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Happy 15th Birthday Linux
An anonymous reader writes "It's 15 years already! On August 25th, 1991 Linus Torvalds submitted the famous message to comp.os.minix: 'Hello everybody out there using minix — I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things)' Happy Birthday Linux!"
GNU/Hurd developers are commited to create THE best possible kernel. They don't have any time pressure so they can freely make experiments in the true spirit of Open Source.
Right now, there is an ongoing effort to use Coyotos ( http://coyotos.org/ ) to create the first operating system with the proved correctness of its kernel.
Besides, message-passing interfaces (the core feature of microkernels) can be potentially very efficiently implemented on multicore processors. For example, ARM Fast Address Space Switching (FASS) can potentially make microkernels FASTER than common monolythic ones.
XP (Pro at least) is a fine operating system. So is Linux. Just because you've learned to drive a car doesn't mean you know how to drive a tank. If you couldn't get X to load at any resolution then you obviously didn't even try (as in put forth effort). Furthermore, you fail to declare what distro and version of Linux you are using. What are you "learning the computer" or something?
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
My 20 month-old daughter bluescreened XP after only 2 minutes of un-attended use. And no, it did not involve pouring juice into the box. Only using a standard keyboard and mouse.
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Simply, I'd say that porting is impossible. It's mostly in C, but most
people wouldn't call what I write C. It uses every conceivable feature
of the 386 I could find, as it was also a project to teach me about the
386. As already mentioned, it uses a MMU, for both paging (not to disk
yet) and segmentation. It's the segmentation that makes it REALLY 386
dependent (every task has a 64Mb segment for code & data - max 64 tasks
in 4Gb. Anybody who needs more than 64Mb/task - tough cookies).
And now it is running on, what, 20 different architectures?
With or without MMU, running hundreds...thousands of tasks of up to
gigabytes in size. Of course, of that version nothing will have
remained. Not even the name, because that came later.
Doesn't sound like either of those is a Microsoft problem. You should probably take the issue up with the firewire card manufacturer. Linux has much more serious problems with some of its drivers. Try unplugging a mounted USB drive and see what happens. Last time I tried it, it permanently locked up the USB subsystem, which nothing would cure short of a reboot. Not to mention hibernation support, which is still horrible and usually doesn't work. I like Linux myself, but I am of the firm belief that people living in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks.