Re: [9fans] new compilers

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[erik quanstrom]

we should not deprive andy tannenbaum of one iota of the credit he
so richly deserves for spurring the creation of linux.

all linus wanted was the ability to distribute a pre-patched version of minix
which supported a few non-80286-compatable convienences like protected
memory.

- erik

On Sun Mar 26 02:15:00 CST 2006, lyndon@orthanc.ca wrote:
>
> On Mar 25, 2006, at 6:52 PM, quanstro@quanstro.net wrote:
>
> > i've got to say one thing in gcc's favor. it was way the heck
> > better than
> > any other compiler i had available when it was first written.
>
> I have fond memories of threatining the Sun sales sloths with death
> and worse if they didn't at least ship .h files after they unbundled
> the C compiler.  Sun is as responsible for GCC as the AT&T lawyers
> are responsible for Linux.
>
> --lyndon

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> we should not deprive andy tannenbaum of one iota of the credit he
> so richly deserves for spurring the creation of linux.

>> I have fond memories of threatining the Sun sales sloths with death
>> and worse if they didn't at least ship .h files after they unbundled
>> the C compiler.  Sun is as responsible for GCC as the AT&T lawyers
>> are responsible for Linux.

True enough.  My point was that both GCC and Linux received a tremendous
boost in popularity due to two massive acts of corporate stupidity.

--lyndon

P.S.  This doesn't mean I'll ever *forgive* Andy Tannenbaum for spurring
the creation of Linux.

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Bakul Shah]

> P.S.  This doesn't mean I'll ever *forgive* Andy Tannenbaum for spurring
> the creation of Linux.

Hmm... and all this time I thought Linux wouldn't have
succeeded if Plan 9 had preceded it out in the open software
world.

May be it is wishful thinking but I suspect even now a Plan 9
based book along the lines of "the Unix Programming
Environment" will find a receptive audience.

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Sape Mullender]

>> P.S.  This doesn't mean I'll ever *forgive* Andy Tannenbaum for spurring
>> the creation of Linux.

This is how myths are born.  Andy Tanenbaum (one n) had nothing to do with
Linux.  He started Minix.  Maybe the existence of Minix played a role in Linus'
decision to start Linux, maybe not.

	Sape

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[LiteStar numnums]

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If I remember correctly Linus created Linux because he could not distributed
some of the fixes he had made for Minix in a single package. Can someone
correct or verify this?

On 3/28/06, Sape Mullender <sape@plan9.bell-labs.com> wrote:
>
> >> P.S.  This doesn't mean I'll ever *forgive* Andy Tannenbaum for
> spurring
> >> the creation of Linux.
>
> This is how myths are born.  Andy Tanenbaum (one n) had nothing to do with
> Linux.  He started Minix.  Maybe the existence of Minix played a role in
> Linus'
> decision to start Linux, maybe not.
>
>         Sape
>
>


--
Nietzsche's first step is to accept what he knows. Atheism for him goes
without saying and is "contructive and
radical". Nietzsche's supreme vocation, so he says, is to provoke a kind of
crisis and a final decision about the
problem of atheism. The world continues on its course at random and there is
nothing final about it. Thus God
is useless, since He wants nothing in particular. If he wanted something --
and here we recognize the traditional
forumlation of the problem of evil -- He would have to assume responsiblity
for "a sum total of pain and inconsistency
which would debase the entire value of being born."
-- Albert Camus, L'Homme révolté

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[9fans] [OT] hypothetical questions

[Russ Cox]

The existence of Minix certainly did play a role in Linus'
decision to start Linux, at least according to Tanenbaum
in the 3rd ed. of his OS textbook (no online ref; I flipped
through a copy yesterday), and according to Linus'
post reproduced at http://www.linux10.org/history/.
I'm sure there are plenty of other references too,
and Google can find them as well as 9fans can.

That's not the same as Tanenbaum playing an active role
in the creation of Linux itself, which he didn't.  I think that
was Sape's point, though I don't think it's what the original
post was trying to imply, especially given the earlier
comments about organizations inadvertently helping to
create other things.  (If Sun hadn't unbundled their
compilers, maybe gcc wouldn't have taken off.  Etc.)
If the Minix license had been different, maybe Linus
wouldn't have created a new system.  Too late now.

Sape raises an interesting and unanswerable question:
if there had been no Minix, would Linus have still been led
to create his own OS?  You'll have to build a time machine
to find out.

(This post is a futile attempt to snip this off-topic branch
at its root.  If nothing else at least it's tagged.)

Russ

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Victor Nazarov]

LiteStar numnums wrote:

> If I remember correctly Linus created Linux because he could not
> distributed some of the fixes he had made for Minix in a single
> package. Can someone correct or verify this?
>
Yes. That's right. Whole story (from Linus's point of view) is in
Linus's Just for Fun book. Really Linux was just a terminal emulator for
connecting to the University computer. Linus announce the creation of
some working code in minix mailing list and Linus name himself as a
great fan of Andy Tannenbaum's book The Design and Implementation of OS
(Minix book)

--
Victor

Re: [9fans] [OT] linus, the early years

[Charles Forsyth]

>>Yes. That's right. Whole story (from Linus's point of view) is in
>>Linus's Just for Fun book. Really Linux was just a terminal emulator for

so you're saying it wasn't really `Just for Fun' but `Just for That!'.
and thus in a way, it was the flipside version of the opposing system's success:
the weather was good and some chap decides to go flying that day,
and IBM, kept waiting, decides: just for that he can go fly a kite, and they'll allow that
sprat Gates to provide them with a poxy little program loader.

Re: [9fans] [OT] hypothetical questions

[Brantley Coile]

> If the Minix license had been different, maybe Linus
> wouldn't have created a new system.

Would that mean that Minix would now look like Linux?

Re: [9fans] [OT] hypothetical questions

[David Leimbach]

Many argue, including Linus himself, that had 386BSD had floating
point emulation (which Linus eventually contributed to 386BSD by the
way) and the licensing issues and legal battles between Unix <-> BSD
hadn't happend, he might have not made Linux.

I think he said all of that in his book "Just for Fun".

Dave
On 3/28/06, Russ Cox <rsc@swtch.com> wrote:
> The existence of Minix certainly did play a role in Linus'
> decision to start Linux, at least according to Tanenbaum
> in the 3rd ed. of his OS textbook (no online ref; I flipped
> through a copy yesterday), and according to Linus'
> post reproduced at http://www.linux10.org/history/.
> I'm sure there are plenty of other references too,
> and Google can find them as well as 9fans can.
>
> That's not the same as Tanenbaum playing an active role
> in the creation of Linux itself, which he didn't.  I think that
> was Sape's point, though I don't think it's what the original
> post was trying to imply, especially given the earlier
> comments about organizations inadvertently helping to
> create other things.  (If Sun hadn't unbundled their
> compilers, maybe gcc wouldn't have taken off.  Etc.)
> If the Minix license had been different, maybe Linus
> wouldn't have created a new system.  Too late now.
>
> Sape raises an interesting and unanswerable question:
> if there had been no Minix, would Linus have still been led
> to create his own OS?  You'll have to build a time machine
> to find out.
>
> (This post is a futile attempt to snip this off-topic branch
> at its root.  If nothing else at least it's tagged.)
>
> Russ
>
>

Re: [9fans] [OT] linus, the early years

[Victor Nazarov]

Charles Forsyth wrote:

>>>Yes. That's right. Whole story (from Linus's point of view) is in
>>>Linus's Just for Fun book. Really Linux was just a terminal emulator for
>>>
>>>
>
>so you're saying it wasn't really `Just for Fun' but `Just for That!'.
>and thus in a way, it was the flipside version of the opposing system's success:
>the weather was good and some chap decides to go flying that day,
>and IBM, kept waiting, decides: just for that he can go fly a kite, and they'll allow that
>sprat Gates to provide them with a poxy little program loader.
>
>
Many things was there for linux to be born. And any accident can lead to
it's creation. If Linus wasn't the creator, somebody else would be.

Re: [9fans] [OT] hypothetical questions

[LiteStar numnums]

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I've no idea if you've seen Minix 3, but with all the bizzare crap that is
in there, it might as well be Linux. I'm suprised that magic numbers aren't
floating all over the place. I especially love this crap (which isn't
necessarily Minix related, but fun none the less):
FORWARD _PROTOTYPE (void somefunc, (char *args));
PUBLIC void somefunc (char *args)
{
...
}
Granted, Linux is stable whereas I've not found Minix to be especially
great,but it still has the hoarde hackery feeling without the benfit(?).
On 3/28/06, Brantley Coile <brantley@coraid.com> wrote:
>
> > If the Minix license had been different, maybe Linus
> > wouldn't have created a new system.
>
> Would that mean that Minix would now look like Linux?
>
>


--
Nietzsche's first step is to accept what he knows. Atheism for him goes
without saying and is "contructive and
radical". Nietzsche's supreme vocation, so he says, is to provoke a kind of
crisis and a final decision about the
problem of atheism. The world continues on its course at random and there is
nothing final about it. Thus God
is useless, since He wants nothing in particular. If he wanted something --
and here we recognize the traditional
forumlation of the problem of evil -- He would have to assume responsiblity
for "a sum total of pain and inconsistency
which would debase the entire value of being born."
-- Albert Camus, L'Homme révolté

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Re: [9fans] [OT] hypothetical questions

[Lou Kamenov]

On 3/28/06, LiteStar numnums <litestar@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've no idea if you've seen Minix 3, but with all the bizzare crap that is
> in there, it might as well be Linux.

i second that, as charles pointed out sometime ago reading linux and
now minix (3) code could be quite an adventure (torture?).

cheers,
l

Re: [9fans] [OT] hypothetical questions

[Bruce Ellis]

don't go there ... unless you are looking at adding another few thosand
lines of redundancy.

brucee

On 3/29/06, Lou Kamenov <loukamenov@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/28/06, LiteStar numnums <litestar@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I've no idea if you've seen Minix 3, but with all the bizzare crap that is
> > in there, it might as well be Linux.
>
> i second that, as charles pointed out sometime ago reading linux and
> now minix (3) code could be quite an adventure (torture?).
>
> cheers,
> l
>

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Burton Samograd]

On 3/28/06, Victor Nazarov <vir@comtv.ru> wrote:
> LiteStar numnums wrote:
>
> Yes. That's right. Whole story (from Linus's point of view) is in
> Linus's Just for Fun book. Really Linux was just a terminal emulator for
> connecting to the University computer. Linus announce the creation of
> some working code in minix mailing list and Linus name himself as a
> great fan of Andy Tannenbaum's book The Design and Implementation of OS
> (Minix book)

I've been hearing this "terminal emulator" story quite a bit lately
(over the past couple of months), and, althought I do dislike talking
part in such arguments, the story that I've always heard (circa '94)
was that linux was the result of wanting to try out the protected mode
features of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't
support.

--
burton samograd                                                kruhft@gmail.com
kruhft.blogspot.com   www.myspace.com/kruhft   metashell.blogspot.com

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Victor Nazarov]

Burton Samograd wrote:

>I've been hearing this "terminal emulator" story quite a bit lately
>(over the past couple of months), and, althought I do dislike talking
>part in such arguments, the story that I've always heard (circa '94)
>was that linux was the result of wanting to try out the protected mode
>features of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't
>support.
>
>
There is no offense for linux to start as a terminal emulator.
And Linus confirms that. And this fact doesn't contradict with
your point (" wanting to try out the protected mode features
of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't support").
Why do you want to reject this terminal emulator origins?
--
Victor Nazarov

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Burton Samograd]

> There is no offense for linux to start as a terminal emulator.
> And Linus confirms that. And this fact doesn't contradict with
> your point (" wanting to try out the protected mode features
> of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't support").
> Why do you want to reject this terminal emulator origins?

I don't want to reject it, it just sounds like a bit of a slam, since
I generally don't hear much good about linux on lists such as this. 
Without linux I wouldn't have ever had a chance to really learn unix,
would have never had a reason to check out plan9 and even have an iota
of understanding about why it's such a great evolution over the
original unix.  I know linux isn't the best but it sure gets picked on
a lot, especially around these groups.

Us kids (well, I'm 31 today, but I still feel like a kid around these
circles) never got to grow up with unix and linux let us learn, so it
still has a place near my heart, warts, cancerous growths and all ;-)

--
burton samograd                                                kruhft@gmail.com
kruhft.blogspot.com   www.myspace.com/kruhft   metashell.blogspot.com

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Skip Tavakkolian]

>>I've been hearing this "terminal emulator" story quite a bit lately
>>(over the past couple of months), and, althought I do dislike talking
>>part in such arguments, the story that I've always heard (circa '94)
>>was that linux was the result of wanting to try out the protected mode
>>features of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't
>>support.
>>
>>
> There is no offense for linux to start as a terminal emulator.
> And Linus confirms that. And this fact doesn't contradict with
> your point (" wanting to try out the protected mode features
> of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't support").
> Why do you want to reject this terminal emulator origins?

what was the nature of this "terminal emulator"?  was it something
like a vt100 terminal emulator or something like mux (dmd, 630)?

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Federico G. Benavento]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 50 bytes --]

http://liw.iki.fi/liw/texts/linux-anecdotes.html

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From: "Burton Samograd" <kruhft@gmail.com>
To: "Fans of the OS Plan 9 from Bell Labs" <9fans@cse.psu.edu>
Subject: Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?
Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 12:04:44 -0600
Message-ID: <ace468790603291004y3c87009fx72d0b779df1a47df@mail.gmail.com>

> There is no offense for linux to start as a terminal emulator.
> And Linus confirms that. And this fact doesn't contradict with
> your point (" wanting to try out the protected mode features
> of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't support").
> Why do you want to reject this terminal emulator origins?

I don't want to reject it, it just sounds like a bit of a slam, since
I generally don't hear much good about linux on lists such as this. 
Without linux I wouldn't have ever had a chance to really learn unix,
would have never had a reason to check out plan9 and even have an iota
of understanding about why it's such a great evolution over the
original unix.  I know linux isn't the best but it sure gets picked on
a lot, especially around these groups.

Us kids (well, I'm 31 today, but I still feel like a kid around these
circles) never got to grow up with unix and linux let us learn, so it
still has a place near my heart, warts, cancerous growths and all ;-)

--
burton samograd                                                kruhft@gmail.com
kruhft.blogspot.com   www.myspace.com/kruhft   metashell.blogspot.com

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Victor Nazarov]

Skip Tavakkolian wrote:

>what was the nature of this "terminal emulator"?  was it something
>like a vt100 terminal emulator or something like mux (dmd, 630)?
>
>
I think it was something like vt100, imho, linux's tty driver derives a
lot from Linus's work, but I don't feel competent to answer your
question, you can investigate source code to find some evidence that I'm
right or wrong.

Burton Samograd <kruhft@gmail.com> wrote

>Us kids (well, I'm 31 today, but I still feel like a kid around these
>circles) never got to grow up with unix and linux let us learn, so it
>still has a place near my heart, warts, cancerous growths and all  ;-)
>
>
Hmm, the most important part of my answer is my age. I'm 21. I'm just a
student.

>I don't want to reject it, it just sounds like a bit of a slam, since
>I generally don't hear much good about linux on lists such as this.
>
>
No slam was intended by me, just an interesting fact, isn't it?

>Without linux I wouldn't have ever had a chance to really learn unix,
>would have never had a reason to check out plan9 and even have an iota
>of understanding about why it's such a great evolution over the
>original unix.  I know linux isn't the best but it sure gets picked on
>a lot, especially around these groups.
>
I can confirm, that my path to the world of plan9 is the same. I still
like Debian, that I used a lot. I still don't like Windows that I use
and have to use a lot. I think, the feeling I experiance when see or
hear about GNU crap is something like sadness. Seems like they loose
that way. That way wich is embodied by Plan9.
--
Victor Nazarov

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[andrey mirtchovski]

On 3/29/06, Federico G. Benavento <benavento@gmail.com> wrote:
> http://liw.iki.fi/liw/texts/linux-anecdotes.html

"What is it that Linux has that no other operating system has? A
cuddly, lovable, silly-looking mascot."

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Francisco J Ballesteros]

Doesn´t the "Linus´s Just for Fun" book title answer these
questions? :-)

On 3/29/06, Burton Samograd <kruhft@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/28/06, Victor Nazarov <vir@comtv.ru> wrote:
> > LiteStar numnums wrote:
> >
> > Yes. That's right. Whole story (from Linus's point of view) is in
> > Linus's Just for Fun book. Really Linux was just a terminal emulator for
> > connecting to the University computer. Linus announce the creation of
> > some working code in minix mailing list and Linus name himself as a
> > great fan of Andy Tannenbaum's book The Design and Implementation of OS
> > (Minix book)
>
> I've been hearing this "terminal emulator" story quite a bit lately
> (over the past couple of months), and, althought I do dislike talking
> part in such arguments, the story that I've always heard (circa '94)
> was that linux was the result of wanting to try out the protected mode
> features of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't
> support.
>
> --
> burton samograd                                                kruhft@gmail.com
> kruhft.blogspot.com   www.myspace.com/kruhft   metashell.blogspot.com
>
>

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Wes Kussmaul]

Francisco J Ballesteros wrote:

>Doesn´t the "Linus´s Just for Fun" book title answer these
>questions? :-)
>  
>
Indeed, I bet Linus himself doesn't remember half the "justifications" 
for doing it.

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[lucio]

> " wanting to try out the protected mode features
> of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't support"

Bruce Evans had a minix-386 running before I heard of Linus Torvalds.

++L

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Dave Eckhardt]

> Without linux I wouldn't have ever had a chance to really learn
> unix [...]

Sure you would have--at worst you'd have been delayed a couple years.

http://www.softpanorama.org/People/Torvalds/Finland_period/att_lawsuit_as_a_launcher_for_linux.shtml

And if you *had* suffered that delay, you'd have got not only BSD
Unix but also Mach (multiprocessor support, multi-threaded processes).
Or maybe Plan 9 :-)

Dave Eckhardt

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[quanstro]

i remember linux' existance giving quite a bit of pressure to the bsd projects.
it's hard to make convincing counterfactual arguments. waiting just a few
years is a really big deal when you're the one waiting.

i wore down the academic computing guys at the college i attended till
they signed the paperwork necessiary for a academic licence way back when.
the cd arrived the summer after i graduated.

i don't see how mach is an improvement over linux.  especially early linux.
mach kernels were three times the size of linux kernels of the day
and didn't do anything useful by themselves. sure they had threads, but
they also had 31 flavors of messages.

mach was developed at cmu and freely available, wasn't it? the documentation
was (tree killers).

- erik

On Wed Mar 29 17:28:38 CST 2006, davide+p9@cs.cmu.edu wrote:
> And if you *had* suffered that delay, you'd have got not only BSD
> Unix but also Mach (multiprocessor support, multi-threaded processes).
> Or maybe Plan 9 :-)
>
> Dave Eckhardt

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Ronald G Minnich]

quanstro@quanstro.net wrote:

> mach was developed at cmu and freely available, wasn't it? the documentation
> was (tree killers).


best Mach phrase: "micro kernel doesn't mean it is small, just that it
does not do much".

from a flame war that erupted when the leviathan mach 3.0 came out.

Well, it may have been big, but at least it was slow.

Lots of good research came out of mach ... not what you think. sandia
national labs has done lots of great OS work for 10 years, or so,
spurred on by the unusable Mach-derived OSF-1/MK-AD that came on their
paragon, and the need to toss it and start clean. SNL did some very nice
work, all due to the need to get rid of the "micro kernel".

ron

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Ronald G Minnich]

quanstro@quanstro.net wrote:
> do you have some pointers to papers from these guys?

go to snl.gov and look up PUMA. PUMA is as different from plan 9 as you
are going to get -- but it did its job well.

ron

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Martin C. Atkins]

Indeed - I used it alot. It was the best thing available.

But it was the patch-hell of maintaining it that made Linux so
attractive in those days.

(That, and the slow-downs caused by Minix's micro-kernel architecture)

Martin

On Thu, 30 Mar 2006 01:16:03 +0200 lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
> > " wanting to try out the protected mode features
> > of his spiffy new '386, which I assume that minix didn't support"
>
> Bruce Evans had a minix-386 running before I heard of Linus Torvalds.
>
> ++L
>


--
Martin C. Atkins			martin_ml@parvat.com
Parvat Infotech Private Limited		http://www.parvat.com{/,/martin}

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Roman Shaposhnick]

On Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 08:40:55PM -0600, quanstro@quanstro.net wrote:
> do you have some pointers to papers from these guys?
>
> from my uneducated position, it seems to me that plan9 has a large
> percentage of what microkernels claim.

  Personally, one virtue of the founding fathers I admire the most
  is their ability to come up with really cool ideas and then always
  know where to stop. The sort of difference cherry on top makes,
  if you know what I mean:

     without a cherry on top: C,       Plan9,  Acme
     with a cherry on top:  C++, MACH/Spring, Emacs

  both lists go on.


Thanks,
Roman.

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[quanstro]

do you have some pointers to papers from these guys?

from my uneducated position, it seems to me that plan9 has a large
percentage of what microkernels claim.  one thing one can't
do is write a hardware driver that lives in userspace.  one advantage
of this could be the ability to load drivers depending on configuration.

has anybody invested some brain cells in this?

- erik

On Wed Mar 29 19:37:48 CST 2006, rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
> Lots of good research came out of mach ... not what you think. sandia
> national labs has done lots of great OS work for 10 years, or so,
> spurred on by the unusable Mach-derived OSF-1/MK-AD that came on their
> paragon, and the need to toss it and start clean. SNL did some very nice
> work, all due to the need to get rid of the "micro kernel".
>
> ron

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[jmk]

On Wed Mar 29 20:52:09 EST 2006, quanstro@quanstro.net wrote:
> do you have some pointers to papers from these guys?
>
> from my uneducated position, it seems to me that plan9 has a large
> percentage of what microkernels claim.  one thing one can't
> do is write a hardware driver that lives in userspace.  one advantage
> of this could be the ability to load drivers depending on configuration.
>
> has anybody invested some brain cells in this?
>
> - erik

yes, brain cells have been burned on that and it has been done.
but we're waiting for uriel's replacement for 9load before the
details are finalised. after all, we don't want to waste our time
doing something that's already been done but just not released.

--jim

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[lucio]

> But it was the patch-hell of maintaining it that made Linux so
> attractive in those days.

I don't know, I went from an interest in Minix directly to 386BSD and
I have never had cause to look back.  Except that Plan 9 changes the
landscape somewhat.

++L

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Brantley Coile]

> Sure you would have--at worst you'd have been delayed a couple years.

I remember the 386 version of BSD about the same time as Linux was
almost, but not quite, usable.  I ran BSDI stuff from 1992 til Plan 9
was released in 1995.  Before that I ran my port of V7 with streams
and my version of TCP running on Motorola 68K VME boards.  I don't
think there was any waiting going on.

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Richard Miller]

> Before that I ran my port of V7 with streams
> and my version of TCP running on Motorola 68K VME boards.

You mean you kept a customised version of the kernel source
locally?  Completely unacceptable.

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Brantley Coile]

>> Before that I ran my port of V7 with streams
>> and my version of TCP running on Motorola 68K VME boards.
>
> You mean you kept a customised version of the kernel source
> locally?  Completely unacceptable.

Consensus has never been my strong point. :)

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[David Leimbach]

On 3/29/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> quanstro@quanstro.net wrote:
>
> > mach was developed at cmu and freely available, wasn't it? the documentation
> > was (tree killers).
>
>
> best Mach phrase: "micro kernel doesn't mean it is small, just that it
> does not do much".
>
> from a flame war that erupted when the leviathan mach 3.0 came out.
>
> Well, it may have been big, but at least it was slow.
>
> Lots of good research came out of mach ... not what you think. sandia
> national labs has done lots of great OS work for 10 years, or so,
> spurred on by the unusable Mach-derived OSF-1/MK-AD that came on their
> paragon, and the need to toss it and start clean. SNL did some very nice
> work, all due to the need to get rid of the "micro kernel".
>

In case anyone was interested.  The madmen at UNSW are porting Darwin
(the mac os x unix portion that used to be freely available until the
intel macs came out) to L4

http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/software/darbat/

I know Qualcomm also uses L4 in real production hardware now for
embedded systems.

You can't lump all microkernels together.  Mach was/is a really poor
microkernel compared to others of today's standards.  QNX has a much
better one as well.

Dave

> ron
>

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[David Leimbach]

On 3/29/06, quanstro@quanstro.net <quanstro@quanstro.net> wrote:
> do you have some pointers to papers from these guys?
>
> from my uneducated position, it seems to me that plan9 has a large
> percentage of what microkernels claim.  one thing one can't
> do is write a hardware driver that lives in userspace.  one advantage
> of this could be the ability to load drivers depending on configuration.
>
> has anybody invested some brain cells in this?

Userspace drivers?  You can load L4 Linux into userspace and use it's
drivers over L4 IPC calls and get reasonable performance.

Heck, you can even download a live ISO and just boot it that uses some
of this technology.  The FreeBSD IDE driver is pushed into userspace
and accessed by the rest of the L4 system.

Now if I could only find the link....

Dave

>
> - erik
>
> On Wed Mar 29 19:37:48 CST 2006, rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
> > Lots of good research came out of mach ... not what you think. sandia
> > national labs has done lots of great OS work for 10 years, or so,
> > spurred on by the unusable Mach-derived OSF-1/MK-AD that came on their
> > paragon, and the need to toss it and start clean. SNL did some very nice
> > work, all due to the need to get rid of the "micro kernel".
> >
> > ron
>

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[Dave Eckhardt]

> i don't see how mach is an improvement over linux.  especially
> early linux.  mach kernels were three times the size of linux
> kernels of the day and didn't do anything useful by themselves.

What the AT&T lawsuit blocked distribution of was Mach 2.5, which
was BSD Unix with parts of the kernel replaced.  One unified source
tree ran on several architectures (VAX, 68k, MIPS, x86; later 88k,
Sparc).  Commercial multiprocessor Unix machines were sold running
that code base (the Encore Multimax, and I *think* the Sequent
Symmetry).

As for utility, Mach on VAX and 68k Sun and DEC PMAX and PC hardware
was the computing environment for hundreds of people at a time at CMU
for a good chunk of a decade.  Multiprocessor desktop workstations
(4-way 88k "Luna" boxes made by Omron) were not uncommon in 1992.
By no means was it perfect, and it was never really good at the
distributed-computing thing, but I think it would have provided *very*
stiff competition for Linux if it hadn't been embargoed.

Dave Eckhardt

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Aharon Robbins]

In article <2afc30c8b36e542ca0a16fc6f4e4c1a3@plan9.bell-labs.com> you write:
>>> P.S.  This doesn't mean I'll ever *forgive* Andy Tannenbaum for spurring
>>> the creation of Linux.
>
>This is how myths are born.  Andy Tanenbaum (one n) had nothing to do with
>Linux.  He started Minix.  Maybe the existence of Minix played a role in Linus'
>decision to start Linux, maybe not.
>
>	Sape

Ah, but he did. There were TONS of people begging Andy to make Minix
do virtual memory on 386 hardware and also to loosen up somewhat on the
licensing. He would do neither.

As a result, there were a huge number of people frothing at the mouth to
just hack on *something, anything* that would run on a 386, so when Linus
released his toy, the world jumped in.

There were also later exchanges between Andy and Linux about microkernel
vs. macrokernel etc.  One could probably still find all this on Google
were one really interested.

It may also help to remember that commercial Unix for 386 was several
hundred dollars a pop, for a binary-only copy, and that was SVR3 or
SVR4, not very exciting to people used to hacking on BSD Unix. (Plus
maybe some additional $$ for a compiler!)

Arnold

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Bruce Ellis]

what else do we need in the plan9 kernel?  and when will the first
linux distribution that comes in a 10 DVD boxed set be released?

brucee

On 4/3/06, Aharon Robbins <arnold@skeeve.com> wrote:
> In article <2afc30c8b36e542ca0a16fc6f4e4c1a3@plan9.bell-labs.com> you write:
> >>> P.S.  This doesn't mean I'll ever *forgive* Andy Tannenbaum for spurring
> >>> the creation of Linux.
> >
> >This is how myths are born.  Andy Tanenbaum (one n) had nothing to do with
> >Linux.  He started Minix.  Maybe the existence of Minix played a role in Linus'
> >decision to start Linux, maybe not.
> >
> >       Sape
>
> Ah, but he did. There were TONS of people begging Andy to make Minix
> do virtual memory on 386 hardware and also to loosen up somewhat on the
> licensing. He would do neither.
>
> As a result, there were a huge number of people frothing at the mouth to
> just hack on *something, anything* that would run on a 386, so when Linus
> released his toy, the world jumped in.
>
> There were also later exchanges between Andy and Linux about microkernel
> vs. macrokernel etc.  One could probably still find all this on Google
> were one really interested.
>
> It may also help to remember that commercial Unix for 386 was several
> hundred dollars a pop, for a binary-only copy, and that was SVR3 or
> SVR4, not very exciting to people used to hacking on BSD Unix. (Plus
> maybe some additional $$ for a compiler!)
>
> Arnold
>

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[lucio]

> Ah, but he did. There were TONS of people begging Andy to make Minix
> do virtual memory on 386 hardware and also to loosen up somewhat on the
> licensing. He would do neither.

I wasn't paying attention to the public debate at the time and even
managed not to notice the micro-kernel/monolythic-kernel controversy,
but I have a pretty clear recollection that the licencing for Minix
was dictated by McGraw-Hill, the publishers of the Minix book, rather
than Tanenbaum himself.

As for 386-hardware, I already mentioned that Bruce Evans had a
legitimate minix-386 going, whether virtual memory was involved or
not, I have no recollection.  The licencing, I recall, was that you
had to have paid for the source distribution and you were then
entitled to all subsequent upgrades and so on.  I did not get the
impression that it was a show stopper at the time, I paid considerably
more for Plan 9 with a much more restrictive licence.

I had some very brief interactions with Andy (and Bruce) at the time,
and both struck me as extremely pleasant, down to earth people.
Torvalds never gave me the same warm feeling as they.

++L

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Skip Tavakkolian]

> As for 386-hardware, I already mentioned that Bruce Evans had a
> legitimate minix-386 going, whether virtual memory was involved or
> not, I have no recollection.  The licencing, I recall, was that you
> had to have paid for the source distribution and you were then
> entitled to all subsequent upgrades and so on.  I did not get the
> impression that it was a show stopper at the time, I paid considerably
> more for Plan 9 with a much more restrictive licence.

I seem to recall that 386BSD was available at about the same time.  i
don't know why it didn't catch on the way linux did.

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[LiteStar numnums]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1435 bytes --]

The whole AT&T vs. BSD lawsuit fiasco scared alot of people away from BSD.

On 4/2/06, Skip Tavakkolian <9nut@9netics.com> wrote:
>
> > As for 386-hardware, I already mentioned that Bruce Evans had a
> > legitimate minix-386 going, whether virtual memory was involved or
> > not, I have no recollection.  The licencing, I recall, was that you
> > had to have paid for the source distribution and you were then
> > entitled to all subsequent upgrades and so on.  I did not get the
> > impression that it was a show stopper at the time, I paid considerably
> > more for Plan 9 with a much more restrictive licence.
>
> I seem to recall that 386BSD was available at about the same time.  i
> don't know why it didn't catch on the way linux did.
>
>


--
Nietzsche's first step is to accept what he knows. Atheism for him goes
without saying and is "contructive and
radical". Nietzsche's supreme vocation, so he says, is to provoke a kind of
crisis and a final decision about the
problem of atheism. The world continues on its course at random and there is
nothing final about it. Thus God
is useless, since He wants nothing in particular. If he wanted something --
and here we recognize the traditional
forumlation of the problem of evil -- He would have to assume responsiblity
for "a sum total of pain and inconsistency
which would debase the entire value of being born."
-- Albert Camus, L'Homme révolté

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 1816 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[plan9]

On Sun, Apr 02, 2006 at 09:47:03PM +0200, lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
>
> I wasn't paying attention to the public debate at the time and even
> managed not to notice the micro-kernel/monolythic-kernel controversy,
> but I have a pretty clear recollection that the licencing for Minix
> was dictated by McGraw-Hill, the publishers of the Minix book, rather
> than Tanenbaum himself.

The publisher was Prentice Hall, not that anyone really cares.

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[lucio]

> The publisher was Prentice Hall, not that anyone really cares.

Oh, they might, if I'm accusing the wrong ones of blocking
technological progress!

:-(

Thank you for the correction.

++L

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[lucio]

> The whole AT&T vs. BSD lawsuit fiasco scared alot of people away from BSD.

Professionals, maybe, but backyard hackers had little reason to care.
I looked at Linux and at 386BSD (and QNX and BSDi) and 386BSD came up
tops.  Linux had no graphics (nor had the BSDs) and KA9Q as networking
(so did the Unix PC, a little earlier, that's what I cut my teeth on),
so there was some other factor there that I did not see, then or now.
Crazily, it may have been the GNU licence, but I'm not convinced.

I'll need to ask my Linux guru (CCed).

++L

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[George Michaelson]

nobody who held a valid licence from the regents had any reason to care
about that lawsuit.

[I worked in several academic/research institutions holding BSD regents
 licences, and while the were a complet PITA to deal with over
 re-re-re-signings and the like (if you couldn't dig up the corpse and
 use the hand to sign the documents with a forgery of the original
 signatures on the first paperwork ever signed with Berkeley, then you
 couldn't renew licences: like the role of 'vice chancellor' never
 changes in the lifetime of a business relationship with Berkeley!) ]

[having said which, the longest delay I ever saw on a tape was due to
 British customs holding 4.2BSD until they got payment on some
 calculated VAT value.]

-G

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[LiteStar numnums]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1979 bytes --]

I think the suit had alot to do with it. There was no question as to the
origins
or legality of linux. It was free, open & mutable. 386BSD was all of these
things,
but the stigma of a lawsuit, regardless of merit, can make people question
where
they will want to invest their time. Even though linux was not a the same
level
as 386BSD when it was released, it was without any questions as to whether
or
not your code & work will continue to be fruitful (it's nice to make
sentances run).
I believe that linux was at the right place at the right time; before
'hacking' became
some nebulous & mediocre buzz word. Simply ripe for the picking.

On 4/3/06, lucio@proxima.alt.za <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
>
> > The whole AT&T vs. BSD lawsuit fiasco scared alot of people away from
> BSD.
>
> Professionals, maybe, but backyard hackers had little reason to care.
> I looked at Linux and at 386BSD (and QNX and BSDi) and 386BSD came up
> tops.  Linux had no graphics (nor had the BSDs) and KA9Q as networking
> (so did the Unix PC, a little earlier, that's what I cut my teeth on),
> so there was some other factor there that I did not see, then or now.
> Crazily, it may have been the GNU licence, but I'm not convinced.
>
> I'll need to ask my Linux guru (CCed).
>
> ++L
>
>


--
Nietzsche's first step is to accept what he knows. Atheism for him goes
without saying and is "contructive and
radical". Nietzsche's supreme vocation, so he says, is to provoke a kind of
crisis and a final decision about the
problem of atheism. The world continues on its course at random and there is
nothing final about it. Thus God
is useless, since He wants nothing in particular. If he wanted something --
and here we recognize the traditional
forumlation of the problem of evil -- He would have to assume responsiblity
for "a sum total of pain and inconsistency
which would debase the entire value of being born."
-- Albert Camus, L'Homme révolté

[-- Attachment #2: Type: text/html, Size: 2391 bytes --]

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

On Apr 2, 2006, at 10:38 PM, George Michaelson wrote:

> [I worked in several academic/research institutions holding BSD
> regents
>  licences, and while the were a complet PITA to deal with over
>  re-re-re-signings and the like (if you couldn't dig up the corpse and
>  use the hand to sign the documents with a forgery of the original
>  signatures on the first paperwork ever signed with Berkeley, then you
>  couldn't renew licences: like the role of 'vice chancellor' never
>  changes in the lifetime of a business relationship with Berkeley!) ]

How was this different from dealing with AT&T?  Both had assinine
beaurocracy.

It took me close to a month to register for the SVR3 kernel internals
course.  As a Canadian, I didn't have a US social security number.  I
never did find out why that was a pre-requisite.  They did finally
settle for my phone number instead.

--lyndon

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Lyndon Nerenberg]

> Professionals, maybe, but backyard hackers had little reason to care.

But the pro's had the commercial distributions; I don't think it
really mattered to them.  (I had Irix and Solaris (and SCO :-P) at
work.  My interest in *BSD was to have something I could experiment
with outside of my day job.)

> Linux had no graphics (nor had the BSDs)

I don't think that's true.  X11 was around and reasonably portable.
(BSDi had it in the alpha and beta releases circa 1993.)

> and KA9Q as networking

Phil's code had a narrow audience at the time.  I ran both NOS and
early Linux at the time, and settled on NOS because it was more
reliable than the Linux kernels of the day.  The Linux code was also
almost impossible to configure and install at that time.  I ended up
running a mailing list for six months off a PC running NOS.  Ugly,
but it worked.  (But NOS kicked Linux hands down for the radio side
of things, and I was running a couple of high-traffic AX25 gateways
at the time.)

--lyndon

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[uriel]

I don't know how to put this politely, so I won't.

Please take this thread to the lunix-history-fans list.

Thank you

uriel

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[lucio]

>> Professionals, maybe, but backyard hackers had little reason to care.
>
> But the pro's had the commercial distributions; I don't think it
> really mattered to them.  (I had Irix and Solaris (and SCO :-P) at
> work.  My interest in *BSD was to have something I could experiment
> with outside of my day job.)
>
I guess we are in agreement, Linux and the BSDs were the hackers'
options.  Minix was, too.

>> Linux had no graphics (nor had the BSDs)
>
> I don't think that's true.  X11 was around and reasonably portable.
> (BSDi had it in the alpha and beta releases circa 1993.)
>
Well, it had X before TCP/IP, which originally was...

>> and KA9Q as networking
>
> Phil's code had a narrow audience at the time.

By some measure, sure, but I ran a dial-in Internet access service
using a (badly) hacked PPP module in KA9Q.  Someone even released a
local version of KA9Q as a South African product, in contravention of
its licence.  Within my circle of Internet "heads", KA9Q was all the
rage.  And Bdale Garbee (sp?)'s manual.doc is still my recommendation
to learn the fundamentals of TCP/IP.  Not that anyone has listened to
my recommendation :-(

Funny, you could download Linux over the 'Net, but you could not
connect with it.  It took Win'95, in my environment, to popularise the
'Net.

I think X was a bit of a toy until TCP/IP became a reality, porting X
without TCP/IP deedn't seem any easier than running *BSD without
TCP/IP.  Possible, but not easy.

++L

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Martin C. Atkins]

On Mon, 3 Apr 2006 11:36:01 +0200 uriel@cat-v.org wrote:
> I don't know how to put this politely, so I won't.
>
> Please take this thread to the lunix-history-fans list.

I must say, that I think that was very polite!
>
> Thank you

Thank you!

>
> uriel
>
Martin

--
Martin C. Atkins			martin_ml@parvat.com
Parvat Infotech Private Limited		http://www.parvat.com{/,/martin}

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Brantley Coile]

BSDi was the way I went in those days before Plan 9 was released.  It
was cheap, it had all the source and it was easier to install
than the other systems I'd played with.

But as soon as I could switch back to plan 9 ....


lucio@proxima.alt.za wrote:
>>The whole AT&T vs. BSD lawsuit fiasco scared alot of people away from BSD.
>
>
> Professionals, maybe, but backyard hackers had little reason to care.
> I looked at Linux and at 386BSD (and QNX and BSDi) and 386BSD came up
> tops.  Linux had no graphics (nor had the BSDs) and KA9Q as networking
> (so did the Unix PC, a little earlier, that's what I cut my teeth on),
> so there was some other factor there that I did not see, then or now.
> Crazily, it may have been the GNU licence, but I'm not convinced.
>
> I'll need to ask my Linux guru (CCed).
>
> ++L
>

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[David Leimbach]

On 4/2/06, lucio@proxima.alt.za <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
> > The whole AT&T vs. BSD lawsuit fiasco scared alot of people away from BSD.
>
> Professionals, maybe, but backyard hackers had little reason to care.
> I looked at Linux and at 386BSD (and QNX and BSDi) and 386BSD came up
> tops.  Linux had no graphics (nor had the BSDs) and KA9Q as networking
> (so did the Unix PC, a little earlier, that's what I cut my teeth on),
> so there was some other factor there that I did not see, then or now.
> Crazily, it may have been the GNU licence, but I'm not convinced.
>
> I'll need to ask my Linux guru (CCed).
>
> ++L
>
>

Alan Cox of Linux fame says he used linux because it had FP emulation.
(IIRC).  Otherwise he'd have used 386BSD instead.

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Bruce Ellis]

i recall a prof who bought a mac becasue "it wasn't unix" and "it wasn't intel".
that was years ago .... things have changed huh?

brucee

On 4/4/06, David Leimbach <leimy2k@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/2/06, lucio@proxima.alt.za <lucio@proxima.alt.za> wrote:
> > > The whole AT&T vs. BSD lawsuit fiasco scared alot of people away from BSD.
> >
> > Professionals, maybe, but backyard hackers had little reason to care.
> > I looked at Linux and at 386BSD (and QNX and BSDi) and 386BSD came up
> > tops.  Linux had no graphics (nor had the BSDs) and KA9Q as networking
> > (so did the Unix PC, a little earlier, that's what I cut my teeth on),
> > so there was some other factor there that I did not see, then or now.
> > Crazily, it may have been the GNU licence, but I'm not convinced.
> >
> > I'll need to ask my Linux guru (CCed).
> >
> > ++L
> >
> >
>
> Alan Cox of Linux fame says he used linux because it had FP emulation.
> (IIRC).  Otherwise he'd have used 386BSD instead.
>

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Jack Johnson]

On 4/3/06, Bruce Ellis <bruce.ellis@gmail.com> wrote:
> i recall a prof who bought a mac becasue "it wasn't unix" and "it wasn't intel".
> that was years ago .... things have changed huh?

Speaking of which, does anyone have any opinion of Objective-C, other
than the preponderance of things like
kAudioHardwarePropertyBootChimeVolumeRangeDecibels in the prevalent
code?

-Jack

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[uriel]

> On 4/3/06, Bruce Ellis <bruce.ellis@gmail.com> wrote:
>> i recall a prof who bought a mac becasue "it wasn't unix" and "it wasn't intel".
>> that was years ago .... things have changed huh?
>
> Speaking of which, does anyone have any opinion of Objective-C, other
> than the preponderance of things like
> kAudioHardwarePropertyBootChimeVolumeRangeDecibels in the prevalent
> code?

I would rather ask:

	"What is wrong with C?"

 and then

	"What is wrong with C that Limbo didn't fix?"


Maybe 9fans should be renamed lunix-history-buffs-and-apple-fanboys...

uriel

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Ronald G Minnich]

uriel@cat-v.org wrote:

> Maybe 9fans should be renamed lunix-history-buffs-and-apple-fanboys...

, no, no, no.

LinuxHistoryBuffsAndAppleFanboysAndBSDToo

I did not know that being a 9fan meant you were unable to like other
things as well. Polygamy is legal in the software game.

ron

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Bruce Ellis]

it would need at least an Ex version to add more 0 parameters.

LinuxHistoryBuffsAndAppleFanboysAndBSDTooEx(0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0)

brucee

On 4/4/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> uriel@cat-v.org wrote:
>
> > Maybe 9fans should be renamed lunix-history-buffs-and-apple-fanboys...
>
> , no, no, no.
>
> LinuxHistoryBuffsAndAppleFanboysAndBSDToo
>
> I did not know that being a 9fan meant you were unable to like other
> things as well. Polygamy is legal in the software game.
>
> ron
>

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Anthony Sorace]

On 4/3/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
// I did not know that being a 9fan meant you were unable
// to like other things as well.

can someone gen ron a copy of the Fanboy Handbook? i've mislaid mine.
c'mon, ron - zealotry  is mandatory! perspective is for philosophers.

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Jack Johnson]

On 4/3/06, uriel@cat-v.org <uriel@cat-v.org> wrote:
> I would rather ask:

So, are you say

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Jack Johnson]

On 4/3/06, uriel@cat-v.org <uriel@cat-v.org> wrote:
> I would rather ask:

So, are you saying you have no opinion, or would you rather not share
it?  You might as well have asked what's wrong with Ford that BMW
didn't fix?

I have no opinion--no experience with it--which is why I'm asking. 
I'm not out to berate someone else's choice.  And, not to belittle
Limbo, but one motivation for creating Objective-C was to avoid
Smalltalk's VM.  So, if you really believe Limbo in some way fixed C,
are you also implying that avoiding the VM in Objective-C was a poor
design choice?

-Jack

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[lucio]

> I would rather ask:
>
> 	"What is wrong with C?"
>
>  and then
>
> 	"What is wrong with C that Limbo didn't fix?"
>
>
> Maybe 9fans should be renamed lunix-history-buffs-and-apple-fanboys...

Well, why don't you fix C _and_ Limbo and we'll humbly allow you to
call the mailing list precisely what you want to.

In fact why don't you go run your own mailing list?

++L

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Bruce Ellis]

can someone set up a scsi drive in less than 4 months?

ask yourself.

brucee

On 4/4/06, Anthony Sorace <anothy@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/3/06, Ronald G Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> // I did not know that being a 9fan meant you were unable
> // to like other things as well.
>
> can someone gen ron a copy of the Fanboy Handbook? i've mislaid mine.
> c'mon, ron - zealotry  is mandatory! perspective is for philosophers.
>

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[David Leimbach]

On 4/3/06, Jack Johnson <knapjack@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 4/3/06, uriel@cat-v.org <uriel@cat-v.org> wrote:
> > I would rather ask:
>
> So, are you saying you have no opinion, or would you rather not share
> it?  You might as well have asked what's wrong with Ford that BMW
> didn't fix?
>
> I have no opinion--no experience with it--which is why I'm asking.
> I'm not out to berate someone else's choice.  And, not to belittle
> Limbo, but one motivation for creating Objective-C was to avoid
> Smalltalk's VM.  So, if you really believe Limbo in some way fixed C,
> are you also implying that avoiding the VM in Objective-C was a poor
> design choice?
>
> -Jack
>
No VM but a pretty interesting runtime, with lots of ways to pass data
around of any type but then find out if it's supported at runtime.

I think Objective-C opened a lot of GUI programming possibilities that
might have been trickier to express in other languages.

There is no one tool that does the job all the time that I've found.

All the world is not a nail.

Dave

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[rog]

actually, the kAudioHardwarePropertyBootChimeVolumeRangeDecibels-type constants
are part of a C interface. i'm not sure if there was an objective-C-style
interface.

i used objective C for a number of years, and i came away with the opinion
that it had initially been quite a neat little (operative word) hack to give
some dynamic binding and a bit of structure to C, but it had turned into
something of a monster. its main problem was lack of modularity - all object
methods lived in the same namespace, and since there were many of them,
huge names were necessitated. the fix for this was to put in place a some
more conventional static class-based typechecking, which was a big mistake
in my view, because one of the nice things about the early objective-C was
freedom of implementation - if you implemented the right methods, then
it didn't matter what class (if any) you inherited from.

in the end objective C suffers from the same flawed inheritance design
as most of the other "object oriented" languages. interfaces are usually
designed by extension rather than by use, so one has to spend much time
writing silly little pieces of non-code to try to mesh what one would
like to do with the design of the interface. the result is often a
tangle of interwoven dependencies that is difficult to understand,
harder to maintain, and almost impossible to refactor.

for something with a stated aim of encouraging software reuse, this style
of OO certainly does a good job of actively discouraging it!

in contrast i've found Limbo's statically typed (but dynamically implemented)
module structure to be excellent for reuse. if objective C
had gone more wholeheartedly down the protocol route, it might have ended
up with something a bit more like this.

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Brantley Coile]

uriel@cat-v.org wrote:
> I would rather ask:
>
> 	"What is wrong with C?"
>
>  and then
>
> 	"What is wrong with C that Limbo didn't fix?"
>
>

I don't think the question makes sense.  If you mean why do any other
language than C, then you have to ask, to do what?  Not the beginning
of a discourse, but I just wanted to point out the what's wrong with
the question.

Re: [9fans] new compilers

[Bruce Ellis]

i think charles once said that it was 'leisurely" to program in limbo.
i agree.  the compiler is great, as is the debugger.  use what
ever you like.  i write nearly everything in limbo or VHDL (the limbo
helpers generate most of the VHDL).  it's easier to write a limbo
program to produce the VHDL ...

brucee

On 4/5/06, Brantley Coile <brantley@coraid.com> wrote:
> uriel@cat-v.org wrote:
> > I would rather ask:
> >
> >       "What is wrong with C?"
> >
> >  and then
> >
> >       "What is wrong with C that Limbo didn't fix?"
> >
> >
>
> I don't think the question makes sense.  If you mean why do any other
> language than C, then you have to ask, to do what?  Not the beginning
> of a discourse, but I just wanted to point out the what's wrong with
> the question.
>

Re: [9fans] [OT] linux origins, why not?

[erik quanstrom]

sorry for the stupid question.  i didn't mean to step in that.

- erik

On Wed Mar 29 22:28:01 CST 2006, jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:
> On Wed Mar 29 20:52:09 EST 2006, quanstro@quanstro.net wrote:
> > do you have some pointers to papers from these guys?
> >
> > from my uneducated position, it seems to me that plan9 has a large
> > percentage of what microkernels claim.  one thing one can't
> > do is write a hardware driver that lives in userspace.  one advantage
> > of this could be the ability to load drivers depending on configuration.
> >
> > has anybody invested some brain cells in this?
> >
> > - erik
>
> yes, brain cells have been burned on that and it has been done.
> but we're waiting for uriel's replacement for 9load before the
> details are finalised. after all, we don't want to waste our time
> doing something that's already been done but just not released.
>
> --jim