Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!seismo!ut-sally!im4u!rutgers!ames!lll-tis!ptsfa!hoptoad!academ!uhnix1!sugar!peter From: peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards,comp.os.misc Subject: Re: Free Software Foundation (was: Re: Mach, the new standard?) Message-ID: <647@sugar.UUCP> Date: Sat, 5-Sep-87 14:30:59 EDT Article-I.D.: sugar.647 Posted: Sat Sep 5 14:30:59 1987 Date-Received: Wed, 9-Sep-87 05:40:58 EDT References: <1665@ncr-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <8381@utzoo.UUCP> <797@Pescadero.ARPA> <2348@xanth.UUCP> Organization: Sugar Land UNIX - Houston, TX Lines: 46 Xref: mnetor comp.unix.wizards:4133 comp.os.misc:150 In article <2348@xanth.UUCP>, kyle@xanth.UUCP (Kyle Jones) writes: > In article <596@sugar.UUCP>, peter@sugar.UUCP (Peter da Silva) writes: > > The problem is that the GNU project isn't being developed for ALL of us to > > use it, just the ones with virtual memory. I think they're too optimistic > > about the power of future machines. I don't think personal computers will > > have VM for a long time yet. > > Future machines? There are PCs that ALREADY have VM. And the prices > just keep coming down. But never mind that... I should have gone on to say that GNU needs not only VM, but also a large linear address space (there go all the 80286 boxes... even though the 286 can support VM), gobs of memory (1 megabyte for the editor? You'll want 16 megs for a small, personal, system then), and a very fast disk (cheap hard disks aren't fast, and the prices on good ones aren't coming down that much). > > This means that there's no incentive to work for GNU... we won't get anything > > for it... and even if we wanted to help them out anyway we don't have the VM > > machines to do the work on. > > There's a lot more to the GNU project than just the kernel and GNU > Emacs. Are you saying that you won't be able to use *any* of the > general purpose utilities that will be available under the completed > GNU system? I find this hard to believe. Even if you can't use any > of the utilities whole, there is still plenty of useful code that can > be spliced into applications that *will* run on your system. I'm sure there will be some fallout from GNU. I just don't think that my time is as well used supporting that fallout when there's the ARP project on the Amiga, and MINIX on the IBM-PC, and probably equivalent *small* systems on other personal computers, that I can work on and be *assured* of getting a good return from. I don't think something like the FSF should be deciding what hardware the system will run on. Start out with a small, extensible kernel... something on the order of XINU, MINIX, or TUNIS. Make sure it's designed with hooks in place to expand it... use message passing (I know AST claims it's not efficient enough, but it seems to work well on the Amiga). Keep it modular. Then you can add the VM memory manager, or the real-time scheduler. You'll have something you can build on. And it might even come out some time (yes, I also don't believe GNU will ever see the light of day). -- -- Peter da Silva `-_-' ...!seismo!soma!uhnix1!sugar!peter -- 'U` <-- Public domain wolf.