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_INVALID,DKIM_SIGNED, MAILING_LIST_MULTI,RCVD_IN_DNSWL_NONE autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 Received: (qmail 9220 invoked from network); 10 Feb 2021 20:04:36 -0000 Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (45.79.103.53) by inbox.vuxu.org with ESMTPUTF8; 10 Feb 2021 20:04:36 -0000 Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id D18519B937; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 06:04:28 +1000 (AEST) Received: from minnie.tuhs.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0CC7794F1B; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 06:03:55 +1000 (AEST) Authentication-Results: minnie.tuhs.org; dkim=fail reason="key not found in DNS" (0-bit key; unprotected) header.d=kev009.com header.i=@kev009.com header.b="VsvPSMwh"; dkim-atps=neutral Received: by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix, from userid 112) id EB77394F1B; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 06:03:52 +1000 (AEST) Received: from mail-yb1-f181.google.com (mail-yb1-f181.google.com [209.85.219.181]) by minnie.tuhs.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id 25B4894F19 for ; Thu, 11 Feb 2021 06:03:52 +1000 (AEST) Received: by mail-yb1-f181.google.com with SMTP id p186so3283555ybg.2 for ; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 12:03:52 -0800 (PST) DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=kev009.com; s=google; h=mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date:message-id:subject:to :cc:content-transfer-encoding; bh=IPGi7aMrjqalxuMKzYeqqoatORjcRBhaBKb8SOxgYGY=; b=VsvPSMwh1uaOIkVLlmn2mnM7xQAPnnN+a/7MItClAt2KfrSpZoCra+X/E9Blzf+z8Y qhE64GdBOyok7dJVxT6a92++lCVxBKPDXweeKgFMm9dONhipFJAMSS/6ppwA6Sw23PAf McmJNTnEimKxpVeZztUAmmVQQNHFw1sO08Az0= X-Google-DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=1e100.net; s=20161025; h=x-gm-message-state:mime-version:references:in-reply-to:from:date :message-id:subject:to:cc:content-transfer-encoding; bh=IPGi7aMrjqalxuMKzYeqqoatORjcRBhaBKb8SOxgYGY=; b=Wt637vesDy642EO63yVlFw1xo44NSooWOplF1jENZCo8sZdiJD3YxUDLElwwOxkXc0 q9TFlEQOs2wsTQ9AkICJS+9injffr//6d1b0IKhT86NGB2x8lj/wLsWv5NQBTU0VWS6X CQbNFnE8W75rMleyHPr9C+IrNspzW3FRst2clkN5uhauPX8jZnI4ndJZbhRp5WkeeJ5B tNwi/FUJfNq/8N9znD5vHtU4PpXMbiHjfFQuCNBzKP9U07KGAcN4gNn43wymikq0Myy8 3UPwqdPblv68YG1AAciyVvrHnP0x1XJuunupkgzyrx31UAQDN4yT9+3qjcKK++v3aTIS d88Q== X-Gm-Message-State: AOAM531QIY0uA0H5+lgcB1oMMqn+HutPlgH6/IQGJ6Er6WxuoPJm6R7l xuX2YUroZkNuKnkgXcUdjzrRu3liUCKs/cs5AJEXng== X-Google-Smtp-Source: ABdhPJxs//HMg48maAV+O2YjD7GQByQFs5JOBROdmd7SQD/E1+9S1ZYos8Q3BM7z/uEFF0s7YUP7O8f0gagAm+eJDpc= X-Received: by 2002:a05:6902:706:: with SMTP id k6mr6667206ybt.87.1612987431201; Wed, 10 Feb 2021 12:03:51 -0800 (PST) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <202102091900.119J0Gv9850825@darkstar.fourwinds.com> <20210210014123.GS13701@mcvoy.com> <20210210022424.GT13701@mcvoy.com> In-Reply-To: From: Kevin Bowling Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2021 13:03:39 -0700 Message-ID: To: Dan Cross Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable 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" On Tue, Feb 9, 2021 at 7:46 PM 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 u= p to a VAXstation running VMS, from which I'd telnet to a Unix machine. Sub= jectively, 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 browse= r tabs open and I feel almost hopelessly productive. I just can't concentra= te; 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 al= l kinds of things I didn't even know I needed; the temptation to read the n= ews, 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. This is the realest description of the modern predicament I have seen! Depending on mood and day, things can be great or awful with modern software for me. In particular, we live in a world of total abundance which is great but also overwhelming. There are no shortage of interesting kernels, libraries, and applications all for free which is particularly amazing having grown up in the brief era of the PC world where most interesting software was shrink-wrapped and cost prohibitive. I can't help but eventually tie the current status quo back to economics. There is a lot of (perceived?) power in flexing a large staff of programmers, whether they are productive or not. It's like having a large standing army during peacetime. The mere existence gives you power in the current market. Look at the first 10 companies on this list https://companiesmarketcap.com/. It's safe to say Aramco has top quality HPC and development staff and the rest are all mostly pure tech plays with large staffs of developers and systems engineers. So in a way, we are sustaining Full Employment Theory for people with *nix skills. That isn't great for quality. Early OS work was done by small teams relative to current, people who really cared about what they were doing. The modern situation is great for people's livelihoods, so unless you are retired make hay while the sun is shining. > 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 Linu= x machine at work and configure getty and login and ... wow, this is terrib= le! It's just too dang and limiting. And that hum from the flyback transfor= mer 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 ab= out the X protocol or the complexity of SMP or filesystems or mmap() or wha= tever, 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 she= ll or terminal program or editor or email client? Actually...no. No, I do n= ot. > > 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 pa= rt 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 peo= ple don't care. But as a system designer, I do. One _can_ build systems tha= t 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 e= ven 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 fundam= entally oriented towards a uniprocessor machine onto a multiprocessor syste= m 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 nest= ing. But...dang), but much of it is forced by trying to accommodate a parti= cular system model on systems that are no longer really amenable to that mo= del. > > - 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 togethe= r >> 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.mcvo= y.com/lm