From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: jsteve@superglobalmegacorp.com (Jason Stevens) Date: Wed, 8 Feb 2017 11:56:37 +0800 Subject: [TUHS] Code bloat (was: How Unix brings people together, or it's a small...) In-Reply-To: References: <930c52a0c279cdd7d44953aa403a504a8622bb83@webmail.yaccman.com> <20170208025538.GE65698@eureka.lemis.com> Message-ID: What about NetBSD 1.1 or even 386BSD? There never was a 4.2 or 4.3 for i386 was there? I'd guess the 32v userland could be built on early 4.4BSD Lite/NET2 greatly reducing its footprint. On February 8, 2017 11:47:03 AM GMT+08:00, Nick Downing wrote: >This is an issue that interests me quite a bit, since I was running >FreeBSD in an effort to get around Linux bloat problems discussed. >Well not that I really mind Linux as a user interface / runtime >environment / main development machine, but I think it probably >shouldn't be used as a "least common denominator" for development >since you end up introducing unwanted dependencies on a whole lot of >stuff. > >So I was running FreeBSD as a more minimal *nix. I did quite a lot of >interesting stuff with FreeBSD such as setting up diskless >workstations in my home, etc. I spent a lot of time tinkering around >in the kernel code. I was planning to do some serious development on >4.4BSDLite or FreeBSD to create an operating system more to my liking. >So, I was looking carefully at differences since ancient *nixes. > >And, I can say that FreeBSD is pretty bloated. Umm well they've added >SMP, at the time it was using the Giant Lock although that could be >fixed by now. They've added VFS and NFS of course. They've added an >entire subsystem for block devices IIRC that handles partitioning and >possibly some other sophisticated stuff, which I believe is their own >design. Umm the kqueues and I believe they have their own >implementation of kernel threading or lightweight processes including >some sort of idle daemon. The network stack is heavily upgraded, to >the extent I looked into it, the added features are things you would >want (syncookies = DOS protection, etc) but also could not possibly be >called minimal, and would preclude running it on other than a >multi-megabyte machine. They have multiple ABIs so the kernel can >accept Linux or BSD syscalls or whatever else (I used it to run >Acrobat Reader Linux on my FreeBSD desktop). Umm I am pretty sure they >have kernel modules ala Linux. Lots and lots and lots of stuff... and >that's only considering the kernel. If you look in the ports >collection you see they have incredible amounts of bloat there too... >for instance GNOME, Libreoffice, LATEX, gcc, python... not that I'm >denigrating these tools, since they do invaluable work and I use them >every day, but the point is, you CANNOT call them minimal. > >The quest for a clean minimal system goes on ->. FreeBSD is not the >answer. In fact I believe 4.3BSD-Reno and 4.4 go strongly offtrack. > >cheers, Nick > >On Wed, Feb 8, 2017 at 1:55 PM, Greg 'groggy' Lehey >wrote: >> On Tuesday, 7 February 2017 at 15:38:40 -0800, Steve Johnson wrote: >>> Looking back, the social dynamics of the Unix group helped a lot in >>> keeping the bloat small. The rule was, whoever touches something >>> last becomes its owner. Of course, we were all free to complain >>> about things, and did, but the amalgamation of tinkerings that >>> characterizes most of the Linux commands just didn't happen. >> >> Out of interest: where do you (or others) consider that the current >> BSD projects it in this comparison? >> >> Greg >> -- >> Sent from my desktop computer. >> Finger grog at lemis.com for PGP public key. >> See complete headers for address and phone numbers. >> This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program >> reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA -- Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: