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Bossa, a Framework for Scheduler Development

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the one-for-the-techies dept.

Eugenia writes "The recent activity in Linux kernel development caused by the introduction of a new scheduler by Ingo Molnar has emphasized for ordinary Linux users the importance of schedulers in modern operating systems. This article gives you a glimpse of what scheduling development is like by letting you implement your own Linux scheduler thanks to Bossa, a framework for scheduler development."

6 of 152 comments (clear)

  1. Ordinary users? by MisterFancypants · · Score: 4, Insightful
    "The recent activity in Linux kernel development caused by the introduction of a new scheduler by Ingo Molnar has emphasized for ordinary Linux users the importance of schedulers in modern operating systems"

    I know some people will take this as flamebait, but I honestly don't mean it to be. However, as long as Linux is in a state where developers think that "ordinary Linux users" have to even care what a scheduler is, Linux will be a failure for mainstream desktop usage.

    Users don't care about OS internals. Don't send them to a page explaining OS scheduling, just tell them "All new Linux makes your applications more responsive!". That's all they want to hear.

    Seriously.

    1. Re:Ordinary users? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      If you don't want to know what a scheduler is, you don't have to read the article. I don't know what bothers you about this. Nobody is asking the users to write their own scheduler.

    2. Re:Ordinary users? by GammaTau · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Users don't care about OS internals. Don't send them to a page explaining OS scheduling, just tell them "All new Linux makes your applications more responsive!". That's all they want to hear.

      I don't think the ordinary users (at least the ones you talk about) are readers of Slashdot or OSNews. This is not marketing material you are reading. It would be silly to judge it as such.

  2. MOD PARENT UP by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    This guy gets it. MisterFancypants is just looking for excuses to complain. The article never implied that ordinary users should care about, or even know about, scheduling. What it says is that scheduling algorithms are important for ordinary users. There is a world of difference between these two statements.

  3. Re: locks &semaphores, "nothing I hated more" by nusratt · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Working with semaphores and locks... *shudder* keep the bad man away!!"
    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=11388 0&cid=964 7043

    Actually, it's quite interesting. It forces you to conceptualize with a certain kind of rigor, and to code with particular vigilance for potential deadlocks, race-conditions, and mis-serialization of resource-updates.

    I can't tell you the number of times that I've read or listened to a description of a design or architecture, and immediately said "uh-oh", to the surprise and dismay of developers who really should know better.

    In a time of increasing processor parallelism, this is a skill-set which must be mastered by anyone who truly aspires to become (or remain) a serious professional-level developer. It's not just for kernel-hackers.

  4. Re:who cares by angulion · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Either way---say what you will, but windows has always been more responsive on the desktop.

    And Linux has been more responsive in the server-room. A server doesn't even need a desktop.
    A desktop user like you might not care if your scheduler degrades after you have 800 processes running, but I can assure you people dealing with large server systems does.
    Windows is in large part more responsive on the desktop since it is in part intergrated into the kernel - the downside being that what would be a application crash can bring down the whole OS. Also you have less privilege separation. (windows desktop is "unsafe" area, but that is another story).

    (What directX equivalent is there on Linux?)

    OpenGL, SDL, OpenAL for starters. Guess what they all can do that DirectX can't?! Yepp, run on different systems and architectures, be it Linux, Windows or a Mac.

    If Linux developers don't stop diddling around with something that was solved years ago, Linux will just go away.

    Linux developer base is quite large and the developers like to "diddle" around to find the best/most effective solution, not the one that takes the least amount of time to make, like it often tends to be when deadlines are pushed in companies.

    Linux doesn't even have a program that can do half of what programs like dreamweaver can do.

    I admit that there is nothing quite like dreamweaver for Linux, but I'm convinced that Quanta can do more than half. :P Anyway, as Linux gets more acceptance, programs like Dreamweaver will eventually be ported.. what will you say then?

    For the developer, what app is as integrated as Visual Studio? KDevelop? Pshaw.

    Are there any development tools that is more restricted to one platform and project management than VS?
    KDevelop and Anjuta might not be as integrated, but they can use CVS, SubVersion etc. and compile on Linux even for Windows (or the other way around). Oh, and they are free.

    I'm not flaming you---but the article. Users don't give a shit about schedulers if there's no applications with them.

    No, not at all :P
    You know, there are alot of people that acctually are interested in kernel-schedulers, allthough they do not tend to be your average desktop user.
    More over, one place where schedulers matter most, ie. in servers, there is absolutely no shortage of applications on Linux.. I'd more like to say there is a shortage of applications in this are for Windows, if anything.