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 17491 invoked from network); 10 Feb 2021 03:11:17 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 10 Feb 2021 03:11:17 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id 36A579507B; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 13:11:13 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9430294F1B; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 13:10:52 +1000 (AEST) Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id D247494F1B; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 13:10:50 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mcvoy.com (mcvoy.com [192.169.23.250]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 22D3194F19 for ; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 13:10:50 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mcvoy.com (Postfix, from userid 3546) id 647B535E34E; Tue, 9 Feb 2021 19:10:49 -0800 (PST) Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2021 19:10:49 -0800 From: Larry McVoy To: Dan Cross Message-ID: <20210210031049.GU13701@mcvoy.com> References: <202102091900.119J0Gv9850825@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <20210210014123.GS13701@mcvoy.com> <20210210022424.GT13701@mcvoy.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: 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 main list Errors-To: tuhs-bounces@minnie.tuhs.org Sender: "TUHS" Sounds good, I've been out on my boat and with my feet I'm a mess, love that boat but I need go rest. I'll give this the reply it deserves in the morning. On Tue, Feb 09, 2021 at 09:44:49PM -0500, Dan Cross wrote: > On Tue, Feb 9, 2021 at 9:25 PM Larry McVoy wrote: > > > I'm going to rant a little here, George, this is not to you, it's to > > the topic. > > > > All in all, that was a pretty tame Rant, Larry. :-) > > Who among us is running v7, or some other kernel that we all love > > because we understand it? I'd venture a guess that it is noone. > > We like our X11, we like that we can do "make -j" and you can build > > a kernel in a minute or two, we like our web browsers, we like a lot > > of stuff that if you look at it from the lens "but it should be simple", > > but that lens doesn't give us what we want. > > > > I had a stint in life where my "primary" environment was a VT320 hooked up > to a VAXstation running VMS, from which I'd telnet to a Unix machine. > Subjectively, it was among the more productive times in my life > professionally: I felt that I wrote good code and could concentrate on what > I was working on. > > Fast forward 15 years (so a little 10 years ago), I'm sitting in front of a > Mac Pro desktop with two large displays and an infinite number of browser > tabs open and I feel almost hopelessly productive. I just can't > concentrate; I can't find anything; things are beeping at me all the time > and I have no idea where the music is coming from. Ads are telling me I > should buy all kinds of things I didn't even know I needed; the temptation > to read the news, or email, or the plot of some movie I saw an ad for 20 > years ago (but never saw) on wikipedia is too great and another 45 minutes > are gone. > > So I go on ebay and find a VT420 in good condition and buy it; it arrives > an unproductive week later, and I hook it up to the serial port on my Linux > machine at work and configure getty and login and ... wow, this is > terrible! It's just too dang and limiting. And that hum from the flyback > transformer is annoyingly distracting. > > The lesson is that we look back at our old environments through the rosy > glasses of nostalgia, but we forget the pain points. Yeah, we might moan > about the X protocol or the complexity of SMP or filesystems or mmap() or > whatever, but hey, programs that I care about to get my work done are > already written for those environments, and do I _really_ want to write > another shell or terminal program or editor or email client? Actually...no. > No, I do not. > > So I'm sympathetic to this. > > I get it. I love the clean simple lines that were the original Unix > > but we live in a more complex world. > > > But this I take some exception to. Yes, the world is more complex, but part > of the complexity of our systems is, as Jon asserts, poor abstractions. > It's like the recent discussion of ZFS vs merged VM/Buffer caches: most > people don't care. But as a system designer, I do. One _can_ build systems > that support graphics and networking without X11 and sockets and with a > small number of system calls. One _can_ provide some support for "legacy" > systems by papering over the difference with a library (back in the day, > someone even ported X11 to Plan 9), but it does get messy and you hit > limitations at some point. > > Ted is straddling those lines > > and he's doing the best he can and his best is pretty darn good. > > > > I'd just like to stress I'm not trying to criticize Ted, or anyone else, > really. We've got the systems we've got. But a lot of the complexity we've > got in those systems comes from trying to retrofit a design that was > fundamentally oriented towards a uniprocessor machine onto a multiprocessor > system that looks approximately nothing like a PDP-11. I do agree with Jon > that much of Linux's complexity is unjustified (functions called `foo` that > call `__foo` that calls `__do_foo_for_bar`...I understand this is to limit > nesting. But...dang), but much of it is forced by trying to accommodate a > particular system model on systems that are no longer really amenable to > that model. > > - Dan C. > > I'd argue listen to Ted. He's got the balance. > > > > --lm > > > > [1] Truth in advertising, Ted and I are friends, we used to hike together > > in Pacifica, we like each other. > > > > On Wed, Feb 10, 2021 at 11:52:21AM +1000, George Michaelson wrote: > > > I won't dispute your age, or how many layers of pearl are on the seed > > > Larry, but MP unix was a thing long long ago. > > > > > > I am pretty sure it was written up in BSTJ, and there was Pyramid by > > > 1984/5 and an MP unix system otherwise running at Melbourne University > > > (Rob Elz) around 1988. > > > > > > You might be ancient, but you weren't THAT ancient in the 1980s. > > > > > > anyway, pearls before swine, and age before beauty. > > > > > > -G > > > > -- > > --- > > Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com > > http://www.mcvoy.com/lm > > -- --- Larry McVoy lm at mcvoy.com http://www.mcvoy.com/lm