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From: Dave Horsfall <dave@horsfall.org>
To: The Eunuchs Hysterical Society <tuhs@tuhs.org>
Subject: Re: [TUHS] FreeBSD behind the times? (was: Favorite unix design principles?)
Date: Thu, 4 Feb 2021 16:43:55 +1100 (EST)	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.21.9999.2102041629440.70858@aneurin.horsfall.org> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <20210131022500.GU4227@mcvoy.com>

On Sat, 30 Jan 2021, Larry McVoy wrote:

[ Usual insightful...  insights ]

> If you like ZFS you don't understand operating systems design.  I do.

Indeed...

> Jeff Bonwick was a stats student at Stanford when he took my OS class, I 
> convinced him to come to Sun.  Bill Moore worked for me.  That's the two 
> main ZFS guys and I thought I had taught them well but they let me down.

{ ... ]

There's no way that I'd use ZFS; lose a block in an ordinary file, well, 
you now have a hole (but not in the file-system sense); lose a block in a 
compressed system, well...

Or perhaps I'm becoming conservative in my old age; I remember when I once 
rewrote utilities that when writing a zero block merely did a seek instead 
(or something like that; you had to remember to actually write out the 
last block).  I wouldn't try it these days, as Unix file systems were 
simple back then.

[ ... ]

> Let's try it this way.  Get back to me when you can show me 40 people 
> who have installed FreeBSD on their own, with no help.  In the same 
> time, I can show you 40,000 people who have installed Linux on their 
> own, with no help.  Probably 400,000.

Well, I did (but without ZFS) on several boxes, with zero help.  Having
had SunOS experience (4.4 was the best) helped :-)

I can't stand Penguin/OS; it looks too much like Windoze for my liking
(and does its best to be almost-Unix-but-not-quite).

-- Dave, a grey-beard

  parent reply	other threads:[~2021-02-04  5:45 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 70+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2021-01-25 11:10 [TUHS] Favorite unix design principles? Tyler Adams
2021-01-25 12:32 ` Steve Nickolas
2021-01-26  2:06   ` M Douglas McIlroy
2021-01-26  2:53     ` Steve Nickolas
2021-01-26 10:22     ` Tyler Adams
2021-01-26 12:26       ` John P. Linderman
2021-01-26 15:23       ` Clem Cole
2021-01-26 16:00         ` Niklas Karlsson
2021-01-26 16:13           ` Adam Thornton
     [not found]       ` <CAKH6PiXKjksEpQOMMMQTbcsMvX2thz3WzqjoRWJAsXnZ4Eq_iQ@mail.gmail.com>
2021-01-30 19:01         ` Tyler Adams
2021-01-30 19:50           ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-30 20:06             ` Tyler Adams
2021-01-30 21:28               ` Clem Cole
2021-01-30 21:42                 ` Dave Horsfall
2021-01-30 21:45                 ` Tyler Adams
2021-01-30 22:31                   ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-30 22:28                 ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-30 23:11                   ` [TUHS] FreeBSD behind the times? (was: Favorite unix design principles?) Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2021-01-30 23:17                     ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-30 23:22                       ` Warner Losh
2021-01-30 23:31                         ` [TUHS] [SPAM] " Larry McVoy
2021-01-30 23:37                           ` Jon Steinhart
2021-01-30 23:54                             ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-31 12:23                               ` [TUHS] [SPAM] Re: FreeBSD behind the times? Dermot Tynan
2021-01-31  0:00                             ` [TUHS] [SPAM] Re: FreeBSD behind the times? (was: Favorite unix design principles?) Bakul Shah
2021-02-09  2:15                         ` [TUHS] " Will Senn
2021-02-09  2:16                           ` Will Senn
2021-02-09  2:30                             ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2021-01-31  0:39                     ` Steve Nickolas
2021-01-31  1:47                     ` Will Senn
2021-01-31  2:25                       ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-31  2:52                         ` Will Senn
2021-01-31  3:00                           ` Larry McVoy
2021-01-31  3:06                             ` Will Senn
2021-01-31  3:32                               ` John Cowan
2021-02-04  5:43                         ` Dave Horsfall [this message]
2021-02-04  6:10                           ` Angus Robinson
2021-02-04  7:46                             ` Andy Kosela
2021-02-04 22:25                             ` Dave Horsfall
2021-02-04 15:45                           ` Will Senn
2021-02-04 16:03                             ` Henry Bent
2021-02-04 16:32                             ` Dan Cross
2021-02-04 16:49                               ` Will Senn
2021-02-04 17:46                               ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-04 18:41                               ` Bakul Shah
2021-02-04 22:28                                 ` George Michaelson
2021-02-04 22:41                                   ` Bakul Shah
2021-02-05  0:33                                   ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-05  5:17                                     ` Bakul Shah
2021-02-05 14:18                                       ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-05 18:16                                         ` Warner Losh
2021-02-05 18:21                                         ` ron minnich
2021-02-06  0:03                                         ` Bakul Shah
2021-02-06  2:06                                           ` Dan Cross
2021-02-06  3:01                                             ` Bakul Shah
2021-02-06  1:18                                         ` John Gilmore
2021-02-06  1:43                                           ` joe mcguckin
2021-02-06  1:55                                           ` Bakul Shah
2021-02-05 20:50                             ` Dave Horsfall
2021-02-06  0:21                               ` Brad Spencer
2021-02-06  2:22                               ` Rico Pajarola
2021-02-06  2:55                                 ` Larry McVoy
2021-02-06  3:07                                   ` Will Senn
2021-02-27  8:54                                   ` Stuart Remphrey
2021-02-06  4:55                               ` John Cowan
2021-02-04  7:46                         ` Chris Torek
2021-02-04 15:47                           ` Will Senn
2021-02-11 21:01                         ` Angel M Alganza
2021-01-30 23:09                 ` [TUHS] Favorite unix design principles? John Cowan
2021-01-30 23:22                   ` Jon Steinhart

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