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OSDL Denies Rewriting Kernel
yootje writes "Although there were rumours saying that OSDL writes a version of the Linux kernel that doesn't infringe patents (an argument that was used by Microsoft), OSDL denies this: 'OSDL officials have said that the report was not accurate, and that while Beaverton is putting $1.2m into economic development around open source software, this is not connected to rewriting the Linux kernel.'"
"Although there were rumours saying that OSDL writes a version of the Linux kernel that doesn't infringe patents (an argument that was used by Microsoft), OSDL denies this: "OSDL officials have said that the report was not accurate, and that while Beaverton is putting $1.2m into economic development around open source software this is not connected to rewriting the Linux kernel.""
OK. So why exactly is rewriting the kernel a problem?
Oops, never mind. /dumb, but had to be done
It was Maureen O'Gara, a writer without an ounce of credibility or ethics. She's been a huge part of the MicroSCOft campaign against Linux all along, this is just another bow shot.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
But given the current state of things, I'm pretty unsure that you can write any computer program of complexity beyond 'hello world' without infringing on at least one software patent.
In other news, FIPFS (Fictitious Initiative for Patent-Free Software) has incredible difficulty writing an operating system due to all practical functionality of operating systems being patented...
Comment is too sensible for slashdot.
Umm, why not maintain an alternate kernel that uses all the best technologies, copyrighted, patented, or not, and let people compile it themselves? Store it on a server in one of the many countries that doesn't give a rip... b
PJ over at Groklaw has a nice write up on this. Is it just me or is Maureen O'Gara just part of the FUD-machine funded by SCO?
Hmmm... I wonder how much reporter integrity goes for on the open market?
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
Yes, it's 10 years old. Rewrite it and get rid of 10 years worth of testing, 10 years worth of bug fixes, 10 years worth of great security. This is exactly what Microsoft is running into with Longhorn. Buggy as Windows may be sometimes, rewriting the Linux kernel would put it behind Windows.
10 years isn't old. It's mature.
The Linux kernel is just getting to the point where it doesn't completely suck ass.
This isn't to disparage where things are at, going, or have been. But you dont just scrap something like the kernel just because its a decade or more old.
That's how you get versions that are "newer" with half the features.
Kernels are time expensive and iterative. You just can't go from nothing to a working production kernel in one or a few releases. It's a big job to do it right.
The linux kernel is finally to a place where you have a good mix of micro and monolithic design principles (not a lot of bloated message passing, loadable modules). It's finally got some really decent SMP, and the VM issues are finally being addressed.
It was really overhauled. From 1.2 to 2.0, from 2.0 to 2.2, from 2.2 to 2.4 and from 2.4 to 2.6. That's the odd/even thing.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
All you have to do is look at the author of the original LinuxWorld story. Yes, that's right. It's everyone's favorite journalist/paid SCO shill Maureen O'Gara. That should have been enough to convince anyone with half a brain cell that this wasn't legit.
Wise men learn more from fools than fools learn from the wise.
Indeed - code rot is a well known phenomenon.
If the kernel is not re-written soon, it will start slowing down and maybe break altogether!
TIM
The article at the centre of this particular storm-in-a-teacup was written by the infamous Maureen O'Gara, who regularly gets dumped on over at groklaw for the quality and balance of her linux reportage and whose company (G2 computer intelligence) is behind a motion in Utah connected to the SCO IBM case to unseal submissions to the Court by both parties. Summary: Nothing to see here.
Then, if there's a patent that they think MS might try to stick them with, re-write/change only that part of the kernel that's affected.
Am I the only one that thinks an entire re-write for operating system technologies that have been around long before MS is a little silly?The Linux kernel is a living codebase. It's constantly scrutinized and updated. The nature of it being open source guarantees this. To say it should be rewritten simply because it is 10 years old is a hollow statement. If you know of a module that's needs updating, point it out.
Zoidberg: Give it to me straight, Professor. ...
Is it fin rot? It's fin rot, isn't it? Tell me it's not fin rot!
That's something made me laugh this week. NO, the code isn't 10 years old. One of the core developers said this week that the kernel is getting 4mb of patches every week. Now, lets compute a bit:
/usr/src/linux-2.6.7
# du -hs
290M linux-2.6.7
# bc
(...snip...)
290/4
72
This would assume that in a little bit over 1 year, the kernel is totally replaced. I know its logically flawed, but it means in my interpretation that there is no obsolete code in the kernel that would be >10 years old, or maybe with a few exceptions. I think it's safe to assume that most parts of the kernel aren't older than 2-3 years. Your logic is flawed.
Personally i think the kernel is perfectly good without a rewrite.
Legal issues shouldn't be a consideration neither, since SCO-code in the linux kernel is something in one class with Santa Claus. Linus stated on multiple occasions that he doesn't believe sco code could be in the kernel. I don't have evidence who generates those rumours, but i got a hunch it's from the SCO,Microsoft side of the barricade.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Sounds like an awful lot of work to achieve the same aim. And if what is being done here is effectively reverse-engineering, isn't there the risk of falling into the same trap again, i.e. inadvertently writing into the kernel patent-infringing code?
Meh, the whole kernel is stuffed with x86 specific cruft. Despite people constantly cheering all the platforms it "runs" on (IMO there's more to running than just bootstrapping), the focus has been on x86 from day one. Much of it is just too ingrained, and entire subsystems could do with a brand new design.
There's no point on discussing stuff like this on slashdot, hardly anyone here knows shit about linux, or computers in general.
Bunch of know-nothing know-it-alls.
Step 1: cp -R kernel.orig kernel.infringement-free
Step 2: There is no step 2. Alas, there is also no Step 3: Profit.
I can just see the fud-meisters now.
"They aren't going to rewrite the kernel to take out our patented stuff. So it must be in there!"
While not the gist of any of the statements, that viewpoint can be made to fit.
Ah, the power of spin.
"How fine you look when dressed in rage."
OSDL, god praise it's name, wishes to send out noice that there is no re-writing of Linux kernel, nor has there ever been any attempt to re-write it. These are the truths! Even if there were attempts to re-write it, which ther are not, it would only be by word of our great master, IBM.
Only the infidels at Microsoft could create such lies, and surely would admit it if they were not such cowards, hiding in thier cubes like the unholy nerds that they are. God willing, capitalist proprietary software will fail under the great crush of thier devil-like closed-source policies. Indeed, I do not doubt this. Praise OSDL.
There are large sections of code that havent been touched since 1.x releases. Linux frankly runs for shit on anything other than x86, despite all the claims of all the different systems it runs on. Too much PC specific cruft.
"Rewrite", to a programmer, doesn't mean to throw everything out and start from scratch, either. It means rethink some the design. Reevaluate why feature X was done the way it was, and if that's stillt he best way to do it. Make sure it's still relevant for modern hardware, and make sure it will still be relevant for tomorrows hardware.
MSFT is doing this with Longhorn. The hardware evolves, why shouldn't the software that runs on it?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
"OSDL officials have said that the report was not accurate..."
I always hate in when PR types use this phrase. Mind you, I like the OSDL, I just hate the "was not accurate" thing. For example...
"The report that Mr. Jones embezzled $10.5 million was not accurate." REASON: Mr. Jones actually embezzled $10,548,984. Its the classic non-denial denial where you deny something in super-general or super-specific terms, while not adding anything meaningful at the same time. It is more about perception than truth.
I don't know if the OSDL is playing perceptions vs. truth here, but I don't like things that are phrased in that particular manner for those reasons.
And: OSDL writes a version of the Linux kernel that doesn't infringe patents
So its the same as the official kernel then!!
Instead of Time To Live, packets should be given TTF - Time To Float....
"Rewrite", to a programmer, doesn't mean to throw everything out and start from scratch, either. It means rethink some the design. Reevaluate why feature X was done the way it was, and if that's stillt he best way to do it. Make sure it's still relevant for modern hardware, and make sure it will still be relevant for tomorrows hardware.
...And linux is doing this with odd releases(2.1, 2.3, 2.5) and now with -mm while keeping 2.6 around. Did you ever look at LKML? You could see tons of discussions about what and how should be done.
MSFT is doing this with Longhorn. The hardware evolves, why shouldn't the software that runs on it?
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
really? got any numbers to support that, oh great fudmeister?
I dont' have any numbers to support my rebuttal either, but I do have 4 non intel systems ( 2 ppc and 2 ultrasparc ) running perceptably faster than equivalently clocked intel machines
Sitting Walrus Blog
Rewrites are so 1990's..
Really it would be wasteful to rewrite from scratch far better to keep fixing and improving what is there.
If you want a more modern OS may I suggest Hurd?
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Or to be more accurate, I sit corrected. :-D
I was attempting to convey the meaning of a warning shot, but never stated the caliber or airspeed of the projectile! Think of it as a kid with a pellet gun firing across the bow of an AEGIS destroyer.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
Kind of like if you shake hands with someone today, and then again in 6 months. You'll still be you, he'll still be him, but none of the cells in your hands will be the same. From one perspective, four different hands would have been involved.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
No, your logic is flawed. The patches aren't uniformly applied to all parts. Some parts get patched repetitively while others dont get patched at all. And it is a fact that there are things from many years ago in Linux.
Seriously. There was a great article posted some months ago here about this very issue (the rewrite-everything vs. don't-fix-if-it-ain't-broken argument), and i agreed with it's conclusions: rewrites should be done when they're needed and no when they can be done.
The Linux kernel is very good as it is, why rewrite it from scratch? It's been evolving these past 10 years, it's not like no one touched the code ever since.
...if the Linux kernel could be rewritten to compile in Microsoft C? Could it then be interfaced under the Windows GUI to provide the best of both worlds? A rock solid kernel with a rock solid UI? Dump all that ugly Bash, sh, ksh, Bourne Shell, csh crap and put the much nicer CMD or COMMAND on top of it for CLI freaks. Maybe drop IE and replace it with the Linux program Firefox. The same with Outlook. Replace it with Linux Evolution. A lot of stuff from the Linux project (GIMP, Xine, Ogg Vorbis and Theora) could be added to this new frankenWindows. Since Macintosh is now Linux as well, you could probably get the code for some of the projects from the Darwin project. I think that iCal, iTunes and the new iWork projects are all part of the Darwin kernel. To be honest, I think you'd wind up with the most usable, stable and secure OS ever. But you know why it wil never happen? Because none of these businesses want to work together. Linus is only interested in his own company's profits. The same with Bill Gate and Steve Jobs. They won't work together because they are trying to smash each other so they can own the world.
The whole concept of a kernel which doesn't infringe patents is ridiculous. You don't decide what is and is not infringement by reading through source code in some magical process. You decide it when some patent holder says "this piece of code here infringes on my patent!" and then both parties either agree or go to court and then the court comes up with some resolution. There are millions of patents out there and there are millions of lines of code in the kernel. There's no such thing as a magical search engine that you can plug a piece of code into and see which patents apply to it. Even things that are heavily promoted as "patent-free" such as PNG, Ogg, and others, might be infringing some patent. There is just no way to say with certainty in this. The patent office grants so many crappy patents all the time that it's hard to say that any very large body of code (like the kernel) doesn't possibly infringe on something.
This is all why big companies tend to enter into cross-licensing agreements with eachother. They know that it's almost inevitable that if you write enough code, you will write something that could reasonably be argued to infringe on some patent that no one has ever heard of. In fact even the companies that hold enormous numbers of patents don't have the ability to check all the code that is out there.
This area of law is only defined and made certain in practice involving specific patents and specific code. For someone to make claims about some code not infringing is completely bogus.
I remember all the arguments about PGP vs. the RSA patent and how much time was wasted arguing about that patent and worrying about it, when a) it was never clear that it was a valid patent and b) RSA never enforced it up until the time it expired.
The right thing to do is to be fearless about these things. If there is an infringement, let the patent holder notify the kernel developers about what the patent is and which regions of code are infringing. The ODSL should then get a lawyer to talk with the developers, look over the patent and the code in question, and see if the patent holder's claim makes sense. If it does, then it is time to think about coding around the patent, but until that set of things has happened, trying to code around patents that may or may not be enforceable is just a waste of time.
Patents are not at all like copyrights. Copyright is usually pretty clear: there's a piece of work authored by someone and that work is or is not similar to some other work. If it is too similar there is infringement and it's pretty easy to see usually. Patents just aren't like that at all.
Like Ann Coulter is to Democrats and Michael Moore is to Republicans Maureen O'Gara is to Open Source Only the weak minded, lazy, and easily led will beleave a word she says. But, unfortunately, the majority of the populace is one of the above...
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.
Because there are situations where X86 is irrelevant, but Linux is a top OS contender. In these cases, someone has (probably correctly) decided that resources are better spent customizing Linux to run on their hardware than it would be to start from scratch.
Given the nature of the USTPO, where any obvious or ancient idea (like swinging on a swing sideways) gets a patent, how can you possibly rewrite something that you can guarantee wont infringe on some over broad chicken scratch filed in the 70's when they had wire wrapped electronics and nixie tubes in cash registers.
By the time you are done whats to stop someone from patenting the code you are working on. Even if its invalid, you get tied up in court either way.
The problem is the system, and the system alone.
Amsterdam (Netherlands) is getting old.
The infrastructure could be much more efficient if they blow up and then re-build everything from scratch.
Would the trouble outweight the gains?
And I'm not talkin about lost nostalgia here.
OK - the analogy sucks, but it shows that something being old should not be the only aspect for deciding what should be rebuilt.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Along these lines, does anyone know the 'if' and 'when' with respect to a 3.0 kernel? I imagine that would be a rather major overhaul, as compared to a 2.4 -> 2.6 jump, for instance (not to say that those aren't large undertakings, of course).
Not that I really need to know, I'm just interested as to whether or not it's been discussed.
No sig for you.
10 years isn't old. It's mature.
Thats what I tried to tell the cops but they still put me in jail!
There are large sections of code that havent been touched since 1.x releases. Linux frankly runs for shit on anything other than x86, despite all the claims of all the different systems it runs on. Too much PC specific cruft.
Actually i'm not totally convinced. I didn't see LKML full of complaints neither developers saying "we should do something about it now". PC specific "cruft" can be disabled or is disabled by default on non-x86. It would be interesting to do a diffstat from 1.x up until today's kernel, with statistics. If i cannot find any source that has done it before i might do it even. THEN we can talk about the age of code. The last change to 1.3 has been made on 20-Mar-2003 15:02 according to kernel.org. I wouldn't call that 10 years old neither.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
It's logically the same as saying it was wrong. In this case, they specifically said they were not rewriting the kernel; e.g. they gave the reason why it was wrong, not just that it was wrong, which would seem to be the source of your complaint.
You're not thinking like a PR drone. You're thinking like a logical human being who talks in specifics.
From the article: "Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) [....] has denied that it plans to rewrite the Linux kernel to combat claims that it infringes some software patents." And "But the OSDL has denied that it is planning to rewrite parts of the kernel."
Lots out outs here. Perhaps OSDL themselves aren't doing the rewrite. Perhaps it IS doing the rewrite, but isn't doing it to combat _claims_. Perhaps they aren't planning it, but they have already planned it.
Compare/Contrast: CEO Speak. The way that CEOs get away with telling lies because, technically, they're not actually lies, even though they totally lead you to a wrong conclusion.
If Linux is proven to infringe on IP's, than it is really essential that those are taken out. But the infringements must be proven with hard facts. But anyways, when I first heard of the rumors I dismissed them myself due to their nonsensical nature. That being, if there was a plan to rewrite the code that was infringing on IP's, it would be done through www.kernel.org since Linus Torvald is employed at OSDL and heads that website. You would have definitely heard something from Linus on the kernel development mailing list also. I would highly doubt that OSDL along with Linus would rewrite the kernel code outside of www.kernel.org and its contributors.
Linux frankly runs for shit on anything other than x86, despite all the claims of all the different systems it runs on. Too much PC specific cruft.
Examples, please! I find this kind of FUD exactly on the same par as SCO's bullshit! Aside from the memory management stuff (which, I admit, I have not examined in much detail) I do not see lotsa x86 specific stuff. I have worked on scaled-down versions of Linux kernel on other architectures besides x86 (my forte is embedded code) and I take direct exception to this.
Defend yourself with facts, sir!
I do have 4 non intel systems ( 2 ppc and 2 ultrasparc ) running perceptably faster than equivalently clocked intel machines
Which proves what about the Linux kernel, exactly? Perhaps with a BSD the differences would be even more noticable; perhaps they'd be less noticable.
The point is, you can't draw any conclusions at all from that setup, except that for those exact conditions, the non-x86 machines are "perceptably faster". Maybe he's right, and if the kernel was fixed, the other machines would beat the x86 ones into the ground - you just can't tell.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Not really. There was a discussion about 2.7 lately (revisiting the issue which occured at last summer) but people seemed to have a consensus to stick with 2.6.x and -mm for a while still before starting 2.7. About 2.8+, i don't think there was any time(line|frame). I guess 2.7+ is heavily dependant on developers wanting to incorporate new stuff in the kernel which would break things. That situation just didn't occur yet.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
This is particularly true (or so I've been told) for embedded PPC applications and for servers (there are lots of old and not-so-old PPC servers out there).
IANAL, but it doesn't take one to read what other companies are doing. Are IBM, HP, Red Hat, and Sun slowing down due to SCO....nope. They are actually speeding up! Anyone who has any inkling of fear over SCO needs to get a hug and some hot cocoa and go worry about things that matter.
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
[...] Although there were rumours saying that OSDL writes a version of the Linux kernel that doesn't infringe patents (an argument that was used by Microsoft), OSDL denies this: 'OSDL officials have said that the report was not accurate, [...]
OSDL themselves are unhappy that they don't infringe the kernel? Are they striving to infringe patents now??? ..I hope this is a typo..
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Unix already did this; everyone uses Plan 9 now.
English is easier said than done.
Personally, I don't care about the edits - the difference between a "stable" release and an "unstable" one is the number of characters you choose to represent it with. It's just a label, it doesn't confer any magical properties.
Some of the networking code is getting a little old - there are sections of the IPv4 code which haven't been touched in 2-3 years. You can have a lot of new ideas on how to improve something, in that kind of timeframe.
A complete rewrite is unlikely at present. The kernel is still evolving too rapidly. Nobody would be able to keep up with the changes. Now, once we reach Linux 3.0 or 4.0, things might settle down some. Then, a rewrite might be smart. Code that evolves is inherently going to have inefficiencies and redundancies, because nobody can track every possible interaction between every possible combination of blocks of code.
In consequence, yes, I think it would be smart to stop at Linux 4.0, deconstruct the kernel and then reassemble. That would be a good time to do a thorough security audit, too. Then we've got a stable base to start the rapid evolution all over again.
The problem with evolving code is that the number of potential interactions rises with the factorial of the number of blocks of code. This means that, beyond a certain point, it's impossible to maintain. By "resetting" the code to a stable state, you can get round that problem to some degree. You still can't increase complexity forever, but you can raise the upper limit.
The problem with a purely designed piece of software is that it's very hard to change the design midway. This means that it's great for producing static results, or a stable starting point, but it is useless for dynamically updating the code.
Finally, OSDL doesn't have the money or the manpower to do a rewrite of the Linux kernel. Do you realise how large the kernel is, these days? Linux 2.6.11-pre1-mm1 is 22,892,878 lines long. Every block of code in that would need to be cross-referenced with every patented algorithm, to be sure Linux was IP-violation-free. I don't know how many patents there are for algorithms, software and "business methods", but it's probably in the hundreds of thousands, maybe the millions.
Let's say that there's an average of a thousand lines per block, and ten thousand business methods. Then you'd need to perform almost 229 million comparisons. By hand, as a computer can't compare two abstract concepts for similarity.
If OSDL employed 10% of the entire population of America, they could probably manage it within a year and keep in step with all the patches that are being submitted. If OSDL could afford to hire 10% of the entire population, they could afford to buy SCO. And IBM. And Microsoft. And every other damn computer software and/or hardware manufacturer in the US. At which point, why would they care about patents? They'd own them all.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
yet...
>>IP issues aside, it's > 10 years old, when code gets that old, it's due for a good overhaul, if nothing else. Why? Does code rust?
Cause I've just patented ALL "hello world" programs... let me se... 1.Patent trivial program 2.??? 3.Profit!
Where is that guy who'd die defending what I had to say when I need him?
I don't see why everything has to be patched.
What the hell is an"OSDL official"?
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
No, it rots.
Google for "code rot". It's a real phenomenon.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I wouldn't call 88 really unlucky :] It is often used my new nazis in their nicks; e.g. Velmont88, 88 -> HH, -> Heil Hitler.
Well. That's just a use. But it is to signify something secretly..... Or maybe it's just a bunch of guys born i 88' who tend to be very nazi :p
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
"Hola mundo"
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
I think this is the article you're referring to.
Mada mada dane.
On the other hand, I think the developement of HURD, lethargic though it may be is a good thing.
And the fact that 99% of the sw that I write will run on Linux or any BSD.
I like options.
Indeed, thank you!
Why does it NEED to run on anything other than x86? Sure, it's cool to run it on a Mac, but for practicality why not run OSX? It's tweaked for the platform
Your thinking is a bit flawed. Running on only one platform optimally is not a sign of good "tweaking". Running on as many platforms as possible _using the same codebase_ shows that your developers can code cleanly and architecture-independant. And of course this doesn't mean that the result is far from optimized.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
But a rewrite of the kernel doesn't mean that the old kernel will be junked. It could be forked and we all could have both kernels to run on. :) Maybe I'm just being naive though.
For what?
du
I've been looking for years for an app to do that. The functionality is in Konqueror, but only one directory at a time, through the 'Properties' dialog. I thought Konq accomplished it by recursively doing 'ls -l' and adding everything up, something I wasn't prepared to duplicate.
This keeps happening to me.
The last time was with 'screen'. Before that it was 'df'.
The pattern seems to be:
1) Need something done
2) Google furiously, scour sourceforge, (in desperation) man -K "$function"
3) Give up, do it the hard way or not at all
4) Months to years later, discover that a programmer scratched that itch back in 196?, the function was duplicated by the GNU project twenty years later, but retained its original, short, cryptic, UNIX name
5) do: locate, man $short_cryptic_UNIX_name, discover that it's been installed on this box since I installed Mandrake 8.1
6) kick self, vow to read more early UNIX history, get on with things
The "concept" may be 10 years old, but if you seriously think today's sources bear anything but the slightest semblance at say.... 0.01, then please pass around whatever it is you're smoking.
Heck... even the **printf functions have been rewritten, jeez. The VM has long been rewritten. Drivers drivers? Yup. Module support? Didn't exist in 0.01 days. I could go on for pages describing the sheer volume of changes - and I won't even mention the fact that Linux isn't tied to the IBM PC AT anymore. Please actually LOOK at the linux source code before spouting off. The stuff that is > 10 years old is minimal and/or completely insignificant. They don't increment version numbers for nothing.
Out of sheer curiousity, go grab some random binaries of off an SLS disk and try running then on your latest Linux install. Oh, you can't. Likely cause your kernel wasn't compiled ith supporting the obsolete a.out format, eh? You don't need to be an amature OS developer (I am) to figure out that you're wrong.
Really? Hmmm, my Linux/PPC install says otherwise. Nice troll. It doesn't take a MENSA genius to figure out that you a) never even looked at the linux kernel source code, b) have no clue how it works c) don't even know "which" PC specific cruft you're talking about (PC-specific, or x86-specific? These are different things)
Shouldn't this be modded "funny"?
-- thinkyhead software and media
Yes, but these are things like panic.c, which have proven themselves to do quite well without any modification. panic.c was last modified, in the main kernel branch, in 1993. There are many pieces of code like that which do not need updating in the kernel.
Azh nazg durbataluk, azh nazg gimbatul, Azh nazg thrakataluk agh burzum ishi krimpatul! This sig blocked by Slashdot.
I never had issues getting 2.0 running and working well on Alpha and Solaris machines. You suffer some for device support, in my case my video cards were worthless (that's an X issue more than Linux), and some of the SCSI cards I had were not supported, but the kernel was robust and served me just as well as it's Intel x86 counterpart.
The applications, on the other hand, were a different story. Most software out there isn't 64bit clean, and compatibility modes proved a little troublesome. Bootstrapping the systems also wasn't nearly as easy as loading on Intels...
As much as I support having a universal system that can be used on many architectures, Linux was designed for x86, hence its best performance will be on x86. If you need it, or want it, on other systems, you can, but don't expect the same level of performance. If, for example, Mac OS X (a good OS, IMO) were ported to x86, it would not run half as well as on Apple (until a lot of small bugs got worked out). Besides, except in the server market (not to discount its importance), there is very little other than x86. If you run PPC, there is a Unix-like OS with a pretty interface and a lot of ports from Linux, and if you need linux, it's there. And may I remind you that Linux is still the only desktop OS to have 64-bit support :)
I'd recommend simply buying/getting a Linux/Unix manual.
/etc/hosts, /etc/nsswitch.conf and commands like 'du'. A generic manual can contain lots of useful info about things like that.
Those can contain lots of useful stuff. A distro manual is probably a bad idea though, you'd want something that properly explains the administration of an Unix system in the generic way - with the command line.
Whatever the distro, some things remain constant, such as
So what are the current security problems with the NT Kernel?
Theres not really a lot that needs improving in that respect, there are undoubtedly many problems with Windows, but they mostly stem from high priveleged services being exploitable and the default configuration not taking full advantage of the security features that are present. These are issues of configuration and implementation rather than fundamental problems with the design.
"Taligent is still pure vapor. Maybe they'll be the last who jumps up on Openstep... "
Longhorn is based on Windows XP, which is based on Windows 2000, which is based on Windows NT, which is based off of OS/2. Microsoft's track record isn't the best, but I'd say you're full of it and too sure of your own opinion about Windows.
Several honest lawyers are trying to make a patent that does not infringe on any known computer program.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
what reason do I have to take PJ's word over O'Gara's?
Any literate person can read articles written by both of them, see which ones have references and are internally self-consistent, and pretty easily decide who is lying thru her teeth.
Anyone who considers O'Gara reasonable probably also thinks Fox is fair and balanced.
Infuriate left and right
http://www.travelocity.co.uk/ are using "hello world" as their ad slogan.
they are probably going to start suing programming books soon....
And may I remind you that Linux is still the only desktop OS to have 64-bit support :)
That's a hell of a reach. There are other OSes that people run happily on the desktop that have good 64 bit support. Linux is frankly a latecomer to 64 bits, when compared to what a lot of people were running on 64 bit boxes on their desktop as long as half a decade ago. SGI and Sun have made plenty of desktop-oriented hardware in that past that ran 64 bits.
Or maybe you only meant the low-budget 'crummy PeeCee desktop' market segment.
Anyways, it's weasel-words to make a 'desktop' distinction, since the Linux 'install base' withers away to a tiny minority of the hardware out there when only desktop-Linux is counted.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
what arch are you talking about? some patch sets don't do well on other archs... but I have gotten linux to work well on x86, amd64, ppc, and sparc...that's pretty damn good if you ask me (preemptive kernel sometimes will make things more unstable though)
Fair enough. My original thought was that linux originally was intended as a Unix that ran on 'cheap' PC hardware. If it works for embedded apps and other things, great, but I'm not sure I'm behind rewriting the whole kernel for embedded platforms, or IBM's big iron, Sun sparcs, etc...
If better optimization for different platforms is needed, maybe the code should be forked for these platforms, or maybe someone that needs it should start over from scratch.
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It's called VMWare
I've used vmware, but find it to be just a bit on the pricey side, and not a perfect solution. I've also run win4lin, and while it was pretty nice, it was dependent on a kernel patch, and IIRC was limited to win98...
To some extent, that's what happens--I'm nowhere nere an expert (but if I get it wrong, I'm sure an expert or 70 will show up to correct me) but there is platform-specific code in the source that only gets used when compiling for that platform. That means in most cases you can optimize for one platform without harming another. Keeping the base code platform-neutral as much as possible is more difficult, but long term benefits all platforms, even X86. And difficult is less of a problem with a popular open-source program.
OK, I wasn't saying old == bad. I was only saying grandparent's logic was flawed.
"We assume that the patches are equally likely to occur at any point in the code."
But your assumption is wrong, a part of the kernel that is actively being developed is more likely to have patches applied to it at frequent intervals.
A LRM assumption is more likely to be correct. That is code that was recently modified is most likely to be modified (because it is actively developed) while a Least Recently Modified part is less likely to be modified because it is stable code. Of course once in a while an LRM portion will get heavily modified because it needs modernising... but it should increase the half life of the kernel significantly.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
I agree fully... I read 2 of her three books and it scares me to think people actually listen to her...
I haven't lost my mind. It's backed up on disk somewhere.