From: torvalds@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Message-ID:
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Hello everybody out there using minix -
I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things).
I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and
I'd like to know what features most people would want. Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them :-)
Linus (torvalds@kruuna.helsinki.fi)
PS. Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have :-(.
Linux -- nothing professional like GNU!
I occasionally feel bad when I waste time, but remind myself that at least I haven't spent multiple decades of my life working on an oversized and broken part of a reimplementation of a terrible software design from the 1970s. Linus Torvalds has not only insulted GNU, but actively works against some Free Software ideals, and recent years have shown him dishonoured by the mob in-part due to his lack of principle. The Linux kernel is nothing special, a monument to convention, and is an excellent example of an army of fools working with sticks and stones to build a skyscraper, against all sense. Overcommitting memory is so stupid it could be mistaken for a joke, but is a remnant of that 1970s design.
The world will be better of when these programs are finally abandoned.
>>3 There have been old systems sitting around for those same decades, and lisp and scheme standards, and lisp and scheme hackers complaining about Unix, who could have re-implemented a Lisp Machine many times over by now, but it seems like after all that time I can count the number who've done it on one hand.
Why is it Torvald's responsibility to make the system you want? He made the system he wants. You can make the system you want.
>>4
Substitute the name Torvald with any other creative, and the word system with a relevant creation. This may give you sufficient distance to consider the value of, or at minimum the reasonableness, of criticism.
As an example say I said: ``Why is it Karl Marx's responsibility to make the book you want? He made the book he wants. You can make the book you want.'' Clearly it would be foolish to consider this statement sound enough to silence critique of Karl Marx's works.
>>5
I am not trying to silence the critiques of the Unix Haters. But, to extend your analogy further, those who had problems with Marx's vision of economics, put forth their own vision of economics.
We live in world of 64 bit ISAs, with both RISC & CISC machines available that run much faster and have much more memory and storage than those of the Lisp Machine/Multics/ITS eras. To say nothing of virtualization.
But these OSs of the Unix Haters, plenty of whom clearly have talent, have not been resurrected, for the most part. For a while I would read these critiques with some sense of hope, that as much as Linux was better than Windows (for what I wanted a computer for), somewhere out there someone was working on a system that was that much better than Linux.
Now it's two decades later, and there are things like 9front, which is Post-Unix, Haiku, BareMetal, Genode, RISC OS Open, etc. So obviously, if you want to work on a non-Unix-like free OS, and you can make a case for it to other people, you can get it done. There are even plenty of contributors to Mezzano OS, which is on Demo 5, has 18 contributors and almost 5600 commits, the last from 26 days ago.
Now obviously, with Linux having over 5000 contributors, over a million commits, the last just 3 hours ago, it does have an advantage. But it didn't start with that advantage. And I know about Mezzano and the various bare metal lisps and schemes from reading about them when people update forums on there progress.
But I never hear about them in posts from Unix Haters, and the last time I brought them up I got a bunch of "it takes a corporation to make a lisp machine because everything has to be perfect."
And, just to kind of underline the point I was hinting at in >>5 (and maybe you were, too), there is plenty of reason <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36myc8wQhLo> to think there are a bunch of unfilled niches out there that need new operating system designs.
>>6
I have no issue with the message: ``The disgruntled should put their passions to work.'' I might not even entirely disagree with the sentiment: ``The disgruntled should keep their heads down and put their passion to work.'' i.e. should speak to the extent that it advances their cause.
there is plenty of reason to think there are a bunch of unfilled niches out there that need new operating system designs.
This is agreeable, and even the particular implication that Lisp Machines would/should always be niche ( https://www.xach.com/naggum/articles/3065048088243385@naggum.no.html ). I don't currently have a means or a will to watch youtube videos, so I won't comment on this. Also I'm assuming you meant to link to >>6.
It's this year's USENIX OSDI keynote, where he talks about how most of the papers put forth were about everything besides Operating Systems' Design and Implementation, and most of the few that are about OSDI take Linux as a starting point- despite the fact that the assumptions that Unix made about the systems it would be running on don't neatly map onto the SOC world where there are several other microprocessors besides the cpu, with different ISAs, possibly different OSs and different views on memory.
So all of those systems are more or less working around whatever the cpu is doing but meanwhile the OS has it's own, prossibly wrong, model of what those systems are and what they do.
>>9 "He" being Timothy Roscoe, the talk is similar to this paper
<https://www.sigarch.org/academics-should-build-their-own-computers-to-advance-systems-research/>
Linux is a meme for normalniggers. Real fags use OpenBSD.
>>11 Would you mind extrapolating as to why?
balmer called linux a cancer.
but what people never realized that he was actually right.
what does cancer do? duplicate and duplicate to the point it becomes harmful.
linux. there are multiple distributions that duplicate and duplicate.
two decades and linux is still shit for desktop. perhaps instead of duplicating and splitting up, the distributions should be unified to create one good distribution instead of 9000 shitty ones?
openbsd does not duplicate and split and has a clear goal.
linux loves to duplicate and have their own separate goals which makes there be multiple options to choose from with none of them being complete.
>>13
Isn't the BSD world similarly fragmented? FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, DragonFly BSD, etc.
>>14
Different flavours of the same operating system young sealion.
OpenBSD
/usr/src/sys/dev/pci/if_jme.c
$FreeBSD: src/sys/dev/jme/if_jme.c,v 1.2 2008/07/18 04:20:48 yongari Exp $
$DragonFly: src/sys/dev/netif/jme/if_jme.c,v 1.7 2008/09/13 04:04:39 sephe Exp $
/usr/src/sys/dev/pci/puc.c
$OpenBSD: puc.c,v 1.30 2020/08/14 18:14:11 jcs Exp $
$NetBSD: puc.c,v 1.3 1999/02/06 06:29:54 cgd Exp $