Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!magnus.ircc.ohio-state.edu!csn!ncar!ico!rcd From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) Newsgroups: comp.os.mach Subject: Re: Bytes in Mach 3.0? Summary: "good" vs "less bad" Message-ID: <1991Feb17.233812.18908@ico.isc.com> Date: 17 Feb 91 23:38:12 GMT References: <2981@fai.UUCP> <62753@bbn.BBN.COM> Organization: Interactive Systems Corporation, Boulder, CO Lines: 28 fkittred@bbn.com (Fletcher Kittredge) writes: > [excerpts from my article showing incredulity at 240Kb of text in 3.0] > Sure, how familar are you with modern operating systems?... To the extent that "modern operating systems" is neither an oxymoron nor an empty set, I think I'm reasonably familiar with them. (I'll take "modern" in the sense of "contemporary" since I think that's what was intended.:-) >...245K of text > with 31k of data is *VERY* small for a UNIXoid kernel. For example, > here is the size of the Unix kernel on Sun, DEC and HP systems:... [examples showing kernels containing 530-1370Kb of text] Yet there have been a couple of followups showing systems currently in use which have conventional (non-"micro") kernels smaller than the size of the 3.0 kernel. Even though there are huge UNIX kernels to be found, I don't think that a relative measure against them says much. It is almost always possible to find code worse than what you've got; a characterization of "less bad than XYZ" is much weaker than "good"! 240Kb of code is a lot in an absolute sense. BTW, I'm focusing on the text size because that's where the complexity is. -- Dick Dunn rcd@ico.isc.com -or- ico!rcd Boulder, CO (303)449-2870 ...But is it art?