From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on inbox.vuxu.org X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.0 required=5.0 tests=MAILING_LIST_MULTI, RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 7022 invoked from network); 10 Feb 2021 01:41:48 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 10 Feb 2021 01:41:48 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id A7D509503A; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 11:41:45 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BE22494F1A; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 11:41:28 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 171F794F1A; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 11:41:25 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 0D5D694F19 for ; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 11:41:24 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id B439C35E34E; Tue, 9 Feb 2021 17:41:23 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2021 17:41:23 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Jon Steinhart Message-ID: <20210210014123.GS13701@mcvoy.com> References: <202102091900.119J0Gv9850825@darkstar.fourwinds.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <202102091900.119J0Gv9850825@darkstar.fourwinds.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.24 (2015-08-30) Subject: Re: [TUHS] Macs and future unix derivatives X-BeenThere: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.26 Precedence: list List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Cc: tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" On Tue, Feb 09, 2021 at 11:00:15AM -0800, Jon Steinhart wrote: > While I use linux, it's no longer a system that I trust in any way. It's > huge, bloated, rats-nest undocumented code. Yes, I know that a small > percentage of people like Ted spend a lot of time on the code and therefore > know it well. But I find it an impenetrable mess. When I first had a need > to look at the UNIX kernel, it was easy to figure out what was going on. Not > so with linux. Of course, I'm getting old and maybe not as good at this stuff > as I used to be. Jon, I think you might be old enough to have run v7, if not, like me, you have read the Lions book and loved it. That kernel didn't do much, it was uniprocessor, block interrupts design, no networking, it was very basic. Amazingly nice to read, but it didn't do a lot. Which is part of the reason we liked it. I loved SunOS 4.x but it was also a uniprocessor kernel (Greg Limes tried to make it SMP but it was not a kernel that wanted to be SMP). I loved it because I could understand it and it was a bit more complex than v7. The problem space that kernels address these days include SMP, NUMA, and all sorts of other stuff. I'm not sure I could understand the Linux kernel even if I were in my prime. It's a harder space, you need to know a lot more, be skilled at a lot more. My take is we're old dudes yearning for the days when everything was simple. Remember when out of order wasn't a thing? Yeah, me too, I gave up on trying to debug kernels when kadb couldn't tell me what I was looking at. --lm