8 ms·

LINUX is obsolete (1992)

78 points by edwincheese 12y ago

ghshephard 12y ago
Something to meditate on any time there is an "Appeal to Expert" - particularly on an issue that is forward looking. Also, I love how he was so confident with regards to While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually design operating systems, the debate is essentially over.
- Nux 12y ago
  Also this (later in the thread), he was pretty wrong.. "Making software free, but only for folks with enough money to buy first class hardware (x86) is an interesting concept. Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5."
- qznc 12y ago
  The funny thing is that I would mostly agree with him. The important detail is "Among the people who actually design operating systems." Linus would agree that Linux is not designed. It evolved. Very few OSs are designed these days. The QNX microkernel is quite successful. L4 also seems to do well. The BSD Mach microkernel is still around. Minix is still around, although its reliability approach (similar to Erlang, let processes/drivers fail and restart) does not gain mindshare. Windows is considered a hybrid since NT. Likewise XNU/Darwin is Apple's hybrid. Maybe the current state is more like: Neither micro nor monolithic won, but we know the tradeoffs now and an OS designer can decide per feature. For most applications the difference does not matter, though. Most applications build on a higher level platform (JVM, iOS, Browser, etc).
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Linux did not evolve so much as that it tried very hard to emulate Unix but outside of the *BSD world. I think microkernels will have their day in some part of the future.
sergiolp 12y ago
I did some small contributions to GNU Hurd years ago, but still, this made me giggle: Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5.
- josteink 12y ago
  Looking back it's amazing how much traction the gnu userland tools gained and how little (zero?) their kernel gained. I'm not going to call it a wasted effort, because I appreciate there being other "Unix"-systems around in case Linux ever goes bad, but at this point it seems to be a whole lot of work invested for nothing. Maybe things will change 5 years down the road when people abandon systemd and DMD had matured, and the best way to run it is on Hurd, but I'm not putting any money on that bet ;)
  - justincormack 12y ago
    There are the BSDs as other Unix systems around; they of course were not at the point when this was written as the lawsuits were unresolved. NetBSD started in 1993, after this. So we have plenty of backup without having to fix Hurd, as well as the L4 based microkernels that are much more mature and interesting than Hurd.
TaylorAlexander 12y ago
This is my favorite part: "Linus Benedict Torvalds In article <1992Jan29.2...@klaava.Helsinki.FI> I wrote: >Well, with a subject like this, I'm afraid I'll have to reply. And reply I did, with complete abandon, and no thought for good taste and netiquette. Apologies to ast, and thanks to John Nall for a friendy "that's not how it's done"-letter. I over-reacted, and am now composing a (much less acerbic) personal letter to ast. Hope nobody was turned away from linux due to it being (a) possibly obsolete (I still think that's not the case, although some of the criticisms are valid) and (b) written by a hothead :-) Linus "my first, and hopefully last flamefest" Torvalds" This HN comment posted from a Linux machine in 2015. :)
caster_cp 12y ago
Tanenbaum said that Torvalds would not get a good grade on his course, epic. "I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)" Perfect display of how universities are good at judging people about how well they know how to "play the game" (and usually that involves conforming to whatever frame of mind your professor thinks is right).
- carlosrg 12y ago
  Well, a microkernel is harder to implement than a monolithic one and from a theoretical standpoint is a better design, IMO it deserves a higher grade in an operating system design course. Let's not mythify the 1992 Linux kernel, which probably wasn't _that_ good.
  - stefantalpalaru 12y ago
    > from a theoretical standpoint is a better design What about IPC overhead?
    - mcosta 12y ago
      >> theoretical In theory you can postulate the performance impact is worth. In practice the is much more in it. That is the difference between computer science and software engineering.
    - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
      IPC overhead was primarily an issue with the Mach kernel in particular (due to it performing elaborate checks on message ports) that later ended up unfairly stigmatizing the entire microkernel design in general. Contemporary microkernels like L4 are much, much faster.
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    A microkernel is much easier to implement than a monolithic one. Been there, done that. The hard part is to get the messaging done with zero overhead (no copying), but using paging for the mbufs you can get quite far with that.
amirmc 12y ago
I find it interesting that this post can be taken two ways. 1. It's clear that Linux 'won' in the marketplace so we can all laugh at how wrong this guy was and the curiosity of these 'microkernel' things and that portability stuff. Lols all around. 2. We've reached a point where ideas are gaining ground about immutable infrastructure, people are talking more about things with similarities to microkernels called unikernels [1] (and where they might be used [2]). Linux isn't going anywhere but these new approaches have value and were being discussed as long ago as 1992. Of course, the author got things wrong but that's par for course. It's more interesting to see ideas that are resurfacing. Incidentally, ARM was a RISC chip and now dominates Intel on mobile devices. I prefer the second approach. So to anyone poking fun at the author, please consider that maybe this is one aspect of living in the future [3], albeit much further than than most (market timing is always underrated and academics tend to think further ahead than most people). We can also remind ourselves that 'Better' is a tricky and subjective thing to define (cf VHS tapes vs Betamax). [1] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628 [2] http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/ http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/ (disclaimer: I'm involved with both the above projects) [3] http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html
- qznc 12y ago
  > It's clear that Linux 'won' in the marketplace Arguable. There might be more instances of QNX and L4 running than of Linux. This is pretty much impossible to measure. Remember that Android smartphones have a second OS underneath or beside the Linux kernel. Apple and Microsoft use a hybrid approach, so they just do not participate in the debate. > OKL4 shipments exceeded 1.5 billion in early 2012, mostly on Qualcomm wireless modem chips. Other deployments include automotive infotainment systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family#Commercial_deployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family#Commercia...
  - amirmc 12y ago
    Thanks for the info. Linux certainly captured mindshare and is synonymous with the cloud these days, but I agree these things are not clear cut.
DanBC 12y ago
Amoeba Operating System: http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/ http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba_(operating_system) Mach kernel http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/mach/public/www/mach.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/mach/public/www/mach.ht... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) RC4000 http://www.prg.dtu.dk/equip/rc4000.html http://www.prg.dtu.dk/equip/rc4000.html CHORUS http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.38.6843 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.38.6... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChorusOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChorusOS
- qznc 12y ago
  QNX http://www.qnx.com/ http://www.qnx.com/ L4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
krasnov 12y ago
Is it still possible to asscess comp.os.minix old archives through NNTP somewhere? Google Groups have the old emails but I can't find a way to read them in a local email client.
- msh 12y ago
  http://olduse.net http://olduse.net
codeulike 12y ago
Linus "my first, and hopefully last flamefest" Torvalds
- Filligree 12y ago
  giggle
jestinjoy1 12y ago
On the portability aspect why Minix is better than Linux? I didn't get that point.
- icebraining 12y ago
  IIRC, Linux at the time had plenty of i368 specific code, while Minix could be compiled to multiple architectures.
- Narishma 12y ago
  I believe at that time, Linux only ran on x86.
jacquesm 12y ago
The problem with this whole debate is that Linus was 'more wrong' than Tanenbaum and Tanenbaum made plenty of mistakes with Minix which also make it more of a macrokernel than a true microkernel. A true microkernel does one thing and one thing only: pass messages. Now that's an ideal and in the real world you don't get to have your ideals realized so rather than to be able to realize this spherical cow you're going to have add in a few more system calls to make it work but you'll end up with something a lot closer to plan9 or QnX and compared to those Linux is very very old hat indeed, it's basically a re-run of the 70's state of the art with a a whole pile of modern day hardware drivers and other goodies thrown in. Tanenbaums biggest mistake was to try to monetize Minix through Prentice-Hall, if he'd just tossed it out there it would have picked up steam a lot quicker, but likely he too had bills to pay and his expenses at the time were probably a lot larger than Linuses, and so history was made. So, Linus was obsolete, but so was Minix and the future as we could have had it is still waiting to happen. And when it does you'll finally appreciate just how obsolete Linux was back in 92, and how much more obsolete it is today. Until then it's like democracy: not perfect but the best we've got (without shelling out lots of license fees for something better).
- icebraining 12y ago
  If cost was the only problem, why didn't Hurd take off? Did Minix not suffer from the same problems?
  - jacquesm 12y ago
    Hurd simply never was ready and/or welcoming outsiders that might have pulled it in a direction where the anointed did not want it to go (such as, actually releasing something). Hurd and Minix both missed critical windows of opportunity and ended up so far behind Linux that they might as well not have bothered. For the longest time the only thing that kept new people flooding into Minix was Tanenbaums courses at VU.
    - dandrews 12y ago
      Hurd not welcoming outsiders? My experience was opposite; for a short while I was a tourist on the dev list, and was never made to feel out of place.
justincormack 12y ago
Tanenbaum admitted at EuroBSDCon last year[1] that he was wrong about BSD and he should have turned Minix into a BSD, which he now has, with Minix3 borrowing NetBSD userspace, build system and so on. [1] https://va.ludost.net/files/eurobsdcon/2014/Vitosha/03.Saturday/07.A%20reimplementation%20of%20NetBSD%20based%20on%20a%20microkernel%20-%20Andy%20Tanenbaum.mp4 https://va.ludost.net/files/eurobsdcon/2014/Vitosha/03.Satur...
sambeau 12y ago
Before we get into - "Oh not this again!" and "Duh! but Linux Won!" and "Microkernels are still a better design"... Remember, today's lucky 10,000... http://xkcd.com/1053/ http://xkcd.com/1053/ Actually, I always enjoy reading this whenever it comes up. I was just about to start a university computing science degree course at this time and was reading Tanenbaum in preparation. This was a debate that was alive for years throughout the computing community I was part of. In the end reality came down to what always wins in computing (and in life too). Running code beats design. Design is always 'better'.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  There's a variation to that. Unless your company is a very successful multinational chances are that a stranger picked at random has not heard about your product. Makes you think a little longer about terms such as 'market saturation', most products don't even go near there.
sgt 12y ago
The following statement puts things in perspective, doesn't it. "Speeds of 200 MIPS and more are likely in the coming years." Now, a modern Mac Pro can do 488250 million instructions per second. Needless to say, we've had progress in these last couple of decades.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Forget about the Mac Pro (and isn't it the intel CPU that does those instructions to begin with?), take any modern graphics card.
RedNifre 12y ago
How feasible is it to radically refactor an operating system? Would it be possible to gradually incorporate all the insights of operating system research into Linux/BSD/$otherProductionReadyOS or is it always necessary to start again from scratch?
- justincormack 12y ago
  Minix3 is to a fairly large extent a refactor of NetBSD to have a microkernel base; osx kind of did a similar thing with freebsd. Also there are ways of running old OSs on top eg Linux on Genode. NetBSD is a good starting point as the drivers are portable (via rump kernel; eg Genode uses this for their filesystem drivers) so you can reuse them in another OS as a starting point, plus it is reasonably simple as OSs go, plus the BSD license is friendly. There were a bunch of related talks at https://operatingsystems.io/ https://operatingsystems.io/
- Danieru 12y ago
  Through refactoring Linux has been transformed to be a real time kernel using the linux-rt patch set. The patch set is aggressive and big and only slowly making way upstream. Still it proves that yes, refactoring can work. Real-time is one of those super-duper invasive features. So if it works for real-time we should be able to refactor in other features.
ezequiel-garzon 12y ago
There seems to be a response by "the" (please rise) Ken Thompson: "viewpoint may be largely unrelated to its usefulness. Many if not most of the software we use is probably obsolete according to the latest design criteria. Most users could probably care less if the internals of the operating system they use is obsolete. They are rightly more interested in its performance and capabilities at the user level. "I would generally agree that microkernels are probably the wave of the future. However, it is in my opinion easier to implement a monolithic kernel. It is also easier for it to turn into a mess in a hurry as it is modified."
avinassh 12y ago
It's amazing to see how a 20 year old university student was debating with well known OS researcher and he was so confident. Btw Linus called DOS as DOG: > You mention OS/360 and MS-DOG as examples of bad designs as they were hardware-dependent, and I agree.
ShannonSofield 12y ago
2015: The Year of Linux!
dang 12y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8151147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8151147

78 points by edwincheese 12y ago

Something to meditate on any time there is an "Appeal to Expert" - particularly on an issue that is forward looking. Also, I love how he was so confident with regards to While I could go into a long story here about the relative merits of the two designs, suffice it to say that among the people who actually design operating systems, the debate is essentially over.

Nux 12y ago
Also this (later in the thread), he was pretty wrong.. "Making software free, but only for folks with enough money to buy first class hardware (x86) is an interesting concept. Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5."
qznc 12y ago
The funny thing is that I would mostly agree with him. The important detail is "Among the people who actually design operating systems." Linus would agree that Linux is not designed. It evolved. Very few OSs are designed these days. The QNX microkernel is quite successful. L4 also seems to do well. The BSD Mach microkernel is still around. Minix is still around, although its reliability approach (similar to Erlang, let processes/drivers fail and restart) does not gain mindshare. Windows is considered a hybrid since NT. Likewise XNU/Darwin is Apple's hybrid. Maybe the current state is more like: Neither micro nor monolithic won, but we know the tradeoffs now and an OS designer can decide per feature. For most applications the difference does not matter, though. Most applications build on a higher level platform (JVM, iOS, Browser, etc).
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Linux did not evolve so much as that it tried very hard to emulate Unix but outside of the *BSD world. I think microkernels will have their day in some part of the future.

sergiolp 12y ago

I did some small contributions to GNU Hurd years ago, but still, this made me giggle: Of course 5 years from now that will be different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5.

josteink 12y ago
Looking back it's amazing how much traction the gnu userland tools gained and how little (zero?) their kernel gained. I'm not going to call it a wasted effort, because I appreciate there being other "Unix"-systems around in case Linux ever goes bad, but at this point it seems to be a whole lot of work invested for nothing. Maybe things will change 5 years down the road when people abandon systemd and DMD had matured, and the best way to run it is on Hurd, but I'm not putting any money on that bet ;)
- justincormack 12y ago
  There are the BSDs as other Unix systems around; they of course were not at the point when this was written as the lawsuits were unresolved. NetBSD started in 1993, after this. So we have plenty of backup without having to fix Hurd, as well as the L4 based microkernels that are much more mature and interesting than Hurd.

TaylorAlexander 12y ago

This is my favorite part: "Linus Benedict Torvalds In article <1992Jan29.2...@klaava.Helsinki.FI> I wrote: >Well, with a subject like this, I'm afraid I'll have to reply. And reply I did, with complete abandon, and no thought for good taste and netiquette. Apologies to ast, and thanks to John Nall for a friendy "that's not how it's done"-letter. I over-reacted, and am now composing a (much less acerbic) personal letter to ast. Hope nobody was turned away from linux due to it being (a) possibly obsolete (I still think that's not the case, although some of the criticisms are valid) and (b) written by a hothead :-) Linus "my first, and hopefully last flamefest" Torvalds" This HN comment posted from a Linux machine in 2015. :)

caster_cp 12y ago

Tanenbaum said that Torvalds would not get a good grade on his course, epic. "I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-)" Perfect display of how universities are good at judging people about how well they know how to "play the game" (and usually that involves conforming to whatever frame of mind your professor thinks is right).

carlosrg 12y ago
Well, a microkernel is harder to implement than a monolithic one and from a theoretical standpoint is a better design, IMO it deserves a higher grade in an operating system design course. Let's not mythify the 1992 Linux kernel, which probably wasn't _that_ good.
- stefantalpalaru 12y ago
  > from a theoretical standpoint is a better design What about IPC overhead?
  - mcosta 12y ago
    >> theoretical In theory you can postulate the performance impact is worth. In practice the is much more in it. That is the difference between computer science and software engineering.
  - vezzy-fnord 12y ago
    IPC overhead was primarily an issue with the Mach kernel in particular (due to it performing elaborate checks on message ports) that later ended up unfairly stigmatizing the entire microkernel design in general. Contemporary microkernels like L4 are much, much faster.
- jacquesm 12y ago
  A microkernel is much easier to implement than a monolithic one. Been there, done that. The hard part is to get the messaging done with zero overhead (no copying), but using paging for the mbufs you can get quite far with that.

amirmc 12y ago

I find it interesting that this post can be taken two ways. 1. It's clear that Linux 'won' in the marketplace so we can all laugh at how wrong this guy was and the curiosity of these 'microkernel' things and that portability stuff. Lols all around. 2. We've reached a point where ideas are gaining ground about immutable infrastructure, people are talking more about things with similarities to microkernels called unikernels [1] (and where they might be used [2]). Linux isn't going anywhere but these new approaches have value and were being discussed as long ago as 1992. Of course, the author got things wrong but that's par for course. It's more interesting to see ideas that are resurfacing. Incidentally, ARM was a RISC chip and now dominates Intel on mobile devices. I prefer the second approach. So to anyone poking fun at the author, please consider that maybe this is one aspect of living in the future [3], albeit much further than than most (market timing is always underrated and academics tend to think further ahead than most people). We can also remind ourselves that 'Better' is a tricky and subjective thing to define (cf VHS tapes vs Betamax). [1] http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2566628 [2] http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/ http://nymote.org/blog/2013/introducing-nymote/ (disclaimer: I'm involved with both the above projects) [3] http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

qznc 12y ago
> It's clear that Linux 'won' in the marketplace Arguable. There might be more instances of QNX and L4 running than of Linux. This is pretty much impossible to measure. Remember that Android smartphones have a second OS underneath or beside the Linux kernel. Apple and Microsoft use a hybrid approach, so they just do not participate in the debate. > OKL4 shipments exceeded 1.5 billion in early 2012, mostly on Qualcomm wireless modem chips. Other deployments include automotive infotainment systems. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family#Commercial_deployment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family#Commercia...
- amirmc 12y ago
  Thanks for the info. Linux certainly captured mindshare and is synonymous with the cloud these days, but I agree these things are not clear cut.

DanBC 12y ago

Amoeba Operating System: http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/ http://www.cs.vu.nl/pub/amoeba/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amoeba_(operating_system) Mach kernel http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/mach/public/www/mach.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/mach/public/www/mach.ht... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach_(kernel) RC4000 http://www.prg.dtu.dk/equip/rc4000.html http://www.prg.dtu.dk/equip/rc4000.html CHORUS http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.38.6843 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.38.6... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChorusOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ChorusOS

qznc 12y ago
QNX http://www.qnx.com/ http://www.qnx.com/ L4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L4_microkernel_family

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

krasnov 12y ago

Is it still possible to asscess comp.os.minix old archives through NNTP somewhere? Google Groups have the old emails but I can't find a way to read them in a local email client.

msh 12y ago
http://olduse.net http://olduse.net

codeulike 12y ago

Linus "my first, and hopefully last flamefest" Torvalds

Filligree 12y ago
giggle

jestinjoy1 12y ago

On the portability aspect why Minix is better than Linux? I didn't get that point.

icebraining 12y ago
IIRC, Linux at the time had plenty of i368 specific code, while Minix could be compiled to multiple architectures.
Narishma 12y ago
I believe at that time, Linux only ran on x86.

jacquesm 12y ago

The problem with this whole debate is that Linus was 'more wrong' than Tanenbaum and Tanenbaum made plenty of mistakes with Minix which also make it more of a macrokernel than a true microkernel. A true microkernel does one thing and one thing only: pass messages. Now that's an ideal and in the real world you don't get to have your ideals realized so rather than to be able to realize this spherical cow you're going to have add in a few more system calls to make it work but you'll end up with something a lot closer to plan9 or QnX and compared to those Linux is very very old hat indeed, it's basically a re-run of the 70's state of the art with a a whole pile of modern day hardware drivers and other goodies thrown in. Tanenbaums biggest mistake was to try to monetize Minix through Prentice-Hall, if he'd just tossed it out there it would have picked up steam a lot quicker, but likely he too had bills to pay and his expenses at the time were probably a lot larger than Linuses, and so history was made. So, Linus was obsolete, but so was Minix and the future as we could have had it is still waiting to happen. And when it does you'll finally appreciate just how obsolete Linux was back in 92, and how much more obsolete it is today. Until then it's like democracy: not perfect but the best we've got (without shelling out lots of license fees for something better).

icebraining 12y ago
If cost was the only problem, why didn't Hurd take off? Did Minix not suffer from the same problems?
- jacquesm 12y ago
  Hurd simply never was ready and/or welcoming outsiders that might have pulled it in a direction where the anointed did not want it to go (such as, actually releasing something). Hurd and Minix both missed critical windows of opportunity and ended up so far behind Linux that they might as well not have bothered. For the longest time the only thing that kept new people flooding into Minix was Tanenbaums courses at VU.
  - dandrews 12y ago
    Hurd not welcoming outsiders? My experience was opposite; for a short while I was a tourist on the dev list, and was never made to feel out of place.

justincormack 12y ago

Tanenbaum admitted at EuroBSDCon last year[1] that he was wrong about BSD and he should have turned Minix into a BSD, which he now has, with Minix3 borrowing NetBSD userspace, build system and so on. [1] https://va.ludost.net/files/eurobsdcon/2014/Vitosha/03.Saturday/07.A%20reimplementation%20of%20NetBSD%20based%20on%20a%20microkernel%20-%20Andy%20Tanenbaum.mp4 https://va.ludost.net/files/eurobsdcon/2014/Vitosha/03.Satur...

sambeau 12y ago

Before we get into - "Oh not this again!" and "Duh! but Linux Won!" and "Microkernels are still a better design"... Remember, today's lucky 10,000... http://xkcd.com/1053/ http://xkcd.com/1053/ Actually, I always enjoy reading this whenever it comes up. I was just about to start a university computing science degree course at this time and was reading Tanenbaum in preparation. This was a debate that was alive for years throughout the computing community I was part of. In the end reality came down to what always wins in computing (and in life too). Running code beats design. Design is always 'better'.

jacquesm 12y ago
There's a variation to that. Unless your company is a very successful multinational chances are that a stranger picked at random has not heard about your product. Makes you think a little longer about terms such as 'market saturation', most products don't even go near there.

sgt 12y ago

The following statement puts things in perspective, doesn't it. "Speeds of 200 MIPS and more are likely in the coming years." Now, a modern Mac Pro can do 488250 million instructions per second. Needless to say, we've had progress in these last couple of decades.

jacquesm 12y ago
Forget about the Mac Pro (and isn't it the intel CPU that does those instructions to begin with?), take any modern graphics card.

RedNifre 12y ago

How feasible is it to radically refactor an operating system? Would it be possible to gradually incorporate all the insights of operating system research into Linux/BSD/$otherProductionReadyOS or is it always necessary to start again from scratch?

justincormack 12y ago
Minix3 is to a fairly large extent a refactor of NetBSD to have a microkernel base; osx kind of did a similar thing with freebsd. Also there are ways of running old OSs on top eg Linux on Genode. NetBSD is a good starting point as the drivers are portable (via rump kernel; eg Genode uses this for their filesystem drivers) so you can reuse them in another OS as a starting point, plus it is reasonably simple as OSs go, plus the BSD license is friendly. There were a bunch of related talks at https://operatingsystems.io/ https://operatingsystems.io/
Danieru 12y ago
Through refactoring Linux has been transformed to be a real time kernel using the linux-rt patch set. The patch set is aggressive and big and only slowly making way upstream. Still it proves that yes, refactoring can work. Real-time is one of those super-duper invasive features. So if it works for real-time we should be able to refactor in other features.

ezequiel-garzon 12y ago

There seems to be a response by "the" (please rise) Ken Thompson: "viewpoint may be largely unrelated to its usefulness. Many if not most of the software we use is probably obsolete according to the latest design criteria. Most users could probably care less if the internals of the operating system they use is obsolete. They are rightly more interested in its performance and capabilities at the user level. "I would generally agree that microkernels are probably the wave of the future. However, it is in my opinion easier to implement a monolithic kernel. It is also easier for it to turn into a mess in a hurry as it is modified."

avinassh 12y ago

It's amazing to see how a 20 year old university student was debating with well known OS researcher and he was so confident. Btw Linus called DOS as DOG: > You mention OS/360 and MS-DOG as examples of bad designs as they were hardware-dependent, and I agree.

ShannonSofield 12y ago

2015: The Year of Linux!

dang 12y ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8151147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8151147