You could have brought this just a little earlier, you know.
I was reminded of FOSDEM yesterday by the advertisements (there are envough of them, and I believe even here on/.), and I made plans to go over the weekend, in between two other things I have to do. Figured out I'd write down the train information, etc. tonight.
Nice thing to slashdot the website on the last minute. I think you've served a lot of people by doing that.
This may all come as odd to you, Hamburger Nation's pride and joy, but there are people on this planet who think that animals have some rights similar to humans.
There are even people who think you should be at least considerate about what you eat. I'm not yet even talking about vegetarians here. I'm just talking about people not living with their minds in their arses, thinking that the current culture of animal treatment is just OK.
We are modern Western people, right? We think about morality all day, and have figured out what can and cannot be done, right? Equal rights for the gay, black, female, jewish!
But a sheep is just a stupid animal! Let's hang a heart on his neck just in case some worthless hamburger head is about to die from his wasteful lifestyle! (And wasteful it is: you are said to be an environmentally better person if you go around throwing batteries in the river all day, than if you get yourself a child.)
Now, Mister Bonker, do you think the research is so right?
You probably still do think so. You think any animal is worth far less than any human. I, for one, was quite well amazed to see a documentary on TV about someone talking with a Gorilla using some kind of deaf language. The animal was actually quite human in conversation, and the IQ of it was estimated to be somewhere around 80, I believe. (Indeed, about the same as a mentally simple human. Have you ever seen those in real life? They look a lot like normal humans, too!)
These things make you rethink the issue: are animals (other than Gorillas) less important to you, only because they look less like humans (than gorilla's do)?
You probably think so. But it's a very arrogant redenation to me. Not unlike "black/ women/ gay/ jewish are less like us and should be treated as such", in fact.
Next time you eat your hamburger, at least acknowledge you're a murderer. It gives you quite a fresh look of how wicked our current society is to animals.
Think I'm radical? I'm not even a full-term vegetarian myself. I'm just honest about the state of our society, that's all. And I'm just hoping more people would be. Why is it that we can see every little social issue, but don't want to see this one?
o There's so little of it o And it still sucks o There's a file manager that "deletes" to a trashcan o Where's the darned trashcan? o And why is my disk still full? o There's just one icon on the screen. o Actually, it's a menu. Sorta. But there's an icon within the menu. o And it says "Terminal". Click on it. Welcome to your UNIX desktop! o Buhh... close the menu:-) o Oh wait, there's an other icon there. o Netscape 4! Yay! o And whaddaya know! A *graphical* man pages browser? Is it possible? o Now them Desktop folks will finally know how to invoke strncpy()! o Close both windows by double-clicking somewhere at the top left. o That's all folks! Nothing more to see here. Go home.
Actually, there's one good thing about (the Sun version of) CDE, and that is the logout screen. It says "Please confirm your exit from the..." instead of "Are you sure you want to..."? Makes you feel less of a baby.
I know Zappa has used it once, and that there is some eeyuh-wee reference to it in some Dexter cartoon or something, but I just wonder where the phrase came from originally.
I was wondering how this applied to e.g. Disney material in Europe -- international copyright law.
I believe there is some agreement over copyright law made between various (collections of) countries. It would occur to me that a decision like the one in this case cannot be made on a per-country basis, based on the aforementioned agreement.
I think it's clear at this point that IANAL etc., but I'm curious about the international results of this decision.
...that I was browsing the Google directory out of boredom, and I came across a full category of stick figure deaths. Kind of silly to find out about some apparently "widespread" hobby when you haven't had the slightest clue ever that such a thing existed in the first place.
I guess the most things you remember, you remember from having remembered them before. And before. And before. A sort of pointer-to-pointer structure.
Sometimes we have to restore the forgotten parts of these kinds of memories by asking people how things exactly were, or make up small parts of our own. That's when things get foggy. My 2c.
My company wanted to do a christmast gift box to all six of our president-employees, but then we realized we had no income whatsoever yet. We decided just to wish each other a merry christmas instead.
Aside from the semi-FP issue (I bet I'll be post # 104 or so by the time I finished writing:-), I don't really see how this differs from M$ browsers (and Netscape 4.x) refusing to render my site correctly. So there.
In actuality, the drugs are opening the doors of perception, allowing the real world to be seen....and your brain to be damaged while doing so...
(Hey, don't doubt me on that, I'm from Holland, so I oughta know!:-)
Anyway, studies have shown what great visions and feelings people get from influencing the brain's electromagnetic field, simply by creating another one around it. Miracles, near-death experiences and Van Gogh vision on demand. "I feel a strange presence" was also on the list.
Exactly the same message (@ least the first paragraph) was attached to the previous story on this topic, I believe it was even the previous gnutella2 story.
"Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge he's like a detuned radio..." -- Radiohead
I have OS 9.1 on a 250 MHz Powermac 6500 with 128 Mb RAM, and it just loads and runs, not "crawls".
DOH! It's just a little program!
How do you expect something that fits on a 150 MB (and that's including Microsnot Internet Exploder and other goodies!) SCSI disk to be slow, especially when it only lacks 22 Mb to stuff the *entire* OS disk on the RAM in the first place?
Like the AmigaOS, that fitted easily on a 8 MB partition, MacOS 9.1 still feels like a very small system shell in many ways not unlike GEOS/C64 (OK THAT was slow), or DOS on steroids: fast -- and easy to program around. Which is proven by the fact that MacOS 9.1 is only used to boot my Mac into Linux 90% of the time:-)
It sometimes seems OSes become huge and nonunderstandable at the very same point they introduce memory protection for them. (I believe that even counts for Win 3.1 -> 95?)
Anyway, jumping right into kernel memory has always been much more fun than this stupid system call trapping!:-)
Back to topic: yes, my Mac takes ages to boot up. That's because it waits for network disks that are never available. That's my fault, I should remove that one of these days. If you have a problem like that, that's not my fault:-) But that's neither OS 9's fault, though.
Mac OS X is based on a Microkernel - now everyone agrees these are slow, right? Well, sure I can see where that's coming from - but Apple have gone to great lengths to make this as fast as possible without losing the benefits.
Then why does Apple use Mach at its core, and not a second generation MK like L4?
The answer is easily guessed: because NeXT used it back when there was no second MK generation at all, and MacOS X is a rewrite of NeXT (proven a.o. by the screenshots of the MacOS X Server betas).
When rewriting, it's a lot of easier to just change the important stuff (UI GOODIES!!!) and leave the unimportant stuff (kernel) as unchanged as possible.
They may have been speed-hacking Mach allright, but they didn't throw it away entirely just because too many software depends on its APIs.
Officially, I am only allowed to run MacOS 7.1. That is, if you consider a second hand CD that came with the second hand Mac a legal source of software.
I actually run 9.1 -- well, to boot up Debian. From there, everything is Free. I get my Internet programs for Free, my updates for Free -- hell, I even screw up my own computer for Free. And get to repair it for Free.
Imagine me having a working Windows PC. I would have to buy all those expensive and boring 3D games just to entertain myself instead:-)
Yeah, I know it's different for businesses. But why does that damned Ballmer always seem to think that businesses are all that important anyway?
Uh, wait, that should be because students never spend money on software anyway. Oh, well...
Still, getting serious again and all, it completely depends on your business' focus. If I'd start up a company (which I did), I'd use Debian for some of the company's stuff (which I didn't because we don't have, and don't need, any corporate computers). Yet, if I had to leave the maintenance to a third party, I would not force them to use something they are not all that familiar with.
I read over the article headline and read "tasteless" instead of "worthless". Suits for me.
I don't by Racoon CD's because I can't play "Here we go, stereo" on PC/ Mac. (I first thought the warning was some sort of a joke, considering the LP image on the front of the album.) I would buy them if I could play them on my PC.
Strangely enough, though, Gnutella queries show that at least some people got to play "stereo" on their PC's. Oh well, suits for me;-)
And time goes by So slowly With Microsoft Can't do so much Are you still more?
Or, for yer Microsoft geeks:
Oh my Word My Excel I've hungered for Microsoft A long lonely time And Wine does Word So slowly And Wine Can't do so much Are you still more?
Re:silly question... what's a microkernel?
on
Realtime OS Jaluna
·
· Score: 2
What is a Microkernel? And what are it's advantages?
Glad you asked.
(Notice that part of this post isn't a direct answer to your question, although it may prove illustrative. But thanks for giving me an opportunity to rant on this;-)
In Linux, the kernel does things like memory management, scheduling, writing to filesystems, to the network, to your sound card, to your video card... etc, etc. That's an awful lot to do. That's why Linux is such a big program.
Now for the sake of introduction, let's compare Linux to Mozilla. Mozilla lets you read and compose mail, browse the Web and compose Web sites. All in one application. As a result, you get a huge application, which takes quite some time to load. And if an error occurs in the mail component, you can say bye-bye to your 34 open Web browser windows as well -- it's one big program, so if one component crashes, the others go with it. Also, if you want to change anything in the code, you're required to recompile Mozilla completely just for that.
So maybe Mozilla would improve by getting split up in several components? Who knows. Fact is, that a kernel (like Linux) may as well improve by doing just that.
Imagine you booting up a system, which is still quite buggy, so your network card locks up every now and then. I actually have this with Linux on my Macintosh, and it can cause the complete system to lock up. In a Microkernel, the network card driver is a separate program, called a "server", running in "user space" (vs. "kernel space"), so it's merely an application like any other. If you have trouble with your network card, you could in theory simply restart the server.
So the advantage of this modular design is that your core is very small, and people can easily add/ delete/ modify its drivers. In fact, the main advantage of a Microkernel architecture is that it's a theoretically clean design. It looks good.
However, with even hardware drivers running in the very protected "user space", there must still be some way for the drivers to communicate with the hardware (and with each other). It is up to the Microkernel to intermediate for this. And here is the real problem. If you just write up a design for Microkernel System Server communication that looks good on paper, chances are that it turns out to be really slow when implementing it, because many data needs to be copied when transferred from a server to the kernel, and from there to user programs, etc.
The design of most older Microkernel interfaces was so high-level, that there was no easy way to get around this problem. Newer Microkernel designs however, recognize this problem at its core, and adapt their design, again at the core, to eliminate this problem. (The silly thing is that by this design, the newer Microkernels are usually even smaller than the older ones, if I am right.)
Darwin is based on Mach, which is a 1st generation microkernel. It uses a communication system called Ports, I believe not quite unlike TCP/ IP ports. All in all too clever for its own good, anyway: the Microkernel is responsible for caching messages (IIRC), which requires a lot of memory/ CPU resources.
Darwin (as well as MKLinux and the older NeXT/ Openstep systems), by the way, screw up Microkernel design at its core, by making just one big user space program with all drivers in it. These systems, politely referred to as single-server systems, only give the OS developers the advantage of not having to write the core of the OS (Mach) themselves. (Mach has a nice thread support I believe, so this might have been a good argument for choosing Mach.) There are no further immediate advantages for users or developers.
And there is of course the disadvantage of using a first-generation, slower, Microkernel as part of your design. (As you might have noticed, all of the abovementioned Mach-based single-server systems have a connection with Apple; I guess they Think Different, or something;-)
Multi-server Microkernels, however, allow developers and (root) users to plug stuff in and out of their systems at runtime without having to change the kernel itself, and without having to fear crashes of drivers. The GNU HURD is a good example of a multi-server microkernel, but the HURD goes beyond everything named here, by redesigning the system so, that any (normal) user can easily adapt the Microkernel to its own needs. The advantages are somewhat beyond our current idea of computing: for example, imagine a normal user application installing a different algorithm for freeing up unused memory, because it is more efficient for this type of application. Maybe you never ever want to do this, but the HURD is designed to be this flexible.
The HURD is currently based on Mach, but there's a transition being made to L4 (the HURD is a quite abstract layer on top of a Microkernel). L4 is a highly esteemed second-generation Microkernel, which takes away the speed disadvantages of Mach.
Anyway, now for the real rant:
Any time a Slashdot story is posted on topic of the HURD, idiots flock together like pigeons to say Stallman is an idiot, and the HURD sucks because Microkernels are slow. While the real truth is that RMS doesn't seem to care about the HURD as a GNU project at all these days (he's currently developing emacs, I've heard -- could you imagine a sillier way to waste your precious time, being reffered to as the last real hacker on earth and all?), and there is nothing slow about L4, and nobody ever says bad things about QNX (a cool Microkernel-based OS) here anyway.
Slashdot readers only seem to recognize the advantages of Microkernel design, when not on the topic of the HURD, while the HURD design has advantages over most other Microkernels. This is plain silly.
Minix was a cute little UNIX introduction to a lot of people. An older version ran on the Amiga as well. It's the way I've made my transition from Amiga -> Minix -> Linux. This Minix never came with XFree86, and I believe it was quite a hassle to install if you really wanted it. Most people playing with Minix ever since Linux was ported to the Amiga, did it as a toy introduction to UNIX, and had no real need for X, anyway.
While I believe Minix does prove to be a little silly a choice these days, it's still a nice look back into the old-style (Version 7??) UNIX, for people who just weren't born that long ago:-)
Hello? You're buying this box to run X why? In fact, I think you'll struggle to find pretty much anyone that wouldn't run this headless.
Hell, I would. Look at this thing: it's the Connectivity Machine! I can attach my printer, scanner, Wacom tablet to it, I can put it to a network, and yet my HUB would take in more place!
It would be a shame to leave this one lying in a corner serving just Web pages and ssh.
Hmm OK I'm a little biased because my printer, scanner and Wacom tablet don't fit to my new old Mac, and Linux doesn't support much PCI serial/ parallel ports for it.
Still, I love these small machines. My current web server is an old Sparc Classic, which is just capable enough to serve the web, but more importantly, is easily hidden behind my TV/ stereo/ LP-collection/ salon combi-table. If it didn't have limitations on speed, sound, color and printer ports, I would use the box as my main computer. So I must say that although the machines shown here are somewhat more expensive than a Sparc Classic, I'd just LOVE to have one.
And the VGA output is also a nice feature which I wished (and hoped, when buying) my Mac had. I would love to get a console on my TV (even if that should mean starting up X for that), so that I can program behind my salon table.
Another fun detail on that page : description says : 300 to 400 EUR while it is sold for 590 EUR.
Storever [storever.com] are selling it for EUR390.
The reason the Egyptian government is wary about letting any old Tom or Dick go digging about is because of the very long history of looting by nearly everyone who's come into contact with ancient treasures over the centuries -- the west being especially guilty of such things.
As long as they bring back the Amulet of Yendor, it's fine with me;-)
Slashdot Mirror
Plus you are not bothered with kernel recompilations etc.
Uhh, you can't compile the kernel, because it's propietary. That's still something different.
You could have brought this just a little earlier, you know.
/.), and I made plans to go over the weekend, in between two other things I have to do. Figured out I'd write down the train information, etc. tonight.
I was reminded of FOSDEM yesterday by the advertisements (there are envough of them, and I believe even here on
Nice thing to slashdot the website on the last minute. I think you've served a lot of people by doing that.
This may all come as odd to you, Hamburger Nation's pride and joy, but there are people on this planet who think that animals have some rights similar to humans.
There are even people who think you should be at least considerate about what you eat. I'm not yet even talking about vegetarians here. I'm just talking about people not living with their minds in their arses, thinking that the current culture of animal treatment is just OK.
We are modern Western people, right? We think about morality all day, and have figured out what can and cannot be done, right? Equal rights for the gay, black, female, jewish!
But a sheep is just a stupid animal! Let's hang a heart on his neck just in case some worthless hamburger head is about to die from his wasteful lifestyle! (And wasteful it is: you are said to be an environmentally better person if you go around throwing batteries in the river all day, than if you get yourself a child.)
Now, Mister Bonker, do you think the research is so right?
You probably still do think so. You think any animal is worth far less than any human. I, for one, was quite well amazed to see a documentary on TV about someone talking with a Gorilla using some kind of deaf language. The animal was actually quite human in conversation, and the IQ of it was estimated to be somewhere around 80, I believe. (Indeed, about the same as a mentally simple human. Have you ever seen those in real life? They look a lot like normal humans, too!)
These things make you rethink the issue: are animals (other than Gorillas) less important to you, only because they look less like humans (than gorilla's do)?
You probably think so. But it's a very arrogant redenation to me. Not unlike "black/ women/ gay/ jewish are less like us and should be treated as such", in fact.
Next time you eat your hamburger, at least acknowledge you're a murderer. It gives you quite a fresh look of how wicked our current society is to animals.
Think I'm radical? I'm not even a full-term vegetarian myself. I'm just honest about the state of our society, that's all. And I'm just hoping more people would be. Why is it that we can see every little social issue, but don't want to see this one?
Well...
:-)
..." instead of "Are you sure you want to ..."? Makes you feel less of a baby.
o There's so little of it
o And it still sucks
o There's a file manager that "deletes" to a trashcan
o Where's the darned trashcan?
o And why is my disk still full?
o There's just one icon on the screen.
o Actually, it's a menu. Sorta. But there's an icon within the menu.
o And it says "Terminal". Click on it. Welcome to your UNIX desktop!
o Buhh... close the menu
o Oh wait, there's an other icon there.
o Netscape 4! Yay!
o And whaddaya know! A *graphical* man pages browser? Is it possible?
o Now them Desktop folks will finally know how to invoke strncpy()!
o Close both windows by double-clicking somewhere at the top left.
o That's all folks! Nothing more to see here. Go home.
Actually, there's one good thing about (the Sun version of) CDE, and that is the logout screen. It says "Please confirm your exit from the
Then *I* must do it, and so I will!
Wow, X-MAS is early this year. <grin>
So, maybe somewhere around X-MAS, Linux will have X-MAS builtin? <heh heh> <snarf>
So, is it Free as in "free from school/ work with X-MAS", or Free as in "a gift from Santa"? <heh> <yeah yeah> <snarf>
...who invented that phrase anyway?
I know Zappa has used it once, and that there is some eeyuh-wee reference to it in some Dexter cartoon or something, but I just wonder where the phrase came from originally.
I want a tail.
I was wondering how this applied to e.g. Disney material in Europe -- international copyright law.
I believe there is some agreement over copyright law made between various (collections of) countries. It would occur to me that a decision like the one in this case cannot be made on a per-country basis, based on the aforementioned agreement.
I think it's clear at this point that IANAL etc., but I'm curious about the international results of this decision.
...that I was browsing the Google directory out of boredom, and I came across a full category of stick figure deaths. Kind of silly to find out about some apparently "widespread" hobby when you haven't had the slightest clue ever that such a thing existed in the first place.
I guess the most things you remember, you remember from having remembered them before. And before. And before. A sort of pointer-to-pointer structure.
Sometimes we have to restore the forgotten parts of these kinds of memories by asking people how things exactly were, or make up small parts of our own. That's when things get foggy. My 2c.
...it's all this Chinese spam!
My company wanted to do a christmast gift box to all six of our president-employees, but then we realized we had no income whatsoever yet. We decided just to wish each other a merry christmas instead.
I've always said it. M$ are murderers.
:-).
No software from the FSF is ever murdered. (GNUstep, HURD). Some are even kept vividly alive by means of iron lungs (emacs
Aside from the semi-FP issue (I bet I'll be post # 104 or so by the time I finished writing :-), I don't really see how this differs from M$ browsers (and Netscape 4.x) refusing to render my site correctly. So there.
In actuality, the drugs are opening the doors of perception, allowing the real world to be seen. ...and your brain to be damaged while doing so...
:-)
(Hey, don't doubt me on that, I'm from Holland, so I oughta know!
Anyway, studies have shown what great visions and feelings people get from influencing the brain's electromagnetic field, simply by creating another one around it. Miracles, near-death experiences and Van Gogh vision on demand. "I feel a strange presence" was also on the list.
Exactly the same message (@ least the first paragraph) was attached to the previous story on this topic, I believe it was even the previous gnutella2 story.
"Karma police, arrest this man, he talks in maths, he buzzes like a fridge he's like a detuned radio..." -- Radiohead
That's just plain silly.
:-)
:-)
:-) But that's neither OS 9's fault, though.
I have OS 9.1 on a 250 MHz Powermac 6500 with 128 Mb RAM, and it just loads and runs, not "crawls".
DOH! It's just a little program!
How do you expect something that fits on a 150 MB (and that's including Microsnot Internet Exploder and other goodies!) SCSI disk to be slow, especially when it only lacks 22 Mb to stuff the *entire* OS disk on the RAM in the first place?
Like the AmigaOS, that fitted easily on a 8 MB partition, MacOS 9.1 still feels like a very small system shell in many ways not unlike GEOS/C64 (OK THAT was slow), or DOS on steroids: fast -- and easy to program around. Which is proven by the fact that MacOS 9.1 is only used to boot my Mac into Linux 90% of the time
It sometimes seems OSes become huge and nonunderstandable at the very same point they introduce memory protection for them. (I believe that even counts for Win 3.1 -> 95?)
Anyway, jumping right into kernel memory has always been much more fun than this stupid system call trapping!
Back to topic: yes, my Mac takes ages to boot up. That's because it waits for network disks that are never available. That's my fault, I should remove that one of these days. If you have a problem like that, that's not my fault
Mac OS X is based on a Microkernel - now everyone agrees these are slow, right? Well, sure I can see where that's coming from - but Apple have gone to great lengths to make this as fast as possible without losing the benefits.
;-)
Then why does Apple use Mach at its core, and not a second generation MK like L4?
The answer is easily guessed: because NeXT used it back when there was no second MK generation at all, and MacOS X is a rewrite of NeXT (proven a.o. by the screenshots of the MacOS X Server betas).
When rewriting, it's a lot of easier to just change the important stuff (UI GOODIES!!!) and leave the unimportant stuff (kernel) as unchanged as possible.
They may have been speed-hacking Mach allright, but they didn't throw it away entirely just because too many software depends on its APIs.
That's my guess. But I guess I'm right
Officially, I am only allowed to run MacOS 7.1. That is, if you consider a second hand CD that came with the second hand Mac a legal source of software.
:-)
I actually run 9.1 -- well, to boot up Debian. From there, everything is Free. I get my Internet programs for Free, my updates for Free -- hell, I even screw up my own computer for Free. And get to repair it for Free.
Imagine me having a working Windows PC. I would have to buy all those expensive and boring 3D games just to entertain myself instead
Yeah, I know it's different for businesses. But why does that damned Ballmer always seem to think that businesses are all that important anyway?
Uh, wait, that should be because students never spend money on software anyway. Oh, well...
Still, getting serious again and all, it completely depends on your business' focus. If I'd start up a company (which I did), I'd use Debian for some of the company's stuff (which I didn't because we don't have, and don't need, any corporate computers). Yet, if I had to leave the maintenance to a third party, I would not force them to use something they are not all that familiar with.
I read over the article headline and read "tasteless" instead of "worthless". Suits for me.
;-)
I don't by Racoon CD's because I can't play "Here we go, stereo" on PC/ Mac. (I first thought the warning was some sort of a joke, considering the LP image on the front of the album.) I would buy them if I could play them on my PC.
Strangely enough, though, Gnutella queries show that at least some people got to play "stereo" on their PC's. Oh well, suits for me
A different approach:
And time goes by
So slowly
With Microsoft
Can't do so much
Are you still more?
Or, for yer Microsoft geeks:
Oh my Word
My Excel
I've hungered for Microsoft
A long lonely time
And Wine does Word
So slowly
And Wine
Can't do so much
Are you still more?
What is a Microkernel? And what are it's advantages?
;-)
;-)
Glad you asked.
(Notice that part of this post isn't a direct answer to your question, although it may prove illustrative. But thanks for giving me an opportunity to rant on this
In Linux, the kernel does things like memory management, scheduling, writing to filesystems, to the network, to your sound card, to your video card... etc, etc. That's an awful lot to do. That's why Linux is such a big program.
Now for the sake of introduction, let's compare Linux to Mozilla. Mozilla lets you read and compose mail, browse the Web and compose Web sites. All in one application. As a result, you get a huge application, which takes quite some time to load. And if an error occurs in the mail component, you can say bye-bye to your 34 open Web browser windows as well -- it's one big program, so if one component crashes, the others go with it. Also, if you want to change anything in the code, you're required to recompile Mozilla completely just for that.
So maybe Mozilla would improve by getting split up in several components? Who knows. Fact is, that a kernel (like Linux) may as well improve by doing just that.
Imagine you booting up a system, which is still quite buggy, so your network card locks up every now and then. I actually have this with Linux on my Macintosh, and it can cause the complete system to lock up. In a Microkernel, the network card driver is a separate program, called a "server", running in "user space" (vs. "kernel space"), so it's merely an application like any other. If you have trouble with your network card, you could in theory simply restart the server.
So the advantage of this modular design is that your core is very small, and people can easily add/ delete/ modify its drivers. In fact, the main advantage of a Microkernel architecture is that it's a theoretically clean design. It looks good.
However, with even hardware drivers running in the very protected "user space", there must still be some way for the drivers to communicate with the hardware (and with each other). It is up to the Microkernel to intermediate for this. And here is the real problem. If you just write up a design for Microkernel System Server communication that looks good on paper, chances are that it turns out to be really slow when implementing it, because many data needs to be copied when transferred from a server to the kernel, and from there to user programs, etc.
The design of most older Microkernel interfaces was so high-level, that there was no easy way to get around this problem. Newer Microkernel designs however, recognize this problem at its core, and adapt their design, again at the core, to eliminate this problem. (The silly thing is that by this design, the newer Microkernels are usually even smaller than the older ones, if I am right.)
Darwin is based on Mach, which is a 1st generation microkernel. It uses a communication system called Ports, I believe not quite unlike TCP/ IP ports. All in all too clever for its own good, anyway: the Microkernel is responsible for caching messages (IIRC), which requires a lot of memory/ CPU resources.
Darwin (as well as MKLinux and the older NeXT/ Openstep systems), by the way, screw up Microkernel design at its core, by making just one big user space program with all drivers in it. These systems, politely referred to as single-server systems, only give the OS developers the advantage of not having to write the core of the OS (Mach) themselves. (Mach has a nice thread support I believe, so this might have been a good argument for choosing Mach.) There are no further immediate advantages for users or developers.
And there is of course the disadvantage of using a first-generation, slower, Microkernel as part of your design. (As you might have noticed, all of the abovementioned Mach-based single-server systems have a connection with Apple; I guess they Think Different, or something
Multi-server Microkernels, however, allow developers and (root) users to plug stuff in and out of their systems at runtime without having to change the kernel itself, and without having to fear crashes of drivers. The GNU HURD is a good example of a multi-server microkernel, but the HURD goes beyond everything named here, by redesigning the system so, that any (normal) user can easily adapt the Microkernel to its own needs. The advantages are somewhat beyond our current idea of computing: for example, imagine a normal user application installing a different algorithm for freeing up unused memory, because it is more efficient for this type of application. Maybe you never ever want to do this, but the HURD is designed to be this flexible.
The HURD is currently based on Mach, but there's a transition being made to L4 (the HURD is a quite abstract layer on top of a Microkernel). L4 is a highly esteemed second-generation Microkernel, which takes away the speed disadvantages of Mach.
Anyway, now for the real rant:
Any time a Slashdot story is posted on topic of the HURD, idiots flock together like pigeons to say Stallman is an idiot, and the HURD sucks because Microkernels are slow. While the real truth is that RMS doesn't seem to care about the HURD as a GNU project at all these days (he's currently developing emacs, I've heard -- could you imagine a sillier way to waste your precious time, being reffered to as the last real hacker on earth and all?), and there is nothing slow about L4, and nobody ever says bad things about QNX (a cool Microkernel-based OS) here anyway.
Slashdot readers only seem to recognize the advantages of Microkernel design, when not on the topic of the HURD, while the HURD design has advantages over most other Microkernels. This is plain silly.
Well, there's my rant. Bye now.
Minix was a cute little UNIX introduction to a lot of people. An older version ran on the Amiga as well. It's the way I've made my transition from Amiga -> Minix -> Linux. This Minix never came with XFree86, and I believe it was quite a hassle to install if you really wanted it. Most people playing with Minix ever since Linux was ported to the Amiga, did it as a toy introduction to UNIX, and had no real need for X, anyway.
:-)
While I believe Minix does prove to be a little silly a choice these days, it's still a nice look back into the old-style (Version 7??) UNIX, for people who just weren't born that long ago
Hello? You're buying this box to run X why? In fact, I think you'll struggle to find pretty much anyone that wouldn't run this headless.
Hell, I would. Look at this thing: it's the Connectivity Machine! I can attach my printer, scanner, Wacom tablet to it, I can put it to a network, and yet my HUB would take in more place!
It would be a shame to leave this one lying in a corner serving just Web pages and ssh.
Hmm OK I'm a little biased because my printer, scanner and Wacom tablet don't fit to my new old Mac, and Linux doesn't support much PCI serial/ parallel ports for it.
Still, I love these small machines. My current web server is an old Sparc Classic, which is just capable enough to serve the web, but more importantly, is easily hidden behind my TV/ stereo/ LP-collection/ salon combi-table. If it didn't have limitations on speed, sound, color and printer ports, I would use the box as my main computer. So I must say that although the machines shown here are somewhat more expensive than a Sparc Classic, I'd just LOVE to have one.
And the VGA output is also a nice feature which I wished (and hoped, when buying) my Mac had. I would love to get a console on my TV (even if that should mean starting up X for that), so that I can program behind my salon table.
Another fun detail on that page : description says : 300 to 400 EUR while it is sold for 590 EUR.
Storever [storever.com] are selling it for EUR390.
The Mandrake version comes with a 10 Gb HD.
The reason the Egyptian government is wary about letting any old Tom or Dick go digging about is because of the very long history of looting by nearly everyone who's come into contact with ancient treasures over the centuries -- the west being especially guilty of such things.
;-)
As long as they bring back the Amulet of Yendor, it's fine with me
You see a large box here. Loot it? (y/n) _