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=-0.8 required=5.0 tests=DKIM_ADSP_CUSTOM_MED, DKIM_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED,FREEMAIL_FROM,MAILING_LIST_MULTI, T_SCC_BODY_TEXT_LINE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 3098 invoked from network); 6 Jun 2022 12:43:50 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (50.116.15.146) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 6 Jun 2022 12:43:50 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [IPv6:::1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id EAB0240CD4; Mon, 6 Jun 2022 22:43:44 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-ot1-x329.google.com (mail-ot1-x329.google.com [IPv6:2607:f8b0:4864:20::329]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 7AA2640C61 for ; Mon, 6 Jun 2022 22:43:38 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-ot1-x329.google.com with SMTP id j17-20020a9d7391000000b0060bf94c4a64so2156782otk.7 for ; Mon, 06 Jun 2022 05:43:38 -0700 (PDT) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gmail.com; s=20210112; h=mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date:message-id:subject:to :cc; bh=49A7X5HiXRfHj43ByKQpBhD2xnUV5fBgXuTHq421PVU=; b=JOGBlNrpLFEDjXsxoKQ/yC317ssLXJkPbI+UvpYYzLJmJR8+5+h4U9as5YZufOnLM7 tWi10/i4ThSIBo5hTjU6rawR7EHUQXbcLSMaJBX9fQqDswkUWcT1MHueZGbhqLqSjaYL /NNMRYddTVuH3xKKBCclRlciBEWkvF2+VB7Y+fo7QWL2Rp9N6+m57QBJ9Ok/bth9kyX0 gOqc/LkL4Z33R9P5Qw50VAC3y5kfk9wCF63IWlj+fzeSWTu70HlQjVKIB6H84RIWYbHi 7WKDo+OdtQbtZTRKtU/mmsuBg3k1LoIhpCS+5OxvSuZiN138l72aVOVF2tURT9B8aFDR MFCw== X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20210112; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date :message-id:subject:to:cc; bh=49A7X5HiXRfHj43ByKQpBhD2xnUV5fBgXuTHq421PVU=; b=ArnzmZymQT6BEhSt6cl3t2rE7dOXgaox7/ImnqobKCBX9vElyyEPPJ2FZ8L5CrXgPk rclpDheQ4beeOm6NYaHe97wakJGLILf2n1ifFn16lyiGdb3u7VrcD98+pA3Qt3XeXS/m dR9nTREVgUa1XGk/YqLP6YCXXbWzHOBFuvIy5zjlZCbVmNoigP5vzjBNtYKon48wMePp rAo828bVgsmMUSQESgpnliAZ25Oe/hpqW9SHHU049ZGAGbtxYZlRMqolAzeFJkR4G+ZQ K3jy9VYRN6xyOkFNXUpnEz2ZUrVzsM7n0n2AMcFiOVHFbiBELcmG8SGer/HSUU8tOan3 +6GQ== X-Gm-Message-State: AOAM530I7BYo1p86+Ne0NIKP1LLhUAwYoDizvnRCYmrvVK9mhkseW8uZ iC2e1bCFAAn90UHYPkEu4iV0zxqYMPoFI/YPn1xpki7m X-Google-Smtp-Source: ABdhPJzh4+QO81O9I8u4DOym+To02qHBPoAUsjxosRoos+0rRpTVsZvNqz4m6MPUR3DZity6HHCEfja+flbJlbPu1L0= X-Received: by 2002:a05:6830:3492:b0:60b:1dda:c407 with SMTP id c18-20020a056830349200b0060b1ddac407mr9895528otu.17.1654519417512; Mon, 06 Jun 2022 05:43:37 -0700 (PDT) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <20220603214032.GQ10240@mcvoy.com> <20220603223014.GS10240@mcvoy.com> <20220603234822.GV10240@mcvoy.com> <20220604010543.GZ10240@mcvoy.com> <20220606011511.GG10240@mcvoy.com> <20220606023614.GJ10240@mcvoy.com> In-Reply-To: <20220606023614.GJ10240@mcvoy.com> From: Dan Cross Date: Mon, 6 Jun 2022 08:43:01 -0400 Message-ID: To: Larry McVoy Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Message-ID-Hash: MRJANV6AMMRZ232MVR3DOI7YECA43GNM X-Message-ID-Hash: MRJANV6AMMRZ232MVR3DOI7YECA43GNM X-MailFrom: crossd@gmail.com X-Mailman-Rule-Misses: dmarc-mitigation; no-senders; approved; emergency; loop; banned-address; member-moderation; nonmember-moderation; administrivia; implicit-dest; max-recipients; max-size; news-moderation; no-subject; digests; suspicious-header CC: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society X-Mailman-Version: 3.3.6b1 Precedence: list Subject: [TUHS] Re: Fwd: [simh] Announcing the Open SIMH project List-Id: The Unix Heritage Society mailing list Archived-At: List-Archive: List-Help: List-Owner: List-Post: List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: On Sun, Jun 5, 2022 at 10:36 PM Larry McVoy wrote: > On Sun, Jun 05, 2022 at 09:40:44PM -0400, Dan Cross wrote: > > [snip] > > But every distribution has its own installer, and they vary wildly. > > Indeed they do. I'd put RedHat as the best of the best, but truth be > told, Debian is not bad, it's more basic but it works. I don't think I've installed RedHat in years, honestly. I believe you that it's a smooth process. > I disagree about the BSDs being similar to Linux, go partition a > disk with FreeBSD and then compare that to Linux. It's night and day. > The Linux stuff works and is obvious, the FreeBSD stuff only makes sense > if you have been using that forever, it's awful if you are a newbie. But define "Linux" here. Do you mean RedHat, specifically? Because with Arch, you've got to manually run `fdisk` or `gdisk` or whatever, and add partitions in that tool, set their type manually, etc, then manually create the filesystems, install the boot loader and configure it. The steps aren't necessarily hard, but it is tedious. The FreeBSD installer, on the other hand, does pretty much all of that for you. My point is that YMMV widely between Linux distributions, which vary between extremes of, "manually partition the disk" and "this graphical wizard does all the nasty stuff for you" and FreeBSD is somewhere between those two. > And I say that as a guy who went through Sun's stuff, it was similar to > FreeBSD but a bit better. > > Linux really did just make stuff work. Huh. I remember before GPT you had to manually create MBR partitions and, if you wanted more than 3 or 4 (or whatever the number was...) you had to go and explicity create an extended partition and then subdivide that. With FreeBSD, you just created one MBR partition and then the installer let you create filesystems within that using their pseudo-graphical installer (pseudo- in the sense that it was all text-based, but at least it was menu driven if that was your bag). I found whatever Linux distribution I was installing at the time a lot more complex than FreeBSD, but I get that individuals differ here. Then again, I care a _lot_ less about carefully dividing my disk up into different filesystems these days. Back in the day, especially on multiuser machines, you had to either due to limitations in the filesystem code (2GB FFS partitions!) or to keep random users from filling up / or /usr. Most of the need for that kind of subdivision has gone away. > Is it elegant like v7 was, absolutely > not. Does it handle a ton of stuff that nobody could imagine in the v7 days? Oh, absolutely! > Absolutely yes. Is it more complex than it should be? I dunno, it is more > complex than I like but I'm an old graybeard. I really wanted coarse graine > locking with what Clem and crew did with the cluster approach. The vproc > stuff. I loved that and I think that is the knee of the curve, scale up > a bit on SMP but then cluster to scale up more. The world that might have been. I was thinking more about the ABI compatibility stuff that Ted had mentioned, and the more I think about it, the less I think that the kernel ABI is all that relevant. Yes, it's nice that you can take a binary compiled on one distribution of Linux and drop it onto another distribution and it will theoretically run because the system call numbers will mostly line up and the convention for trapping into the kernel is basically stable, but that's only part of the equation, and for any non-trivial binaries, you've also got to make sure that a whole slew of shared libraries are installed and the correct version (hence why my colleague can't use the Salae controller software on his Arch machine). To compensate, we've built up a huge amount of complexity around containers and flatpaks and all of that stuff, which sometimes doesn't work; not to mention moving across ISAs. A stable kernel ABI may be necessary, but it's definitely not sufficient. - Dan C.