots, not on AST.
-- resigned
Let's not split hairs...
by
Ayanami+Rei
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· Score: 2, Insightful
If the API for a certain kernel module becomes so complete that it amounts to message passing, then the kernel module might as well be outside the kernel. I understand the VFS implementation layer is pretty clean in this respect. (That is the well-behaved FS modules which don't reach into the kernel and do weird things)
Just having them in the same address space is a convienence to not have to actually handle details about passing messages.
-- THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE
ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
just an european guy?
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Anonymous Coward
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· Score: 1, Insightful
sheesh!
tanenbaum is not just another european guy. he is a scholar, an academic and an outstanding educator indeed. his books should be rated among the best by all standards and a must for anyone who's serious about the subject.
though i read about OSes and programming in college (it was tanenbaum's book that stands out, of course), i left programming and am a network/security specialist.
again, tanenbaum's book is one of the best ever in that area. not only that, he should be number two to mark twain with that dadfetchedest style.
now don't ask me who mark twain is.. he not just another yankee who wrote childrens books.
Re:Multiply small integers
by
36-bitter
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· Score: 4, Insightful
Careless spelling and careless arithmetic are often indicators of sloppy thinking. They're also impolite -- the rest of us have to think harder than should be necessary in order to take your meaning. Don't be surprised to find that some readers will not put forth the extra effort, when they see that a writer does not put forth even the minimum effort.
Linux is not an improvement on Minux
by
AHumbleOpinion
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· Score: 4, Insightful
And, even if the OS itself was not so good, it doesn't matter, because people often learn the subject from the mistakes, shortcomings.
You may be suffering from the misconception that Minix tried to be, or should have been, a commercial grade Unix workalike. If so you are wrong. When you write software in an academic environment where the goal is to teach students the code should be written with clarity and easy of understanding being paramount. If efficiency or more advanced techniques conflicts with clarity or ease of understanding you should choose the later. The job of the University is to teach core concepts that are long lived and transcend the OS, language, or architecture of the day.
After all, Linus wrote the Linux to improve Minix on Minix.
No. Linux and Minix have different missions. Minix was a teaching tool, it's mission was not to become a full featured Unix workalike. Its goal was to remain small and comprehensible to further its teaching mission. Linux had a very different mission. It is silly to compare the two. Linux is no more of an improvement on Minix than a wrench is an improvement on a screwdriver. Different tools for different jobs, or missions in this case.
Re:Confident, arrogant, maybe just annoying
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Flyboy+Connor
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· Score: 2, Insightful
You seem to suggest Tanenbaum didn't really mean what he said. So you think Tanenbaum actually thinks MINIX is the most important thing he has ever done.
Think of it, what is more important: a toy-OS that nobody has used in decades, or a row of computer textbooks which are considered the top of their field since decades.
Shouldn't be too tough...
Re:Microkernel reality
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0x0d0a
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· Score: 2, Insightful
The basic penalty for using a microkernel is one extra copy and context switch for every file system operation. If your system is doing anything besides I/O, you'll probably never notice. If you're running a web server that serves mostly plain pages (little Perl, Java, PHP, etc.), you'd probably notice the overhead.
The bus multiplier on processors and the cycles-for-a-main-memory-access have steadily increased over the past decade or so. This has steadily increased the cost of a page table cache flush, and thus steadily increased the cost of a context switch.
Re:I'm with Tannebaum about microkernels
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0x0d0a
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· Score: 3, Insightful
The only thing they accomplish is code memory savings.
Ironically enough, this is not really the case for Windows due to a pretty poor (in retrospect) design decision.
Windows supports pageable kernel memory, unlike Linux. This leads to vastly more complexity than Linux (since you *really* don't want kernel code like your paging code, say, to accidently cause a page fault). You also don't want anything that might be involved with paging (want to support a remote pagefile? Hope network support doesn't page! A pagefile on a USB keydrive? You'll need USB code and thus probably power-saving code and so forth to never cause pagefaults). Any *data* touched by any code that can be invoked by a page fault cannot ever be paged out, or else the risk of a hang again appears. Windows maintains different lists of "pageable" and "unpageable" memory.
Linux took a much simpler approach -- kernel memory isn't pageable, but kernel modules can be unloaded -- that increases the simplicity and reliability of kernel code.
Re:Little Help?
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Typhon100
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· Score: 3, Insightful
You may not agree with him, but you'd have a tough time arguing he's not a respected researcher. His books are standard texts at many universities...Modern Operating Systems is the one used in the undergrad OS class here at Harvard.
Debunking Ken Brown
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boots@work
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I've read Ken Brown's essay, and I debunk it here. Here is the executive summary:
The paper is poorly written, full of contradictions and gramatical
errors. If their essay were a program, it would not even compile, let
alone work.
Nearly every paragraph makes an unsubstantiated assertion. Brown
seems to feel that just inserting "it is clear that", "ironically",
"clearly", or "it is widely known" is an adequate substitute for
cited evidence. Ironically, it clearly is not.
Brown clearly does not understand the terms he uses, such as
"copyright", "public domain" or "open source". He does not seem to
understand that copyright protects representations, not ideas. In
several places he seems to think that open source is in the public domain.
Quotes such as "sometimes theft is necessary" as are attributed to
the open source community without any evidence they were ever uttered
by anyone.
Experts are asked misleading or hypothetical questions to elicit
quotes that are used out of context. I think AdTI is not honest
enough to ask straight questions because the answers would not suit
them.
Brown says he can't believe that Linus wrote Linux,
because... welll, he just can't believe it. Nothing more. He does
not cite even a single line of Linux source that was copied from any
other system, despite that all the data needed to check this is
available to him. If he found even one line, his paper might be
credible. But he does not.
When sources are cited, Brown grossly misinterprets the data:
diagrams that do not show code descent are interpreted as showing code
descent.
If Microsoft paid AdTI to write this, they didn't get much for
their money.
AdTI would like universities to release their work under something
like the MIT licence, rather than the GPL or proprietary licences. At
least this is not obviously silly, though as usual they just state it
without making a meaningful case.
Re:His comment on Slashdot:
by
0x0d0a
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· Score: 3, Insightful
To be honest, the only times I've read anything directly written by Tanenbaum (and been aware of the fact) was when reading the minor flames between him and Linus and this recent webpage. (My OS class used the "dinosaur book".)
From this tiny dataset, it doesn't really seem that AST is particularly arrogant. I've written much nastier flames than AST did on that infamous occasion. He backs up his claims -- "microkernels are better -- I can say this because I know better than you due to 20 years studying them" would be arrogant. "Microkernels take a relatively minor 20% performance hit or so and provide easier debugging" is a different story.
The flamefest is clearly over.....
by
tiger99
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· Score: 3, Insightful
..... which must be a good thing for FOSS, Linux and the world at large. Brown may have, by accident, done everyone a big favour here, by forcing Prof. Tannenbaum to say what might otherwise have been left unsaid. We might otherwise imagine that animosity existed when in point of fact it did not.
All due respect to Linus and the Prof, none at all to Brown.
Slashdot Mirror
In his email, Linus said that Brown never contacted him. No email, no phone call, no personal interview. Nothing. Considering the fact that Brown was writing an explosive book in which he accused Linus of not being the author of Linux, you would think a serious author would at least confront the subject with the accusation and give him a chance to respond. What kind of a reporter talks to people on the periphery of the subject but fails to talk to the main player?
Hmmm, duh!
How many "explosive" books on Diana were published without giving Diana a chance to respond in the book?
Dragging someone's name into the dirt in a book and not including an interview of that person in the book is the hallmark of a trashy book. But then, we all knew it, since it's a Microsoft PR ploy ultimately, so no surprise there.
You know, I think I had AST wrong. I'd seen the thread where he bashes Linus for not doing a microkernel design and thought that maybe it was sour grapes.
His exchanges on this subject have changed my opinion on that. He's been nothing but kind toward Linus, generous with his time, and well-spoken.
If anything good come out of this whole mess, maybe it's that AST really got to show us what he's really like instead of all of us just assuming that he was bitter about the MINIX/Linux history.
You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake -- but you could be if you got off your ass.
Can't help it, but whenever I read something from Tanenbaum, I am thinking "oh my, is this guy arrogant".
This isn't being disingenious, that is a highbrow critique.
If the author was serious then he would have given his "target" - Linus - at least some chance to respond. He didn't. Therefore he isn't a serious author.
Professors generally don't go saying directly, 'that author is such a luuusor dude!' And authors who write trash books about Di aren't exactly people to take seriously either.
Your mistake is to imagine that moderators read at threshold 0. Neither have they read the moderating faq, and frequently not even the article.
Of course that's the obvious funny answer. I'm sorry you beat me too it.
Of course the real, and obvious, reason that they did not talk to Linus is because they did not want to.
Things that make you go (as they obviously have for the good professor), "Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm."
KFG
This argument was never really a big deal in the first place, it was just a classic arguemnt between a realist and a purist.
There are different types of unixes from proprietary to the bsd's to the linuxes. Promote the adoption of unix as an alternative and it gives linux more room to grow.
While it's not always the case, a lot of places where linux is making in roads is in replacing commercial unix installations. This is a short sighted strategy. Unix right now is competing with Windows server platforms. If linux takes over all the unix servers, then it will be linux competing with Windows server platforms. Meaning it won't be in any better position than it is now.
Though if we could foster support for greater unix deployments including bsd and linux in addition to the commercial unixes that have been there for years, windows servers would really have competition.
Open Source Java DAO Generator
You know, not everyone comes to slashdot for just OS and linux news. It's "news for nerds", yes, but some people are more interested in parts other than the creation of linux.
---
Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
>Therefore the only effect Tanenbaum (and Slashdot) gets from this
:)
>document is self-defence and mutual knob-polishery. Not that
>Tanenbaum is entitled to have his say and defend his honor, but there
>you go.
I don't think Tanenbaum loses sleep worrying about the commercial sucess of Linux
I think he was mostly trying to prevent looking like a dick for being associated with that book. Mission accomplished!
Perhaps today he's preaching to the choir, but look at it this way: One of the world's most respected computer scientists just TRASHED the integrity of the guy who interviewed him. I'm sure the whatchamacallit institute will be a long time living this down. And Tanembaum provides lots of nice quotes for the profesional marketers from Red Hat/IBM/Novell/whatever, computer columnists, etc.
I'm posting this as AC since I'll most likely be modded down for touching a "hero" of the Linux revolution:
.very very pleased with himself for having written Minix and fostered the development of Linux.
.
.was never good performance-wise. . .
.and wasn't really good for learning the architecture of an OS either.
.but somehow Tanenbaum feels entitled to think of himself as a pillar of computer science and computer history, and act accordingly.
I've always rather gotten the impression that he was something of the anti-christ of the Linux revolution, and that that's why he has to waste so much time explaining that he and Linus are not enemies.
. .
And says so in the very paper in question.
The trouble is that Minix, which was meant to be an academic OS to study. .
And says so in the very paper in question.
. .
And says so in the very paper in question.
. .
Here I'm sure he'd disagree with you, however, since you leave out why it "wasn't really good" you protect yourself from criticism.
Minix knew success because it was "this other, free Unix for i386" (and some other architectures like the Atari ST), and people could goof around with it for free.
And says so in both papers in question.
That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts.
And explains that such is not the case in the paper in question.
. .
And not only says so in the paper in question, but points to references should one chose to follow them up. Not to mention the fact that if he were not popularly regarded as such among the computer science community said paper whould have no had raison d'etre in the first place.
Now I shall watch myself be modded down as a troll by Slashdotter who have never met, read about, or listened to him...
As a general rule I find it more responsive to posts such as yours to, well, respond, rather than mod down something just because I might find it unpalatable. An unpalatable point of view is not the same thing as a troll.
I have never met the man, nor listened to him, but I have both read him and read about him. He is a public figure in the computer science community, just as is Linus.
He impresses me, as he appears to impress the orginal poster, as just the sort of intelligently sarcastic "prick," in the Swift/Dickens/Twain/Leacock mode, that I rather enjoy dealing with.
Of course you have to consider the source of that last statement (as one might well consider the source of any), as I myself have been accused, on occasion, of being such a man, and may be merely feeling an affinity of kind.
KFG
> I'll most likely be modded down for touching a "hero" of the Linux revolution:
Tanenbaum is hardly seen as a "hero" in the Linux community, of those who know him at all, most only remember the infamous "Linux is obsolete" flameware on Usenet.
> It's quite well known that Proff Tanenbaum is somewhat of a prick, very very pleased with himself for having written Minix and fostered the development of Linux.
How is this well known? I've never read anything about him boasting about having fostered the development of Linux. He does point out areas where the early Linux was inspired by Minix, but I don't think anyone would dispute that.
> Minix knew success because it was "this other, free Unix for i386"
It was the "free Unix for XT". One of the reasons for Linus to develop Linux was that Minix didn't take advantage of any of the advanced features of the 80386. AST refused almost all suggested improvements, his motivation being that he wanted to teach it in a one semester course.
> That's the extent of Tanenbaum's achievenemts.
Tanenbaum is a university professor. His achievements are his publications in peer reviewed journals, and citations to these publications. Since he has lots of both, he's been pretty successful.
You're right, and indeed I said 'unix' not 'linux'. The whole thing that is both the strenght and the weakness of the 'alternative to windows' is its very nature, the design Philosophy. Open Source most notably. The problem is, everyone has the right and the possibility to make their custom version of an application or even core structure, tweaked to their needs, and this is a Marketing disaster.
Open Source fights itself
If I promote Linux I would have no time to promote OpenBSD, even though in principle I have no reason to dislike openBSD, Im just more familiar with Linux.
The key thing that makes these systems competition to Windows is the way they are designed. Open the source completely thereby both creating a greater likelyhood of dumb mistakes being caught but on the flipside removing the whole 'security by obscurity' concept.
One thing Id like to re-emphasize is that there is Too Much Preaching to the Choir in our circles. I know why I like Linux (etc), Slashdot likes Linux but there are plenty of ignorant (not necessarily because of stupidity) middle-management types that need to be convinced by less formal and more 'shouty' methods.
Linux has far too few scantily clad ladies at the booths in conventions, and too many people who look like Andrew Tanenbaum
Now I shall watch myself be modded down as a troll by Slashdotter who have never met, read about, or listened to him...
You should get modded down for this statement alone. Let your post stand on its merits, don't trick stupid moderators into moderating it up solely because of reverse psychology.
It's the same as when people snidely point out that a typo "obviously" means the guy is too stupid to know how to spell. Same deal. Universities, Usenet, and Slashdot, for example, are full of this kind of childishness. C++ programmers, BTW, love this kind of shit, which kinda makes sense when you think about it.
Actually, his argument is that a microkernel would make a better early-90s graduate-level compsci project than a conventional monolithic kernel.
He's basically bashing Linus for doing an academically uninteresting project. (Keep in mind that as a professor, he's got the complete UNIX source code at his fingertips - he didn't need a free unix.)
And he was right, but that hasn't stopped damp pantied fanboys from tarring-n-feathering him over the years for arguing with the Great Linus.
Tanenbaum (AST) is a Professor who worked at AT&T and has written many textbooks aimed at university students. AST's most famous book - Operating Systems: Design and Implementation - includes a UNIX-alike operating system called Minix that he wrote himself. Minix includes binaries and source code for the kernel, C library, C compiler, and all the utilities. AST wrote Minix and the book to teach students how operating systems are written. Any computing science student who attended a decent university in the past decade has probably had at least one of AST's books as a required text.
Minix ran on an 8086 and didn't have modern virtual memory (VM) features. When the 80386 came out there were some unofficial patches to make Minix/386. These patches added virtual memory and paging and memory protection, turning Minix into an useful OS. AST refused to add these patches to Minix, rightly arguing that they would make Minix too complex for a student to understand. Minix was a teaching tool, not a general purpose OS, even though Minix/386 was a pretty good general purpose OS. Unfortunately the license back then didn't permit forking. Despite these limitations, Minix had a very large user community. .
When Linus came along and announced Linux a lot of people realised that GNU (basically all of UNIX except for the kernel) and Linux (basically none of UNIX except the kernel) when combined would produce a UNIX-alike operating system. Just like Minix but with VM and the more relaxed GPL for a license. There was no Linux news group so all the discussions were on the Minix news group.
AST put his two cents in on the Linux kernel. He correctly pointed out that the Linux design was a 30 year old monolithic design; not elegant or modern. Linus argued back that monolithic kernels are more practical. AST said Linus would fail his OS class, if Linus was his student. That's the infamous AST/Linus flamewar. It wasn't very hot, as far as flamewars went. AST was right, so was Linus. They just had different perspectives.
Ken Brown is an ignorant idiot who is selling a book claiming that Linus didn't write Linux. He argues that noone could write something so complex as a UNIX-like kernel without stealing code. Ken is under the delusion that writing a UNIX needs a huge team of people working for many years. He seems to be ignorant of the fact that the first UNIX was written by Ken Thompson on a computer so ancient that your wrist watch has more computing power. For "research", Ken Brown spoke to AST. Notably he did not speak to Linus Torvalds. AST is pointing out that Ken is lying in his book; AST has pointed to several examples of single authors who created a UNIX-like kernel, AST included.
The confusion might be that Ken Brown doesn't understand that Linux is just a kernel. The first "Linux" that you ran back in 1991 was actually GNU/Linux. Linux comprised less than 2% of that system. RMS and his team had been working on GNU for nearly a decade by that stage (longer if you count emacs). Linux The Kernel was a small piece of the puzzle. An essential piece, but certainly writable in 6 months by a bright and talented person. These days, Linux is an incredibly tiny piece of a "Linux distribution". Ken Brown might think that Linus is laying claim to the entire system. Of course, Linus has only ever claimed credit for the first kernel. Recent kernels have very little "Linus" in them. And the distro you have on the desktop is less than 1% Linux anyway.
The other theory is that Ken Brown is being paid by SCO/Microsoft/LatestPariah to create FUD over the legal origins of Linux.
I prefer my own theory. Ken wants attention. Saying something ridiculous gets easy attention and increases book sales. We're playing right into his hands by giving him the time of day. It gives him false credibility by creating a "controversy" when in reality there is no controversy. Just Ken saying ridiculous things with no evidence to back them up. It's like all those authors who write books on Noah's Ark, or the location of Atlantis. They must have a huge grin on their face when somebody pays attention to them.
Hello? 1992 called, they want your version of Linux back. Fast-forward to 2004, and my SuSE 9.1 install has a 1.4MB kernel with its 53MB of driver modules sitting in a seperate directory.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The more I read of Tanenbaum and his work the more I admire him. The fact that he is a Fellow of two prestigious societies says alot about his contributions.
Tanenbaum is a classic academic; he knows where to pick his fights - on the science. He attempts to stay above personalities, but doesn't flinch when it comes to calling bullshit on some dickhead (my words) who is out to smear someone for money.
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
His books are an integral part of Computer Science curriculum at any good university, so it's not like he's pimping some poorly-written fresh-out-of-the-press novels.
But was Linus ever in his class? I thought it was more a hypothetical comment.
Tanenbaum was engaged in an intellectual arguement. That so many zealots interpret it as a political arguement reflects badly on the zealots, not on AST.
resigned
If the API for a certain kernel module becomes so complete that it amounts to message passing, then the kernel module might as well be outside the kernel. I understand the VFS implementation layer is pretty clean in this respect. (That is the well-behaved FS modules which don't reach into the kernel and do weird things)
Just having them in the same address space is a convienence to not have to actually handle details about passing messages.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
sheesh!
tanenbaum is not just another european guy. he is a scholar, an academic and an outstanding educator indeed. his books should be rated among the best by all standards and a must for anyone who's serious about the subject.
though i read about OSes and programming in college (it was tanenbaum's book that stands out, of course), i left programming and am a network/security specialist.
again, tanenbaum's book is one of the best ever in that area. not only that, he should be number two to mark twain with that dadfetchedest style.
now don't ask me who mark twain is.. he not just another yankee who wrote childrens books.
Careless spelling and careless arithmetic are often indicators of sloppy thinking. They're also impolite -- the rest of us have to think harder than should be necessary in order to take your meaning. Don't be surprised to find that some readers will not put forth the extra effort, when they see that a writer does not put forth even the minimum effort.
And, even if the OS itself was not so good, it doesn't matter, because people often learn the subject from the mistakes, shortcomings.
You may be suffering from the misconception that Minix tried to be, or should have been, a commercial grade Unix workalike. If so you are wrong. When you write software in an academic environment where the goal is to teach students the code should be written with clarity and easy of understanding being paramount. If efficiency or more advanced techniques conflicts with clarity or ease of understanding you should choose the later. The job of the University is to teach core concepts that are long lived and transcend the OS, language, or architecture of the day.
After all, Linus wrote the Linux to improve Minix on Minix.
No. Linux and Minix have different missions. Minix was a teaching tool, it's mission was not to become a full featured Unix workalike. Its goal was to remain small and comprehensible to further its teaching mission. Linux had a very different mission. It is silly to compare the two. Linux is no more of an improvement on Minix than a wrench is an improvement on a screwdriver. Different tools for different jobs, or missions in this case.
Think of it, what is more important: a toy-OS that nobody has used in decades, or a row of computer textbooks which are considered the top of their field since decades.
Shouldn't be too tough...
The basic penalty for using a microkernel is one extra copy and context switch for every file system operation. If your system is doing anything besides I/O, you'll probably never notice. If you're running a web server that serves mostly plain pages (little Perl, Java, PHP, etc.), you'd probably notice the overhead.
The bus multiplier on processors and the cycles-for-a-main-memory-access have steadily increased over the past decade or so. This has steadily increased the cost of a page table cache flush, and thus steadily increased the cost of a context switch.
May we never see th
The only thing they accomplish is code memory savings.
Ironically enough, this is not really the case for Windows due to a pretty poor (in retrospect) design decision.
Windows supports pageable kernel memory, unlike Linux. This leads to vastly more complexity than Linux (since you *really* don't want kernel code like your paging code, say, to accidently cause a page fault). You also don't want anything that might be involved with paging (want to support a remote pagefile? Hope network support doesn't page! A pagefile on a USB keydrive? You'll need USB code and thus probably power-saving code and so forth to never cause pagefaults). Any *data* touched by any code that can be invoked by a page fault cannot ever be paged out, or else the risk of a hang again appears. Windows maintains different lists of "pageable" and "unpageable" memory.
Linux took a much simpler approach -- kernel memory isn't pageable, but kernel modules can be unloaded -- that increases the simplicity and reliability of kernel code.
May we never see th
You may not agree with him, but you'd have a tough time arguing he's not a respected researcher. His books are standard texts at many universities...Modern Operating Systems is the one used in the undergrad OS class here at Harvard.
To be honest, the only times I've read anything directly written by Tanenbaum (and been aware of the fact) was when reading the minor flames between him and Linus and this recent webpage. (My OS class used the "dinosaur book".)
From this tiny dataset, it doesn't really seem that AST is particularly arrogant. I've written much nastier flames than AST did on that infamous occasion. He backs up his claims -- "microkernels are better -- I can say this because I know better than you due to 20 years studying them" would be arrogant. "Microkernels take a relatively minor 20% performance hit or so and provide easier debugging" is a different story.
May we never see th
All due respect to Linus and the Prof, none at all to Brown.