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Kernel Changes Draw Concern
Saeed al-Sahaf writes "Is the Linux kernel becoming fat and unstable? Computer Associates seems to think so. Sam Greenblatt, a senior vice president at Computer Associates, said the kernel is 'getting fatter. We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel. We are interested in a more stable kernel.' There continues to be a huge debate over what technology to fold into the Linux kernel, and Andrew Morton, the current maintainer of the Linux 2.6 kernel, expands on these subjects in this article at eWeek."
Members of the open-source community are expressing concern over rapid feature changes in the Linux 2.6 kernel, which they say are too focused on the desktop and could make the kernel too large.
"We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel. We are interested in a more stable kernel."
If you don't want it, don't compile it in. Thats the best part about having the kernel opened and so easy to manipulate. With the GUI available for modifying the kernel as well as a detailed set of instructions built right in, anyone can sit there and remove support for the latest gaming joystick if they so choose to. No one is making you keep it. If the kernel didn't have the option of supporting it, or if they discontinue the building of, then Linux will never be ready for the desktop. Just because Morton or Linus decides to add/accept support for the desktop community doesn't mean that the kernel won't be any more stable. Who is to say that adding gaming support took time away from stabilizing the kernel? If I'm strictly a game hardware designer and send my contribution to support the latest device does not mean that I could have spent my time improving the kernel. I may not be comfortable doing that. In other words, maybe I can't stabilize the kernel but I can write new drivers for it. And if I spend my time doing that it doesn't mean that I take time away from those improving and stabilizing the kernel.
The part that really caught me off guard is the inclusion of the Xen virtualization technology. Big changes are coming to the kernel that are really going to improve Linux and its functionality in the buisness and home world.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
A real step towards the desktop is for the average user to be able to build a sleek customized kernel, right?
Isn't that why you compile your own kernel?
FP?
Rick B.
Bullcrap. Who likes installing zillions of extra drivers when updating the kernel?!
And about "fatter": I don't get it. You will probably use ONE sound driver, ONE (or perhaps two) network drivers, etc. Just the fact that the *amount* of drivers is gettling bigger, does not mean the kernel "is getting fatter".
-- The Online Photo Editor - http://www.phixr.com
I can see why some people would have a problem with this, such as those that see Linux as a networking OS or for more of an embedded system. But if Linux folks ever want to see Linux as an OS for the masses, you have you cater to the average joe, and offer all of these features for games and video and the like, if it's ever to compete with the media abilities of Windows and Mac.
It is getting unstable, and rather large if people need the stuff, make them get it themselves
Show this to your friends and family that don't know what a real hacker is
That lets you not have ISDN, USB Dildo, and/or Ham radio support.
I think it's laughable that Computer Associates talking about other people's bloated software.
Drivers that are not compiled are not taking any additional space. Drivers that are not used all the time can be compiled as modules...
So I guess I do not understand the criticism here.
On the enterprise front, Morton said he expects to merge code from Cambridge University's Computer Laboratories' Xen virtualization technology into the Linux kernel within the next few months. Xen "does the right thing technically," unlike other technologies, which are mainly workarounds for the fact that the operating system is not appropriately licensed, Morton said.
Huh????
--fatboy
We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel.
That's cool.
Conversely, we are not interested in what interests whiny bloviating assholes who go on record to offer unsolicited unconstructive criticism.
"We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel."
..we want text, orange, perhaps green on a black background. We want large buzzing metal boxes that only we are allowed access to. We want to store our data on large spinning reels of magnetic tape, or better yet punch cards.
also we want a sandwich.
That is all.
Starsucks
The problem, I think, is that developers tend to be people who love computers. And people who love computers tend to have nice rigs, just as people who enjoy cars tend to spend a disproportionatly large amount of their income on cars (ever see the parking lot at a lan party--complete with people pulling multi-thousand dollar machines out of the hatch of a Hyundai?).
Perhaps Linux needs more developers from third world nations; the kid from a rural village with intermitant electricity getting his hands on an old, but useful machine and learning that he, too, can tell it to do all sorts of things!
An effective signature identifies a particular user amongst a base of thousands.
I worked for a UNIX computer mfg in the late 80's. Even then there were arguments about kernel-bloat.
What would be cool is if the linux distros had default kernel options, much the way some of the majors have Workstation, Server, etc... that would adjust the kernel based on how the machine was being used.
Yes, I know one can reconfigure the kernel by one's self, but it then requires personal care and feeding for patches, upgrades, etc... It becomes one more thing one has to do. Personally, unless I really need it, I'm not goign to bother... too much of a PITA
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I have never heard of there being a problem with too many music drivers in the Linux kernel....Or any music drivers in the Linux kernel....In fact, I have never heard of music drivers at all
We're all entitled to our opinions. While CA isn't interested in more drivers or game support, other users are. Conversely, things CA will want are less important to other users.
I myself would like better multimedia drivers, good solid and easy to install and configure drivers for my PVR-250 and pcHDTV tuner cards in my MythTV box. CA may not give a darn about those at all, but this is my primary Linux goal and getting my particular MythTV rig running is the only application I myself presently give a darn about in all of Linux land.
I myself do not give a darn about gaming support either right now. That may change in the future if I decide to expand on MythTV and turn the thing into a high-end game console as well. But for the moment I'm not interested, just as many gamers may not be particularly interested in TV tuner drivers.
Though keeping stability and efficiency as primary goalsagreeably is a good idea. But I think high-quality (ie. NOT alpha or beta) drivers for more hardware should also be important.
Let's see what Alan Cox had to say about the 2.6 Kernel Development cycle.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/1/3/216 After 2.6.9-ac its clear that the long 2.6.9 process worked very badly. While 2.6.10 is looking much better its long period meant the allegedly "official" base kernel was a complete pile of insecure donkey turd for months. That doesn't hurt most vendor users but it does hurt those trying to do stuff on the base kernels very badly.
Alan
Thankfully, there are better alternatives to the insecure donkey turd that is Linux.
IIRC, this is exactly the decision that improved the performance of, but decreased the stability of Windows NT 3.51; when they added video drivers to the kernel and released NT 4.0.
On the other hand I was screwed so badly by CA that my automatic reation to anything they say or do is to discount it as coming from that Den of Thieves and Liars.
Too lazy to create a sig...
What the heck is up with CA? At the same time they praise Linux, they seem to turn around and bash it. If they have an agenda it's not clear. Criticism like this doesn't smell right, especially after the flack they gave Linux in Australia. Something's fishy but I can't seem to see what it is.
Leave the gun, take the cannoli -- Clemenza, The Godfather
This doesn't handle the problem of needing to rebuild the kernel to include some "drivers" but what it does do is make clear the fact that there are some _real_ problems with the kernel that need to be fixed (ie: those "features" that require a rebuild of the kernel to support additional drivers) and unconfuses the issue of distributions vs kernel design.
Seastead this.
CA have contributed so much to the Linux kernel, so they know what they're talking about. NOT.
What is CA's motive in saying this ? They have no real experience in developing operating systems, nor are they producing data and a testing methodology to backup their opinion.
It seems to me they might be talking through their hat.
The Internet's nature is peer to peer - 20050301_cs_profs.pdf
What the fuck are music and game drivers?
I hope I don't get a troll rating on this, but I think that as any kernel grows, it becomes exponentially more difficult to project all of the possible interactions between components. Some of the ones that get missed or go untested simply because they weren't foreseen cause problems. Any kernal is going to become more unweildy as it grows. Especially when it starts to encompass so many diverse tasks and support multitude of dedicated roles. I think to attribute problems such as this article talks about as specific to Linux is biased.
So then don't build them you insensitive clod. Why do people seem to then that the kernel is ONLY for them and their market. Just because there is a driver doesn't mean it needs to bloat your kernel. With simple config options you can build a very small tight kernel.
If anything the extra junk benefits them because the folks developing those drivers are likely to find bugs in the kernel proper.
As hardware becames faster and more advanced, software developers become lazier and less efficient. If this continues, we could end up with something like Windows, which comes out of the package with hundreds of useless utilities and programs, that the standard user could possibly have no use for.
as linux grows more popular, distributing source code for absolutely every driver for and varient of the linux kernel in one allmighty tar makes less and less sense. Who could have possibly guessed the wild notion of inf != fin?
So, keep the current menuconfig (it's wonderful), but instead of distributing absolutely everything in one packages, have it download what additional things it needs based on if people ask for them.
You know, I dont need the drivers for the in-house printer IBM used in 1927 either, why not complain about that(*such) being included?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
There've been concerns about kernel bloat since the 1.3 kernel. I recall there was quite a ruckus when the compressed kernel tarball went over 10mb. But yanno it's gotten more robust and added support for a lot of modern features (Especially in networking) that I really do appreciate having the choice of compiling in. And I'd be surprised if the source was anywhere near the size of the commercial UNIX kernels much less Windows or one of the mainframe OSes. The build system seems to be pretty well capable of containing the bloat as well.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I suspect that all long-lasting, end-user OSes tend toward bloatware. Macintosh went through this with OS 7 through 9. Windows appears to be doing this as it progresses to Longhorn. It's just the natural evolution of software to accumulate cruft on the basis of yet another nifty feature that must be added into the bowels of the OS until the development effort becomes so constipated that the next version never appears or is so complication/unstable that people abandon it.
The trick, for Linux, will be to do what Apple did in moving to OS X -- create a new, "from-scratch" (yes, I know Apple borrowed a lot from others), OS with some form of compatibility-creating layer or old-kernal box. Incrementalism only takes an OS so far before revolution is needed to build a new, better system from the ground up.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
One of my friends is fanatical about drivers being compiled in rather than existing as modules. I think it has something to do with security.
Is that the core of the argument? Is it really that important?
My impression is that it is easier to install a system using modules. Is that correct?
...but it could be that it only has 8MB of memory... ...and it's a Pentium 100...
but it ran v2.0 and v2.2 kernels just fine!!!
If you do not want anything do not compile it. simple
http://openwrt.org/
http://www.uclinux.org/
http://www.lynuxworks.com/
http://www.windriver.com/
[root@boblap ~]# uname -a
Linux boblap.atl.org 2.6.11.7monkey-brain-soup #1 Fri Apr 8 02:18:40 EDT 2005 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
Windows has it's "swap file" set up inside the partition.
To install Linux, one has to check out the hardware, or at least experiment with some of it, try out a few sound cards, graphics cards, etc. to see how your chosen linux distro works (or doesn't) with the hardware. You might want to set up a swap partition, not too easy on a PC already preloaded with XP.
So, the kernel has to keep pace with the expectations, and the competition, that already has a pre-engineered edge.
What about one of those boxes that has a bunch of memory card readers on the front?
Will your distro work with those, or will you do like I might, and take that out, and replace it with a cdrom drive? Do we cut back the features we have on the new PC's being offered for sale so Linux can be run or installed on them?
If the kernel is getting unstable because of all of the added features, then that is what we will have to do.
Is it too much to ask the manufacturers to install a sound card that works with Linux as well as Windows?
Rapidweather's Linux Screenshots.
I don't know what to think about this. On one hand, I used to brag about how Linux never ever crashed on me (not ONCE), despite my heavily tinkering with it. This was, I think, way back in the 2.0 days. Ever since, with a few generations of kernels, I had to eat those words far too often.
I really miss the days when I could run on a P166 with 32 MB of RAM, and KDE ran not too badly (as long as you don't try to open Netscape or StarOffice). I don't think this kind of performance is attainable at all anymore.
But on the other hand, I'd be loth to run a kernel that didn't at least support USB! I love having ALSA instead of the old mishmash of sound drivers. Ext3 was a relief. I must say that for me at least ip[tables|filter|chains] was confusing, but I trust that the best choices were made... Going back to a kernel that didn't have those features would be simply unnaceptable.
Has the kernel reached a level of complexity where the ol'time stability isn't likely to happen anymore? We just need to react with patches, just like the other OSs out there?
SYS 64738 NO CARRIER
Al these comments show, is that CA have no idea how the Linux kernel module system works. If they think they have to compile in all 10,000 odd modules whether they are used or not, then yes, their version of the kernel would be bloated.
Oh well, what the hell...
A lot of kernel functionality could be moved outside the kernel if the intrakernel communication was regularised into some mechanism (messages, for example) that could be efficiently marshalled and moved through a user-kernel boundary.
Obviously you can't do this for everything, but you could simplify the kernel significantly if instead of separate interfaces for every kind of object a single regular interface could be used at least as a starting point. The Amiga did this, and the result was a system of rare simplicity that made quite complex components easy to implement. Matt Dillon, a long-time Amiga hacker, is working on turning the BSD kernel inside out in this way. There's no reason Linux couldn't be cleaned up and pared down the same way.
I bet the same people bitching about not needing "game or music" drivers are the same people who wonder why linux cannot fully displace windows.
sheesh. as many others have said already - if you dont want/need the driver - don't compile it.
saying "just don't compile the options you don't want."
Problem is, that doesn't affect the main problem, which is that 3 million lines of options code is a LOT harder to keep bug free among all the different combinations than 1 million loc.
All bugs may be shallow given enough eyeballs, but the difficulty of debugging the linux codebase may well be increasing faster than the number of eyeballs.
"We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel."
Damn. I guess they are not interested in my little linux-on-arcade project :
I don't really think this is an issue right now, but if it does become one, why not have two different kernel trees? One for desktop usage, and one for server usage. I don't see that this would really cause any problems -- 2.4 and 2.6 are still maintained. I think even 2.2 is maintained.
At the risk of getting flamebait or troll, I'll speak my mind anyway.
.config, you can unbloat YOUR products.
How about trying out this GREAT utility called "menuconfig"...then you can unbloat your kernel. In the time it saves you from manually editing your
USB Dildo [...]
What the fuck kind of computer do you have?
Sam Greenblatt, a senior vice president at Computer Associates, said the kernel is 'getting fatter.
...and the kernel has continued to bloat since then.
Are we going too fast?
Blame it on Microsoft... or SCO or Sun hahahah ... or IBM!!!
oh wait no.... forget the last one.
We all know that infrastructure, of any kind, was magik'd into being, particularly in the Divine States of America.
Only slightly more seriously, why would anyone expect CA to be any different from any other company? The infrastructer they use is a God given right, and it just magically appeares there. Just like markets.*
*Yes, yes there are exceptions. And they prove the rule by their exceptional nature.
Part of the beauty of free software is that, if you have the capacity, you can modify it to your needs. So my first responce would be, if you don't need a feature don't compile it into your kernel. Some however, who don't have the capacity to modify thier kernel, might benifit is distributions included multiple kernels, say one optimized for a server, desktop, or laptop. I think that this is an issue for distributions (Redhat, Suse, and friends) and not the kernel team.
The way to a man's heart is through the left ventricle
How embarrassing for CA.
;P. The last thing I'd want is to NOT have to go scouring the net for some obscure driver.
;)
Yeah, I personally find increased driver support a real problem
If he wants an OS for which you can't optimise the kernel in anyway try microsoft.com. I hear there are a couple there.
Moving more functionality outside the kernel by fixing the kernel's architecture is what I was talking about in Distributions vs Kernel Design. I just think the pedagogy here is to get people to see apt-get as a way of off-loading the kernel. This exposes the kernel's architectural problems to people who otherwise won't understand the real issues. If you can't install it with apt-get and have it running -- then you either need to create a apt package or you need to fix the kernel architecture.
Seastead this.
And so begins the great Kernel reform where Linux will fall taking Captian Open Soure down with it, or will this lead to the great change in the Kernel making it greater than ever and killing the Evil empire (*Microsoft*)? A very Delicate Subject
A USB 2.0 compliant one. Duh.
It's only an insult if it's not true.
Because it may encourage people to just go to a commercial alternative. If you tell a company "We don't care about feature X, if you want feature X, hire a dev and code it yourself," they may do an analysis on it and determine you know what? It would cost us $50,000 to have a contractor develop this whereas we could buy a commercial solution that does what we want for $10,000.
This is espically true for companies who's core bussiness isn't IT or engineering or the like. If a company just uses computers as a means to an end and they don't really have a tech staff, it can be expensive, difficult and risky to contract someone to do the development they need. Better to just get a commercial solution.
I'm not saying this means OSS devs need to jump up and meet every request from every person that whines, that's clearly impossible. However I find that the OSS community in general is way to fast to say "It's open, if you want the feature, write it yourself!" Rather the merit of the request should be weighed, it may be worth your while to work on. If it's not, then you should give reasoning as to why not, and not just say "Do it yourself."
> I think that they're being selfish and unreasonable
They're a for-profit company, after all.
If they have to spend extra time just to take out the bloat and re-QA - well, it's just gonna cost more to use Linux.
And it's not like you can "roll your own" - you change the kernel, you have to re-certify or else you're running an unsupported config, son.
That's the case at least as far as enterprise distros and ISVs are concerned.
It's all great but I just don't see how Gentoo, without h/w and s/w certifications, can replace enterprise distros and help solve this problem.
Shit! They included the USB Dildo? Finally!
*Runs to the nearest ftp mirror*
Linux on the other hand has a sound design (no design is ideal).
Further if you think Linux sucks because [chose your reason] there is most likely already an OS project running to address your issue.
In short MacOS needed a restart worse then windows 3.1, Linux does not.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
The more code in the kernel source tree, the harder it is to test. The more code linked into any single kernel, the less reliable. Hooks in the kernel that can't be ifdef'd out for drivers you don't have linked (or loaded) in serve only to provide opportunities for the kernel to crash.
Have all you people who are dismissing this guys comments personally reviewed the kernel to make sure it matches your biased view of what the theory is?
"This mission is too important to allow you to jeopardize it." -- HAL
I used Linux 2.4.x with SMP machines under heavy loads and never experienced problems. And added drivers do not count as "bloat", but as hardware support.
The size of the kernel itself has hardly changed. The complexity (NUMA, no big SMP locks, etc.) although has gone up quite a bit. Bugs in drivers do not reflect the code-quality of the kernel itself.
As to 2.6 development strategy: I can't really say anything. There seem to be no bugs that have an effect on my hardware configuration. Perhaps someday.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
Yeah. If you really wanna have some fun, do a "cat /dev/urandom > /dev/dildo" for hours of fun!
Greenblatt's not alone in this. There are PLENTY of people with over-inflated images of themselves pontificating on this very subject. Many have gone so far as to suggest we actually care. I know I first got wind of this from George, the groundskeeper. I know, at least on the U.S. side, it spread from there. Who knows the ramifications? Someone might actually give $hit, if we're not careful.
Isn't it funny how when "Enterprise" Linux users (read corporate) have to hire people to handle all the changes it is that the "Kernel Changes Draw Concern from the Open Source Community"
:)
Sounds to me like the Open Source Community is REALLY HAPPY to have faster desktops, better gaming machines.
I think it's a case of sour grapes. They've got to spend money so complain, and by the way, make it sound legitimate by saying it's the Open Source Community.
I for one, welcome our BIG FAT KERNEL!
The size of 2.6 isn't the problem - the crazy policy of not having a development branch and throwing everything at 2.6, on the other hand, is.
They don't like Xen technology; it competes with CA's programs. Or at least, that's what I'm reading into this.
If the kernel supported boot loadable drivers, then we might not need to compile those drivers into the kernel in the first place...
Linux drivers can be, and normally are, modules. Just don't ship the modules you don't want to support, there is no need to re-certify anything.
This is such clap trap. The windows kernel has tons of hooks for video cards, and the same ilk. This guy is just a retarded tool. Seriously, how is this any different from Windows? Oh wait, I forgot Computer Associates is just trying to suck up to their clients... who run... Windows!
Yes but the K6-2 @ 300 MHz will still outperform the Celeron @ 500 MHz thanks to the latter's almost non-existent L1/L2 cache...
http://www.polarfox.com/vms/txt/vmsfaq.txt
Chapter 2.6
We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel.
He might or might not have a point but things like music and game drivers do not make a good example of kernel bloat. It's not like it hurts that those drivers exist in the kenrel. Such drivers are usually shipped as loadable kernel modules. If you don't need them, they won't be loaded. They're only using up your disk space (which shouldn't be a concern these days)
As pointed out by the parent poster, NetBSD-current includes support for running as both dom0 (host) and domU (guest) under Xen 2.0. This support will therefore be in NetBSD 3.0.
Sorry for this oversight.
To clarify support in the present release: NetBSD 2.0 includes support for running as dom0 and as domU on Xen 1.2. The Xen tree includes a patch to run NetBSD 2.0 as a domU (guest) on Xen 2.0.
NetBSD was the second OS to be ported to Xen, after the Linux 2.4 port done in Cambridge.
Otherwise they'd never have complained about this.
I'd say the Linux kernel suffers from the similar problem faced by Debian: the more packages and drivers you glom to the core, the harder it is to manage the core or important parts. Releases would also be hampered by QA on every driver/package you have.
Difference is that Linux has Linus, who's willing to release a kernel, drivers stability be damned (see Kernel 2.4?)
Would be cool if Linux goes to a model like Ubuntu: core, universe and metaverse; signifying different levels of stablity and supportiblity.
its covered by HID of course
My solaris boxes rolled over on their uptime at 490 days or whatever the number is.
Can be safely ignored as it is likely a lie. Please note this quote from an article at Red Herring:
Last April, CA restated $2.2 billion in sales that it had improperly reported. Chairman and CEO Sanjay Kumar stepped down, and three CA executives pleaded guilty to fraud. In September, Mr. Kumar was indicted for securities fraud, conspiracy, and obstruction of justice in connection with accounting practices while he was CEO of CA. The company has also footed a $225-million restitution fund for shareholders.
This extraordinary mendacity and outright fraud when coupled with a long history of predatory business practices that would make Bill Gates blush means I will totally ignore anything anyone associated with CA ever says, never buy their products, point out thier failings to anyone who will listen and advise others to do the same.
Apart for the tirade of posts about "it works great as a server.. Don't use Gnome/KDE/"
The poster has a valid point. Windows/Macos ran guis at a decent speed on hardware down to 200 mhz pentiums. Linux, especially desktop linux is getting bloated. There seem to be very very few "lite" desktop linuxes.
I have a old notebook with a fantastic screen I wanted to make a picture frame out of. Unfortunetly its a 150mhz maxed out with 24 megs of ram. I couldn't find a linux that could work with it. Back to Windows 95 it shipped with.
Much of the "fat" is not built into most systems. There are, for instance, approx 30 different file systems to serve different needs. You won't be building all those into a desktop. Nor will you be compiling the ARM and PowerPC stuff into an x86 build.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have a somewhat modern machine, a p4 1.6 gf4ti 4200, but only 128 megs of ram.
One game i love to play in linux is enemy territory. I just get by with 128 megs of ram but it works. In 2.4 maps take about 30-45 secs to load. Most servers won't kick me with these load times so I can play as much as I want.
On 2.6 however, the first map loads about as fast as 2.4 or maybe a couple of seconds faster. But every map thereafter gets longer and longer in loading times. I'm talking from 40 secs to eventually 200 seconds and then I get dropped from the server.
I've tried various versions of 2.6. Tried some of the mm patches. Yes I made sure X had a nice value of 0. I filed a bug http://bugme.osdl.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2191 and had exchanges with andrew morton but in the end it didn't get resolved so back to 2.4.
I wanted to go to 2.6 cause everything else seems much smoother.
Has anyone else found that 2.6 has worse swap/load issues when ram is at a minimum? Any workaround?
That's basically the point.
;-)
A WinXP port to Xen was prepared in Cambridge but is unreleasable due to its intrusive changes to the source code (which was available to the University under the MS Academic Source license).
There are potential ways to hack around this but the current plan is to wait for Intel Vanderpool / AMD Pacifica machines to become available. The hard-to-modify bits of Windows (like the memory management) will see a fully virtualised MMU, etc. Paravirtualised device drivers can still be installed to maximise IO performance.
In the meantime, there's also a port of ReactOS in the pipeline (http://www.reactos.com/wiki/index.php/Xen_port) - seems to be making good progress, although it'll be a while yet before you can run applications on it
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 808295 Mar 24 2004
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1458226 Mar 28 15:19
I suppose it is a little bigger. I did compile scsi support into the second one for a usb keydrive though.
:wq
It's just too bad they don't have the source code. If they only had licensed source, CA could modify it to be whatever best suited their needs. Oh well. Maybe some day, someone will come up with an idea like that and put it into action. Heh, I'm such an idealistic bastard...
Try this:
If it asks you any questions, those are new features that you weren't using before so just answer "N". when it's done, proceed to build your kernel, and it will be no more bloated than it was before.Just like most linux users.
What ever happens to open source QNX ?
did QNX ever provide source code to their OS?
Yes, and the typical help text is going to be changed to..
"If you don't know who CA is, you can safely ignore them"
What exactly are game and music drivers?
like, maybe for instance sound and video drivers?
Isn't calling these game and music drivers a bit misleading, and a bit discrediting at that? It's not like those things don't have their own group of developers taking care of them. It's not as if the alsa guys are stealing kernel developers away from their precious stable-code-writing-tasks, or anything.
As for video drivers...well if you're any bit of a serious gamer on linux and using one of the latest cards this most likely means you're using the ATI or nvidia closed source drivers, which again is not exactly relevant to any work that the lead kernel developers are probably doing...
It seems like this guy is completely clueless and is just making a big fuss over nothing. Or maybe they're just bitter that their favorite feature didn't get into the kernel but a new sound driver did? Hrmm...
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
This brings a thought to my mind about cost in terms of time and effort. Maybe if one has to spend all this time and effort maybe it's not really free or have a true low TCO.
Just my 5 bytes...
"It's not rocket science, Smithers! It's only brain surgery!" --Mr. Burns
"We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel."
Then disable them, spoogelips. Don't let them compile in.
Is this rocket science?
"Members of the open-source community are expressing concern over rapid feature changes in the Linux 2.6 kernel..." So why isn't there a 2.7 branch for "new" features? How is 2.6 stable while new features are being rolled in?
We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel. We are interested in a more stable kernel.'
No offense, but he sounds pretty clueless here - not to mention the fact that there is no "game driver" or "music driver", perhaps he is referring to device drivers and/or low-latency features, which allow for a better gaming/multimedia experience...
In any case, he completely misses the point that the kernel, as shipped by the distros, is modular. That means, if a device isn't present, or isn't used, the driver for that device never gets loaded into memory. So it doesn't really matter how many devices are supported, the only device drivers affecting the size of the kernel are the ones loaded into memory on the machine in question.
I find Greenblat's attitude ridiculous, since he seems to be saying that the kernel developers need to focus on what Sanm Greenblat is interested in, and to hell with people who want to do cool and interesting things with linux, which aren't part of CA's business plan.
I could go on, but that's enough for a first impression.
This guy is the architypal PHB, he is clue-less, and, yes if CA wants to have a profile, in the world today, they will have to hire a viable group of good kernel hackers.
The days when you could coach, from the sidelines, are long gone.
You want your adgenda, pay for it.
It's a classic old-school 1970s-era all-inclusive bloated Unix macro-kernel design. Too bad for you.
Maintain your own kernel to leave out the parts you don't like, or use another OS.
Or you could always wait for Hurd.
I think people are missing the real issue in their anger over someone criticising the Holy of Holies. In case you missed it, the issue is that Linux is getting fat and bloated.
linux-2.6.11 is forty four megabytes. Gzipped up. I don't want to waste my bandwidth downloading it to see what it is unzipped, but trust me, it's massive. Where does all this bloat come from? Drivers. Drivers are good, but the current kernel paradigm (and Linux isn't alone in this) is that every driver has to be included with the kernel. So we end up with huge packages and huger repositories where everything is required to reside.
Imagine the size of Linux when we finally get to the goal of having every past and current device with a dedicated driver in the source tree. You're talking possibly ten gigabytes uncompressed. Even if you're not using 99.9% of those drivers, they're still there. The day may come when you can actually build the kernel faster than you can make its dependencies.
Could you imagine a KDE or GNOME where every core, addon, auxiliary and experimental component was all part of one single tarball? Even if you only wanted GTK+ and GIMP, you still have to download and configure the entirety of the GNOME repository to get it. That's what it's like with the Linux kernel.
It's time non-core drivers got split off from the main Linux project. If you don't need to add anything into the kernel to get driver to work, then put it in the driver subproject and don't bug the big guys with this penny ante crap.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
It's amazing to me how much some people THINK they know and how much they REALLY know. Imagine, one of the biggest problems with Linux is finding drivers and one of the more appealing things of Windows is the availablity of drivers. I have long had issues with consultants I have met and the BS Buzz word bingo jargon they blur out. But I know, THEY ARE NOT ALONE in the world =) Okay, I'm off to buy some CA Stock! With a BS artist like that.. I'm going to be RICH! RedNeckCanUck
You mean to say I don't have to have support for L120 and ATM devices on my desktop or web server!???
Just kidding.
Those $.02 of yours are worth more like 2 bucks.
why not use "paging" to "page out" the unused parts of the monolithic kernel... man
The fastest way to kill a good product is to let CA buy it.
i use udev no problems. . try gentoo 2005.0 its great. there have got to be plenty of other distributions with udev support by now too.
I'll just go and develop my own kernel with blackjack and hookers. on second thought forget the kernel...
Its an Idea which has been mentioned in the past and its time it got serious consideration.
Power Corrupts,Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely, leaving one person(group)in charge is absolutely corrupt.
Hurd fanatics' usual argument against Linux.
Though Linus calls Linux modular, it isn't actually modular because at run time the kernel runs as one big program( it is called modular because of the modules aspect of Linux). The disadvantage of this being, as the kernel gets bigger it is going to be more difficult to maintain it. On the other hand, the microkernel as such is small. The modules are in user space, and are separate programs, which helps in maintaining them.
Look ahead 5 years and see how Linux kernel would be experiencing more bloat and Hurd getting better each time
- srid
The linux-tiny patchset is your friend here. Using it, I've gotten a relatively full-featured kernel booting on x86 weighing in at under 800K... and that's without doing any agressive trimming, and without module support. According to his OLS 2004 presentation, Mackall has achieved a linux 2.6 kernel weighing in at a mere 363K, and others have reportedly managed a kernel as small as 191K.
Some of the linux-tiny ideas have been making their way into the mainline kernel, so this isn't just a special-purpose patchset - it's really a proving ground for kernel size minimization techniques.
"Great men are not always wise: neither do the aged understand judgement." Job 32:9
Why not just branch off the kernel into two major projects? I know this would probably be time consuming and would require a ton of work, but I think it might just be a great idea. They could continue work on the standard kernel, keeping it stable and flexible... since that is what made Linux so mainsteam (as it is of now). And with the second kernel, they could improve that, since it will be based on the first kernel, and work on that to compete with Apple's Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. I know it's a long shot, but companies like Novell are already on top of things like this... but mainly just distro-wise. But if they would just focus on a seperate kernel for this, I think they would be a lot better off... and they could leave a lot out of the first kernel, making it more stable than ever (no games, audio, etc.)
I know it's probably a nerd's dream (just as combining the Xbox, GameCube, and PS2 is) but hell, it's worth a shot nonetheless.
"Instant gratification takes too long." - Carrie Fisher
It sounds like a market to me, compiling kernels that only do what the customer wants to use them to do, I was under the impression that's why you have an IT staff, but what do I know? Apparently CA only wants to use default distro kernels, or doesn't know how easily a kernel compiles. Of course, he may be criticizing the fact that gamer types and other non-enterprise programmers write what *they want*, instead of what *he wants*, that's easy, put a couple of those guys on the payroll, or was free beer the only reason CA got on board? Am I wrong or are they CA the ones that bought the Linux license from SCOX? So many questions.
I am happy with the kernel, and however is monkey enough to compile everything IN and than complain about it being big well uhm
uhm indeed.
Is this the same Computer Associates that was caught up in the whole SCO Linux license thing?
I'm not saying that he doesn't have a point, but what I am suggesting is that he might not have the Linux community's best interest in mind...
ESR has been labelled a retard for a long time, because he constantly acts like a retard. It has nothing to do with criticism, and everything to do with being a loud mouthed blowhard who is constantly working his hardest to make the entire open source community look like idiots by claiming himself to be some sort of self appointed representative.
if your kernel is so big, perhaps you should .. recompile it. The distro's and even kernel defaults tend to support a lot more than most people need, thus its going to be bigger. I never really understood this argument- I mean of course as development chugs on core functions are gonna change and as a result most likely get bigger- but seriously if your server has 'the latest game drivers' then you are not doing your job correctly.
I never understood this out-of-the-box obsession, i mean seriously what type of admin puts an os into production 'out-of-the-box'?
The only part that really bothers me about this, and I say this as someone who has built a career off of programming under the unices, especially Linux- what bothers me about this is that its not the tech-heads that read this and go 'whoa we better find a better solution', its the management- and as a result I have to deal with what some guy who is a journalist and quite probably not really that qualified to talk on the subject has to say, but now its coming from my boss.
What you think is "loading" is actually matching. The NT kernel is asking each driver to see if it needs to load on the system. If a driver does not match, it is not loaded into memory.
These are the same prigs slash and burned countless buyouts--last big one was Platinum.
Having the displeasure of the merger experience with Platinum and the morons who slashed whole teams without investigating their wealth of technical expertise should shed some light on the lack of forsight and vision necessary to develop a kernel that meets the needs of the Consumer and Enterprise.
Just my two cents.
If CA/whoever don't like the kernel direction, they should hire some kernel hackers of their own, pay someone to finish the HURD (or, god forbid, switch to *BSD) or else *shut up*. Unlike Windows, no one's forcing them to use Linux.
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Didn't the Linux community bash Microsoft thoroughly when Microsoft decided to fold the graphics systems into the Kernal in Windows 2000? In Windows NT 4.0, the graphics and audio systems sat above the low level microkernal, which could be extremely stable. Not so in Windows 2000. Microsoft did it for performance reasons and also availability reasons. NT 4.0 could not run DirectX above 2.0, but Windows 2000 could. But when Microsoft took that everything in the kernal plunge, the Linux community just unleashed both barrels.
Now Linux is taking the same plunge, one has to ask if previous Linux protests were so much protesting about nothing, and if today's Linux moves are a tacit admission that this "superior" operating system is actually far behind Windows in some ways.
This is my sig.
I think everyone mistook this. They are not saying video drivers mean nothing, they are just saying that more focus should be payed to the core parts of the kernel. They are saying that more focus needs to be on stabillity and speed, not that no one should develop drivers for video, sound, etc.
If linux becomes a kernel with a bunch of media/video added, and less attention to the main parts, it will suck. Without the media/video, it will suck. We need both parts.
Great, now I have to go grep my kernel tree for 'dildo' just to see if there really is a kernel driver for a USB Dildo. Thanks.
"You never know when some crazed rodent with cold feet might be running loose in your pants."
-Calvin
In 2000, the linux community was four guys who only use command-line apps. The linux community now isn't at all the same.
Yeah, I agree that the quality of the kernel is going downhill... Know about the ipconntrack bug on kernel 2.6.10 ? When an outgoing session goes into connect timeout, it's not flushed from ipconntrack and pollutes the table for 2 days ( default setting ). This bug applies on all subversion of 2.6.10 and has been corrected on 2.6.11. It's been a major pain to upgarde kernels via SSH and reboot blindfolded and finger crossed all our external client machines....
-- Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world; it's the only thing that ever has.
They were in that event with Sun. Sun is trying to ramp up Solaris and put down Linux. It was a business event, but labelled as an educational one.
So, what it was was the people of Sun Microsof^H^Hystems squirming in the imminent death of their business based on over-expensive hardware and the emergence of Linux.
Takes me about half an hour to go through config and that's someone who knows what most options are... and what hardware I have.
Obviously you have to do things properly by hand, but this is taking longer and longer.
Start by coping over your old config, that will help.
But never-the-less, every new option has to be looked at, considered and then selcted or deselected. Sometimes it can be a hard decision; you might have a parrallel port but will you actually use it? "hmm, well I suppose a friend might just bring round a 486 laptop with a laplink cable.."
A blog I run for the wealth
Nobody is under any illusion that their impish protests would keep DirectX out of the XP kernel. OTOH it's perfectly understandable that many administrators of "standard" Linux distros want to keep features to a minimum. That's the path which leads to stability and security...
No sig today...
Somebody remind me how many lines of kernel code this guy is responsible for?
Must ... check ... anonymous box ...
They want developers to concentrate on the core parts of the kernel instead of branching out to all these different areas, thus making linux very feature filled but rough around the edges.
Techie: "There ya go, now all we have to do is to compile a new kernel".
Sam: "Compile it? Why?"
Techie: "You know, to remove the bits that we don't need. To make it smaller, faster..."
Sam: "Couldn't we just have the developers stop development on the parts that we don't need?"
Techie: "Um, brilliant. I'm sure that it'll be no trouble at all..."
Who says that those drivers need to be built? Probably he never ever configured a single kernel in his live, never looked into one.
I think this braindead people would better be quiet. But sadly they are always in the positions to give off the most bullshit ever.
"Freiheit ist immer auch die Freiheit des Andersdenkenden" - Rosa Luxemburg, 1871 - 1919
Rebuilding external modules can be a pain - with svgalib I end up installing the whole thing again because there's no easy way to do the kernel module alone under 2.6. I wand reiser4 support as soon as possible. Most importantly though, can someone get Linus to stop breaking the perfectly good ide-scsi driver because he doesn't like it? Please.
I am trolling
but CEOs were caught doing fraud, conspiracy and obstruction of justice. Are they trying to obstruct the growth of open source? CA is aggregate company that doesn't really participate in general software innovation field. They buy it, or merge it in. And we know what mergers bring: synergy. Another for kill the bought company dead reusing its userbase and still useful product, or choke up and die.
p x?a=11693&hed =Computer+Associates+Shakeup§or=Profiles&subse ctor=Companies
relevant:
http://www.redherring.com/Article.as
Every boxed distro I've ever used since Linux started supporting modules, installs those as modules. They're only loaded if you actually have that hardware.
So if your friend's machine doesn't have Bluetooth or PCMCIA, rest assured that the drivers for it won't be loaded.
So the problem is...? That he/she/it has maybe 1 MB taken by those modules, in an age where the smallest HDD you can buy in a shop is something like 37 GB? (And even that if you get an old WD Raptor or a SCSI drive. For ATA/SATA the starting point is higher.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
My own practice, over many years has been to rebuild the kernel after an install or upgrade. By focusing only on the modules and drivers needed, one can build a much smaller kernel.
I'm actually glad there is support for a lot of hardware and making things work.
I'm more concerned about care being given to changes to the core functionality, like virtual memory, especially in the stable kernel that many of us run in production.
A lot more work needs to be done to make modules work with various kernel versions.
This way binary driver modules can be placed on company websites and then installed.
Sure, this is more microkernel like, but Microkernels are a lot more modern and easier to manage.
Advertising nowdays on the internet is getting harder and harder to capture peoples attention. But with a title of "Linux: Kernel Changes Draw Concern" who could resist to have a look at this article that threatens our beloved. After a quick glance at the summary I thought, "what crap, you can just select what components you need". But then my senses kicked in and I realized that Slashdot wouldn't post something on the main page that didn't have some meat to it. I mean, this isn't a newbie linux tutorial site. So I opened the link and watched the advertising load in my browser. CA never stuck me as a great source of information and eweek.com is usually posting horrible linux generalizations and fills itself with ads. But for an ad this article takes the cake. It says nothing but unfounded criticism from CA and some fairly level headed responses from the kernel team, and then follows on with some off topic article about Xen. I would go so far as to say that eweek.com has paid slashdot for the traffic. I mean, seriously how can such an article that has made an inflammatory statement but not backed it up with any real information actually be considered news rather than just FUD. Where can we find our idealistic news source that doesn't take part in paid news articles and other advertising. A disillusioned slashdotter.
Something I have been wishing for for a long time is a stable Kernel ABI and/or API, so that all those drivers could be seperated out into seperate downloads instead of just one sumo-download with everything. I really don't see much good in having everything stuffed into a single source tarball, it only causes to you to download a whole bunch of stuff you will never ever use and also leads to careless changes to the kernel internals, which constantly break stuff that is distributed outside the kernel. Beside from that a stable ABI/API would make it quite a bit easier for hardware vendors to actually supply drivers. Yes, there is a risk that those would be closed ones, but many are already today and I for one would prefer a closed source drivers which I could use with some random kernel version over one that only runs with some very specific kernel version of some very specific distribution or even worse, no driver at all.
The real problem behind all this is that CPUs don't support modules. If they did, then it would be possible for anyone to write a piece of software called 'a driver', and then users to load and unload it according to their preference.
One would say that Linux already has kernel modules that work fine. Yes, that is true, but why should the kernel be re-compiled at all? why isn't the module system the default mechanism for kernels? the reason is that it is still not 100% viable to use modules in every case. And the reason is that the hardware does not allow it: it is still better from a performance point of view to put everything in one big chunk of code.
How would true module support be possible in CPUs? true module support would be possible if CPUs used memory maps. Each page in memory would have its own memory map, its own view of the rest of the world. Then it would be possible to use flat address pointers, and each module would be truly safe, because it would only see the part of the computer that the O/S would allow to see.
Memory maps would add one more level of indirection for memory access, but I think modern hardware is so fast, that it would be dead easy to do it. The presence of memory maps would open the world of truly componentized software, and would make the distinction of kernel/user mode a thing of the past.
Is that some brand of water based lube?
I'm a big fan of F/OSS and having released code under GPL, Apache and boost-style licenses i'm aware different situations suit different policies. However there seems to be an economic consequence of the GPL here:
CA want enterprise features. People say "code them yourself" but they are a business, and suppose the cost of employing the programmers is not viable for them, as they cannot then sell their work on due to it being subject to the GPL. If there was an off the shelf solution they would be likely to purchase it, but for they same economic reason that CA themselves won't produce the product, neither will anyone else, so the product never exists. I do not see which party of the OSS community ever has the incentive to create this missing component?
While i'm not even sure if I agree with myself and i'm playing devil's avacado here it might be a concern - is this an indication that their _may_ be serious weakness in a GPL model in certain markets?
You are Andy Tanenbaum and I claim my five copies of Operating Systems: Design and Implementation. Having said that I agree, microkernel = sweet. Especially Pistachio.
Well, although I have not read TFA, just from the title and summary I think, if someone does not want the current Kernel they could always make a fork and start producing another sripped version, without all the "new things" available in the last ones.
I find interesting that there has not been a kernel fork in all these years, although I guess it is difficult to maintain a project like that, so that is why the big projects are not forked (OpenOffice, FireFox, Linux Kernel, mmm any other?).
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Let's say the kernel bloats by 5 megabytes.
At today's memory prices, that's about 75 cents US.
How long would it take me to trim out and reboot and test a smaller kernel? Oh, at least $10 of my time. Plus the hard to quantify costs and risks of changing the OS and rebooting during the workday.
By this argument kernel bloat, just the memory consumption aspect, shouldnt be a big cause for concern. As to the potential for less stability when there are unused modules in memory, I don't see how code that's never called can cause stability problems. Any surmises?
CA wants Linus and Andrew to spend all of their time working on "Enterprise" features and none of it on things like improving Linux's real-time performance and integrating drivers for non-server hardware. I think that they're being selfish and unreasonable...
It's a plain and simple fact that Linux kernel is really insecure. After you install any Linux with whatever Grsec configurations, if the server is running common web serving software and having several user accounts, I can make a bet that inside 6 months one or more critical security exploits have been found that can be used against your system.
I do agree that the underlying issue is a human issue one, but not solely. A huge part of the issue is that too many users still agree that Linux is secure enough for everyone. Because of this mass, developers aren't interested enough to make Linux kernel not blush when its security is compared to different BSD kernels.
CA's point seems valid to me: Gaming features of Linux kernel are pretty good, but security is lacking even when Grsec is applied with excellent settings. But the way FOSS community is reacting here is pretty odd. CA is being accused of being greedy or talking total BS. But the whole development of FOSS software lags behind when every Linux user from a teenage gamer or a corporate admin has to follow every day Linux kernel news and be ready to patch and reboot every Linux-running machine he runs. Many aren't willing to put up with this at all and stick to Windows to avoid the hassle.
Big companies and single users both shouldn't have to spend their time that way. Everyone deserves a free open souce operating system that you can rely on. That's the whole idea of GNU. Anyone who feels he hasn't done enough good to deserve a FOSOS, go ahead and donate to a project you appreciate. You can donate money, code, feedback or just spread the word.
Corporations are the new Soviet Union.
there is no reason why you can't run an old KDE on a new kernal
Computer Associates shows how little they understand Linux. So the kernel is fat because of the availability of drivers? So what do they do compile every single driver available into it? Boneheads. All I can say is if they think it's fat. Then they must think any version of Windows is one lean OS.
My karma is not a Chameleon.
You really don't understand, please do some research on kernel tainting, there is good reason the module system is the way it is.
http://www.tux.org/lkml/#s1-18
It really does not make any sense at all for anybody in a developer position to complain about the kernel being bloated when it can be pruned to suite their needs. If I were to take the article at face value it means Sam Greenblatt is a complete moro^H^H^H^H purist who thinks along the lines of 640K ought to be enough for everyone. I wouldn't like to think of him that way because if thats true the implications would be far ominous than I could imagine.
So I'm guessing the real agenda is hidden between the words. I have several possible lines that makes sense.
!! Warning !!
What follows are wild speculations.
Use your own judgement on this.
CA might be wanting to change how the kernel is distributed and about who is going to pay for it. In other words CA wants to pass on the buck onto Linus to produce a server branch and a desktop branch of the kernel, because they don't want to hire an extra worker to do the job. Hence their gripe.
Or
I got this idea from this quote from TFA.
For some unknown reason CA don't want to have Xen embedded into the kernel. Not because of the bloat. Remember the kernel can be pruned. Also its assumed in this case hiring an extra hand isn't a problem. Maybe Greenblatt has a friend working at VMware.
Or
This is a promotion for Xen meant to improve its awareness amongst the community. disguised as a a controversial statement.
I did a word count on the two portions of the article. First half of the article about bloated kernel and the second half of the article about Xen. The results are quite revealing.
$ wc -c first_half
1621
$ wc -c second_half
2030
OMG! more than half the article is about Xen!
Not that its a bad thing to promote Xen. I actually like it. Although I don't think a good software needs to do any kind of covert promotion to be particularly popular.
Anybody else have a better explanation that makes sense?
BTW my kernel is just over 2 Megs on Gentoo.
$ du -h kernel*
2.1M kernel-2.6.11-hardened-r1
Is there really an overriding need for a more stable Linux kernel? Maybe I've just been lucky, but I honestly can't think of anything in the IT world more stable than the Linux kernel.
Reading TFA, it appears that CA wants better OS virtualization features. What does that have to do with stability and/or a smaller kernel?
Sam Greenblat, respected Linux kernel hacking authority figure, from the long-time advocate of Linux, CA...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
One of the things I've never liked about Linux is precisiely the sort of thing that is being discussed here - it changes too quickly and it's heading in the wrong direction for my needs.
I'm not complaining though !! It's not my project and if that's the direction the developers want to take it then that's up to them.
Instead, I use something that is far more suitable for what I need - OpenBSD. All the BSDs (Open, Free, Net....) are far more conservative in the types of drivers etc built into the kernel. I couldn't even tell you what OpenBSD's suport for your average sound card is like, but that's ok because I don't need it.
If you want a Unix-like OS for running servers and 'serious' stuff then you are far better off with one of the BSDs. They are more stable (ie - they don;t change is the way Llinus does), they are easier to administer, they are not fragmented like Linux, they are not bogged down with a million different drivers for this that and the other, they don't try and keep EVERBODY happy (they are more restricted in their scope), there's no GPL involved (a very useful feature that seems to escape many commercial organisations), etc etc....
Basically, there is more than just Linux about - if Linux doesn't do what you want or you don't like the direction it's heading then look elsewhere - there are plenty of VERY GOOD (and usually BETTER) alternatives; far more than I have listed here.
In short, why does everyone equate "open source OS" with "Linux" ? It's very annoying and just shown how blind most people are.
Well, if CA doesn't like what's being done, they could always switch to HURD. :-)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Both archetectures are incorrect. I think it would be best to use a hybrid approach. Isolate the stuff that "needs to be in the kernel" from the stuff that doesn't.
The stuff that doesn't need to be in the kernel (e.g. USB device drivers, and I don't mean OHCI/etc support, I mean the driver for my joystick) can be extracted from it, and placed in userspace.
Then, the stuff that needs to be there (Filesystem support, disk drivers, net code, etc) can stay there, and live happily. This is the way several other OS's work:
- MS Windows
- BSD Dragonfly
- OSX
Now, OSX and Firefly are mainly hacks over BSD. When I say a hybrid, I mean a non-hackish hybrid. Linus has this thing about making sure it's done "the right way"... I'd hope he could see to it this would.Not that it doesn't present problems. It would require a massive overhaul to the whole system, every system would need to be categorized as "in" or "out"... but it does have its benefits:
Binary what? Companies need to make their source code availiable!
and those drivers are not copied or kept in memory
Even before that, there were work-arounds
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
"We are not interested in the game drivers and music drivers that are being added to the kernel. We are interested in a more stable kernel."
Disclaimer: I am not a linux geek, but I am an engineer, so I understand technology and the reasons why geeks do what they do.
That being said, my initial reaction to this story was: "oh man, the fact this is even an issue means linux has a long way to go". Why do I say that? Because it's obvious if linux wants more desktop share, they need to be working on the features that most people are interested in. Namely, games, music, etc. The fact is, games sell machines. Multimedia features sell machines. Look at apple: people are buying macs just to use their iLife programs. Last I checked, a stable kernel was not high on their list of reasons why they made the purchase.
I'm not discounting clean, organized code. Stablity and speed are important. But my general impression of the linux community (from the outside looking in) is that it's one big crab theory gone bad. As soon as one part of the community realizes the truth, that they only way to sell linux is to build into the system features that people actually will buy, the geeky half of the community steps in and whines that linux no longer has clean code and has become "feature bloated".
Look guys, I'd hate to put a lightbulb right up to the obvious, but consumers are not geeks. No matter how clean or efficent the code is made, the average person is simply NOT going to get excited unless the operating system has the FEATURES they want. Ultimately, it comes down to what they heck you can do with the operating system at the user level. If the user's experience is not "doing it" for them, then no amount of "clean code" is going to solve that problem.
And I know that comes as a complete downer to most geeks. We spend 10 hours a day tweaking our setups, getting everything just "perfect", and expect to be rewarded comparably. The sad thing is, most people don't care. They don't care what the code looks like, they don't care about how much time it took, and they don't care about our "brilliant" hacks. The important thing to them is what they can do with it.
So what is the solution? Easy: split up linux for the different markets. One market is for geeks, like the above gentleman who want a stable kernel and nothing else. The second market is for consumers that play games, listen to music, etc. Geeks get their geektoy, and consumers get what they want. But the community is not going to be able to make a version of linux that will appeal totally to both markets, since the markets are COMPLETELY different. (Again, geeks aren't consumers.)
I don't see what the problem is.
Ya don't fscking like it, don't fscking use it, ya fscking complainin', useless nits!
Here's what I do, pay attention - ya might lern sumpthin'. I have just enough intelligence to know how to compile a lean, mean, screamin' kernel. It's really small and lightning fast. And, as a surprising side effect, this meager intellect also allows me the uncanny ability to select what I want to include, or not include before compiling! Wow. So the kernel's fat. Who cares? It does what I want, what I told it to do. I want fat, I compile it in. I don't want fat, I don't compile it in. It's really just that simple.
I think the developers are, and have always been on the right track. The kernel needs to be able to do anything and everything. Power to them! Kernel fat be damned. It's there if and when I need it. I'LL MAKE THE DECISION WHAT TO INCLUDE IN MY KERNEL, thank you very much. For people that need CA to tell them what they need, don't need to be using Linux. There's another OS for those kind of people.
Damn, I just hate being the smartest mofo on this planet, I really do. But, thank God for idiots, we wouldn't have geniuses.
I thought the 2.4 series was supposed to be the stable series? Is all this complaining really about use a 'bleeding edge' kernel?
Quack, quack.
It's pretty straightforward. I tried to add the Trance Vibrator's USB ID to the usb.ids list, but the maintainer never got back to me. I suppose he didn't think I was serious. Hmph.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
The trance vibrator that came with Japanese editions of Rez doesn't need much bandwidth.
Frankly, I'm surprised we haven't seen a ginormous boom in USB-controlled sex toys. Or at least a frickin' Winamp plugin for this thing.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Or, you know, you could get control software for it. Bless those wacky Japanese!
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
For a proprietary, single-platform system, you have to admit MacOS aged gracefully. It managed to stick with the 68k series for a number of years, then miraculously made a platform switch to PowerPC without alienating its userbase. Amazing! And then they swapped out the underlying guts of a brittle, old-fashioned OS for something much, much more modern, and carried the userbase (or should I say 'the faithful') along with them. More power to them.
Linux, on the other hand, is designed to be multi-platform. A mass migration away from x86? Who would notice? The kernel is modular, it is extensible, it does not need to be rewritten from the ground up for changes to be made. What sort of change would require dumping the kernel and starting something new? Moving from a pure-monolithic to a modular design? Been there, done that.
OSX is a great example of how to weather the need for major revisions brought on by poor (but understandable at the time) architectural decisions. Linux is a great example of how not to need them in the first place.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
That's easy, you can do it for us. Just specify a general and fast binary interface for drivers, and implement and compile it as a module for each kernel as it is released. Then third parties just write to your interface and users load your interface and the third party modules. See? So come on then. Get working on it for the rest of us.
That is, after all, what has to be done to acheive the effect you're asking for. It just needs somebody to commit their time to it. That person is you.
Many hardware vendors do try to support Linux.
/usr/src/linux
They release drivers. But often they are binary only and only work on a few versions of the Linux kernel.
While you say they could ship source and let people compile, that means more bloat in a way - people need to install a compiler and the rest of the stuff they need, plus the relevant kernel source code and headers.
Plus it's not always possible for hardware vendors to ship source - NDA, licensing, secrets etc etc.
Another example is vmware:
Practically every time I update the linux kernel for some security problem, I have to do something like the following:
su -
cd
make cloneconfig
make modules prepare
vmware-config.pl
I don't have to do this for windows.
So Linux is not that stable in that respect.
Not everyone is running a web server. The popular distros are geared towards desktop users. For this group, the OS really ought to work 'out-of-the-box'.
My how angry! The anger of the zealots does lots to hold back Linux (just like it did to Mac and Amiga before it).
CA offers criticism of the current state of linux and the zealots get pissy. Hell in my opinion they are exactly right, there is a lot of bloat in the kernel these days. Some things should only be done as modules, and some stuff should be retired (err, removed from the default kernel)
Since right about 95 I've been of the opinion that the anti-MS desktop crowd has in many ways held back Linux from being the server platform it could be. I wouldn't mind seeing a fork where the "server" version went one way and the "desktop" version went another, within the kernel some decisions make more sense for one side then the other. Moreover, often simpler = more stable, everything else being equal I'd rather have a 1M line kernel then a 10M line kernel.
So instead of taking it as an opportunity to improve you take it the wrong way.
Maybe there are reasons for the way things are now, but that in no way makes this idea of coupling the modules looser a bad one or make CA the anti-christ (they are, but not for saying this) when they critique the state of things from their perspective.
It was a serious suggestion. A stable ABI needs somebody to do the work and ensure it is unchanging and always available. The OP wants it, the OP should just go ahead and do it.
With regards to kernel bloat, the minimal kernel is very unbloated. The rest is just drivers. The recent increases in size are due to cleaner driver models and better VM/Scheduler which are a benefit to everybody (especially big iron with lots of users). Then there are drivers and ports on top - but they aren't bloat since they don't have to be compiled, or they can be compiled as separate projects into modules. IMHO, with initramfs, the kernel should soon start to make more and more stuff modularised and more code will then be shared - this will be very very good.
Is this something to think about?
I'm not a CA basher, but the fact here is that those things that can, in Mr. Greenblatt's opinion, make Linux unstable can be removed, or simply not added in the first place. I know a few people that install everything, which I consider to be a poor practice. I install what I need and nothing more, and I have had no problems with my 2.6 kernel systems. They are stable on the server and the desktop. Perhaps a FULL install could make an Enterprise server unstable, but I don't see it. I'm not a Windows person, but I am told the Windows kernel is MUCH bigger than the Linux kernel, and companies have been accepting the crashes and blue screens for a long time...yet Windows didn't change, and people didn't line up to dump Microsoft stuff in the streets.
I'm not a troll, but I play one on Slashdot.
128K of L2 cache running at 500MHz is better for most applications than 512K of L2 cache running at 66MHz.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
You may not have noticed, but some vendor kernel sources have features not found anyhere else. Many of these get folded back into the main kernel tree.
While I don't have hard statistics, I'd venture a guess that that's how most of the kernel development occurs these days. It sounds to me like CA wants home-user-centric features excluded. I'm having a hard time coming up with a plausible reason. The only thing I can think of is that they might think that by preventing such things from becoming part of the main kernel tree, vendors like Novell and Red Hat will stop working on them.
Maybe those two venders would; their money comes from enterprise sales, anyway. But user-centric distros, and the community at large, would pick up the slack, anyway.
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