From: sadkins@bigbird.cs.ohiou.edu (Scott W. Adkins) Subject: Re: Creeping featursm (Was: Re: ANNOUNCE: linux-0.99 patchlevel 3) Date: 14 Jan 1993 15:43:08 GMT
In article <JEM.93Jan14151001@vipunen.hut.fi> jem@vipunen.hut.fi (Johan Myreen) writes:
>In article <jpo.726998071@hrz.tu-chemnitz.de> jpo@kappa.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de (Joerg Pommnitz) writes:
>
>>Some days ago Peter MacDonald wrote, that he had included
>>the ipcbeta patches to the SLS release.
>>Isn't it time to make this beast part of the standard kernel ?
>
>Linus is of course the definite authority on this, but I'd like to add
>my two cents. I think there should be some limit to what gets added to
>Linux; does it really need everything? If I remember correctly, one of
>the goals Linus had was to keep Linux a small and simple, but Posix
>compatible kernel.
I disagree with you here... a lot of systems can be POSIX compliant and
still have extensions to the kernel. I do not recall POSIX saying that
you *can't* have this or that... (somebody correct me if I am wrong).
I think that shared memory, ipc's, semaphores, etc. should be included
since it makes the communication bewtween processes and programs just
a bit easier. I think a lot of Unix systems are moving in this direction
anyway (specifically with shared memory), and Linux should attempt to
stay on the leading of edge of ... (what? popularity? technology? well,
just the leading edge...) :-)
>We don't want Linux to become a new AIX, do we?
I think this is a little out of the ball park... Could Linux ever get
as bad as AIX? It isn't because AIX had shared memory and IPC's that
made it so bad... there was a lot of other things that made it bad from
the start (like the design for instance...) (You can flame me for this,
since I am admitting right now that I don't know *that* much about the
way AIX does things...)
>If Peter MacDonald distributes a kernel different from the "standard"
>kernel (Linus' version), then I think it is questionable if that
>kernel is Linux at all.
I completely disagree here... Linux is linux... If it is supported by
the Linux community (and of course Linus himself), then why shouldn't it
still be called Linux? Kernels all over the world for all types of Unix
systems are modified to include new stuff or non-standard stuff... but
this does not make it a new type of Unix. I can imaging what would happen
with Minix, with students/profs/etc modifying the kernel every day! :-)
Don't be too harsh on me for voicing my opinion here... Of course, Johan
was voicing his opinion too... :-) I thought I would just add a little
extra traffic to the c.o.l's highway!
Scott.
--
Scott W. Adkins Internet: sadkins@ohiou.edu
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ak323@cleveland.freenet.edu
Ohio University of Athens Bitnet: adkins@ouaccvma.bitnet