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The story of the Linux kernel

Posted by sengan on from the stuff-to-read dept.

Todd Bradshaw wrote in with an excerpt from Linus' chapter in "Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution". Linus' number one rule for keeping the kernel healthy is to avoid new system interfaces.

7 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Linus, the great diplomat by Thandor · · Score: 3

    I think the thing that shone through in this article is that Linus is one of the world's great diplomats. Although he'd probably deny it, saying he's just pragmatic, I think it's true. He's just modest, a trait that goes hand in hand with being diplomatic.

    Take, for example, the way he manages to mention Windows NT several times in a less than complimentary way, without ever sounding like he was being condescending, or "Microsoft bashing".

    Or the way he manages to bring home his point against microkernel architecture. He made points that coming from most people would have been flamebait, but from him seem little more than quiet assertions of the truth, due to his modest and humble manner. Then again, Linux is probably proof that this assertions are in fact truth.

    I'm not saying that the article was brilliant, in fact I thought it served to highlight the difference between a great author and a great computer scientist. That is, the article, while doubtlessly interesting and informative, lacked an artist's touch (much like certain operating systems in fact). However, it did yet again highlight what makes Linus such a good kernel maintainer - his people skills are first class. It's something that unfortunately can't be said for enough CS people, which is probably why Linus stands out so much.

    I think this is the reason why many people, myself included, have the greatest amount of respect for people like Linus. For in being a pragmatist, while the world hasn't benefitted (or suffered!) from any great ideas of his own, his contribution in helping people come from often vastly different views to meet in the middle ground has more than made up for that.

    So while I respect RMS as the rightful "Saint of free software", as I respect various other "celebrities" of the free software/open source world, I think that what Linus has done is far greater. That is, in the way he has managed to bring people together (not just with code, but also with his words) rather than tear them apart over a relentless pursuit of an ideal, as some have done. Perhaps he realises, in his more balanced world view, that the end does not justify the means, nor, just as importantly, does the means justify the end.

    It's probably no coincidence that Linus is generally reluctant to offer his opinion on things, and when he does he tends to be brief and to the point. Perhaps that's a hint that I've said enough! :)

    --
    "Now watch what you say or they'll be calling you a radical, liberal, fanatical, criminal." - Supertramp, The Logical So
  2. For sale on Ebay by Chris+Siegler · · Score: 2

    Operating Systems--Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum

    Hardly used. Read only once, in fact. The are no markings in the book. Unlike most text books, you wont find highlighted sections with annotations marking all of the useful and helpful areas of the book.

  3. linux and web serving by Rob_D_Clark · · Score: 2

    I have to say, that was a very well written article. I enjoyed reading it.

    I was interested in what Linus had to say about web serving, but I am a little curious what he means about the kernel handling requests for static pages. Does he mean something like a system call that could directly copy from file descriptor to file descriptor?

    --
    --Rob
  4. There's a World Beyond Linux by cjs · · Score: 2

    I'm not at all impressed with this article, and I must say it's reduced my opinion of Linus considerably. I've mentioned a few of the things that have bugged me in other posts, but I'll summarise here.

    1. The claim that Linux is `the most widely ported operating system available for PCs' is certainly arguable. It's unfair to ignore the lesser known systems (such as NetBSD) in an article with such wide distribution.

    2. He's insulting. There's no reason for calling the people he's discussing `dishonest' or `stupid.' That's immature.

    3. He's not correct that the OS research world had abandoned monolithic kernels for microkernels or felt that only microkernels offered good prospects of portability. Around the time Linus started his first i386 work, Berkely and other folks were busy making 4BSD (which is monolithic) more portable, and moving it on to several other architectures. The period between 4.3BSD and 4.4BSD showed a dramatic portability and ports increase.

    4. Linux is far behind the curve in terms of internal structure for portablity; NetBSD is unarguably significantly better in that regard. Take a look at device drivers, for example; Linux has a proliferation of machine-dependent drivers where NetBSD uses machine-independent drivers almost everywhere. Linux doesn't even have a structure to support MI device drivers! (See NetBSD's bus_space and bus_dma work for an example of what such a structure can look like.)

    In short: he insults others, denegrates the work of others that Linux was built on, and he frequently ignores the work of others. Either he's lacking in technical knowledge, or he's willfully ignoring other stuff out there that `competes' with Linux. This article is marketing, not information, and is only going to worsen the reputation Linux already has as a `Microsoft' among the non-Linux free software community.

    cjs

    --
    The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
  5. Scalability vs. reverse scalability by MasterD · · Score: 2

    After reading the future plans for linux, I saw a big problem. Linus wants Linux to be able to run on embedded systems -- great! But he also wants it to run on 16 processor super servers. From my understanding of kernels, it seems these are conflicting goals.

    So far, Linux has been able to work on Palms and on 4 processors. But if all goes as Linus plans, there will be a much bigger discrepency in the scale of systems in the future. And this will just hurt the performance of Linux on either of these systems.

    For instance, does it make any sense to have red-black tree virtual memory areas on an embedded chip running 2 processes? Or should the scheduler be as simple as it is for a machine with 16 processors?

    I am afraid Linus will hold back scaling Linux up. He even mentions that one will only be able to use a modified (non-standard) version of Linux if you want to run on 64 processors or more. It is true that in order to scale, you need to make things more complicated and possibly slow for single processor machines, but this should be done. I mean, how many 386's are there running Linux nowadays? How about in 5 years?

    I would bet money that there will be many 64 processor machines out there in 5-10 years. Moore's Law is going to give out eventually on the single processor and the only where to move will be in the parallel direction. Linux should be prepared for this.

    -tbd

  6. I think it is by ochinko · · Score: 2

    But when you think about it it's not very surprising that the ease of porting depends most of all on how good your design is, even if you designed it with only one platform in mind.

    One of the troubles with M$ products is that marketing reasons can take over pure technical ones. One such decision (I read it somewhere here) was to place the video driver in the kernel space to make the GUI run faster in NT 3.51. The other obvious example is the attempt to bury the web browser as deep as possible in the OS only to limit the market share of a rival product.

    I am aware this is off topic but please post more examples if you know such. The Windows user lives with the undying hope that the next version will finally get rid of the bugs and will become stable. But it would be good Linux advocacy if we are able to prove that they are consistent in sacrificing reasonable solutions for the sake of greater revenue.

    Linus talks about how Linux will inevitably be replaced by another OS once when the hardware evolves enough. But at the same time he tries to ensure that Linux is designed in such a way that it lasts as much as possible. M$ on the other hand don't need an OS which lasts more than 3 years because how else could they convince you to buy their next one if you are comfortable with the current. 'But please, try our new one. It's not only richer in features but we got rid of the bugs. Really! This time for sure!'

  7. RE: The Review - Interfaces vs Modules by NoneToBe · · Score: 2

    Great review! My rambling thoughts...

    Especially interesting from an engineering pov is the separation of interfaces from modulisation. The idea of writing the OS in C and basing "portability" on the portability of the compiler is a cool idea.

    But, I suggest that you do need "interfaces" otherwise how can ppl use the devices? The "interface" in Linux is the /proc + /dev file systems. So, Linux is actually using "low-level" interfaces, ie interfaces which are "thin" as apposed to "thick" (example, glide vs DirectX).

    In effect, we have a trade-off against "portability" towards usage. This, I agree with totally.

    Cheers /.ers