The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD OS

n0dez writes "Peter H. Salus has written a review of The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System on UnixReview. "If you need to understand just how a kernel works, you need this book. McKusick and Neville-Neil have done the community a favor, and this book deserves to be a best seller." This book is an update to The Design and Implementation of the 4.4BSD Operating System by Marshall Kirk McKusick."

Comments

I was considering this book

[BoomerSooner]

I was considering getting the 4.4 version of this book so I'm glad I waited. I've been working through the Tanenbaum OS Book and it's a bit dry. I've been working through the 2.4 Linux Kernel as well. It's amazing the quality that goes into these open source offerings.

I just wish someone would make a linux distro that is more like OS X. It would bring Linux to the desktop faster and give grandma an interface she could easily understand.

Re:I was considering this book

[bhima]

I use OS X and NetBSD at home.

Also I support Linux, NetBSD & VxWorks at work.

I wish someone would make something as nice as OS X for something besides my Macs.

Still, I think my mum could use SusE, currently she uses OS X 10.3 on her iLamp and it suits her nicely.

Not Another Linux Distro

[cipher chort]

"I'm looking at running a modified linux kernel on x86, x86-64, PPC & Itanium"

Assuming your goal is to create a pretty desktop OS like OS X, why would you run it on Itanium? Itanium is designed specifically as a "RISC killer" for high-end RISC/UNIX shops (and it's failing miserably, I might add). To my understanding, OS X Server isn't even the same code-base as normal OS X. Supposedly it's more NeXTish. The point is that Apple's servers don't really run the same OS that their desktops and laptops do.

It always strikes me as funny when Linux people whine about the lack of a Linux distribution that works like OS X. Hmmm, maybe that's because Apple pays developers market wage to create their interface, rather than relying on community contributions by random, unaccountable people? Also, it seems that the Enlightenment WM is really supposed to mimmic OS X, so perhaps the lament should be "I wish there was a WM..." rather than "I wish there was a distro...". Besides, if you recognize that OS X is so much better, why don't you just buy a system with OS X? Do you not believe in paying for quality, or should everything just be handed to you on a silver platter?

Then again, that's the problem with the Linux community. Instead of contributing towards a common project and common goals, everyone goes off and totally duplicates the effort of everyone else. You end up with dozens of WMs, dozens of text editors, dozens of e-mail clients, a dozen web browsers, hundreds of OSs (that's what a distro is, after all) and not ONE of them approaches the quality of a commercial OS.

If free software is ever going to approach the quality of commercial software, people have to stop this assinine "I'll start my own ___" mentality and learn to work in productive teams. The Apache web server and OpenSSL should be examples of how to do things. There aren't 10 different common SSL implementations in Open Source.

Getting slightly back on topic, BSD should serve as a good example for how to do OSS right. Have large groups of developers working on an integrated project, i.e. a whole OS. Pick one default for everything, and don't duplicate effort all over the place. There are only really four free BSDs (Dragonfly, Free, Net, Open) and they share code heavily. The default installations have one sane selection for each task, and you can add more from ports if you really, really feel like it. Development is a lot more cohesive and as a result, the BSD releases tend to work a lot more reliably. Imagine that!

Re:Not Another Linux Distro

[zx71]

( I'll bite). always strikes me as funny when Linux people whine about the lack of a Linux distribution that works like OS X. Hmmm, maybe that's because Apple pays developers market wage to create their interface, rather than relying on community contributions by random, unaccountable people? Also, it seems that the Enlightenment WM is really supposed to mimmic OS X, (...) Have you ever used Enlightenment ( probably not )? It is nothing like OSX. The closest you could reasonably come to your statement is to point out the existence of a OSX skin. Also, Enlightenment predates OSX by quite a bit, so it would be hard for it to be designed as an OSX clone. Then again, that's the problem with the Linux community. Instead of contributing towards a common project and common goals, everyone goes off and totally duplicates the effort of everyone else. You end up with dozens of WMs, dozens of text editors, dozens of e-mail clients, a dozen web browsers, hundreds of OSs (that's what a distro is, after all) and not ONE of them approaches the quality of a commercial OS. There are ( surprise) dozens of email clients, text editors et al. for most OSes. I think you'll find a large number of these programs are not linux-exclusive. vi and emacs can be found on almost any nix system, for example. Including several commercial ones. Now counting a distro as a full OS is pushing it quite a bit, but even so, there are commercial distros - by your definition RedHat and SuSE don't approach their own quality.

Re:Not Another Linux Distro

[BoomerSooner]

You're probably right about the Itanic. I was just thinking out loud. PPC & x86-64 are the two main platforms I would like to focus on. I fully intend to pay my people for building the OS. There are so many great OSS projects out there that I have no intention of reinventing the wheel. Look at how much OSS stuff is in Mac OS X, it's quite amazing.

The real things that I find lacking is an integrated desktop to filesystem like both the Mac and Windows OSes offer. This makes life much easier for users. I do like the mac way of avoiding the registry as well. That thing is a fucking mess. Why shouldn't someone be able to tar zxvf their harddrive and simply restore their software (hell and maybe the OS too).

Plus the installation in Linux through the distros is too much. I remember trying to read every entry the first time I installed Slackware in '95. It took several hours to read, I cannot imagine selecting packages now (it's about 6GB installed last I saw from Fedora Core 2).

OS X also has the GUI filesystem layed out right. There is no reason for the gui file manager (finder) to show the root of the hard drive. It's unnecessary (especially if you've ever explained to someone why they keep getting dll errors after deleting a directory in windows less than one day after reinstalling the system, thanks mom).

I know Linux can be an excellent desktop choice for consumers. It however needs to make some decisions (like you said about BSD) as to what needs to be included, instead of what should be included just incase the person using the system is a graphic designing programmer who uses vi/emacs/nedit/joe/... at the same time while running mozilla/lynx/firefox/konqueror(sp?)/... if you get the drift.

Re:Not Another Linux Distro

[ArbitraryConstant]

"I usually run mplayer, but sometimes xine is better suited to my tastes. Having both Firefox and Konqueror is pure gold, depending what kind of things are you browsing (casual browsing=Firefox , work browsing=lots of pdf docs+frequent interaction with my files=Konqueror). Even more than one text editor is ok, since I can use the fully featured Kate when programming and gvim as a "very advanced notepad" (Yes,I know both are not the true-geek-choices).

For me, OSS is choice and flexibility. Perhaps the monolithic approach of the BSD's is what is leaving them behind (of user base, not technically,where they're probably equal or superior) the confused,fat penguin."

It's pretty clear you haven't used a BSD... I've used a half dozen Linuxes, and you sacrifice none of the choice and flexibility when using a BSD, except for the rare case of software that's not portable (I've never personally had a problem with this).

The whole point is that the base system is small and well tested. Extras that haven't been as extensively tested are available but not essential to system operation. Debian-stable is the only Linux I've used that can keep up with this reliability, and it's pretty far behind in terms of recent versions of things.