

Linux is Obsolete [1992] - vinutheraj
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.os.minix/browse_thread/thread/c25870d7a41696d2?pli=1

======
cperciva
Linux was obsolete 17 years ago and is still obsolete -- unfortunately, most
programmers only know how to write in obsolete ways, so it takes a long time
before obsolete code stops being written (cf. forking servers vs. event-driven
servers).

It's starting to look like virtualization will deliver the world of
microkernels which Tanenbaum prophecied: Xen is, for all practical purposes, a
microkernel with which semiprivileged processes (OS kernels) interoperate.

~~~
khafra
This has thing ring of truth, for me--but do you see virtualization taking the
kind of extreme route it'd need to provide more microkernel (at least, like
EROS) benefits? A different OS instance for every program? That seems like a
pretty kludgy way to do it.

~~~
cperciva
_A different OS instance for every program? That seems like a pretty kludgy
way to do it._

Kludgy or not, there have been some moves in that direction. People often
distribute "VMWare appliances", i.e., a single application packaged up as a
VMWare instance; and FreeBSD system administrators often run different
services in separate jails.

~~~
silentbicycle
It also depends on how small the OS is.

~~~
abstractbill
Something that's too big today will seem trivially small soon of course.

~~~
swannodette
Those giant 800k floppy disk games, those really amazing 160x120 QT movies at
8fps, remember how colossal Myst was, a whole CD-ROM!

~~~
silentbicycle
I remember getting 1 mb of memory for my 386. A whole megabyte of _memory_!

(Firefox is usig 110mb at the moment - I started it about five minutes ago.)

------
silentbicycle
For a contemporary rebuttal by Rob Pike, see "Andy Tanenbaum hasn't learned
anything" (<http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/andy_tanenbaum>)

See also: "Systems Software Research is Irrelevant" [2000]
([http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch....](http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~ejones/writing/systemsresearch.html))

------
nanexcool
"If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to even
start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still isn't." - Linus
Torvalds, January 1992

17 years later and it still isn't! Makes you wonder about the whole GNU/Linux
ecosystem had the GNU guys actually finished Hurd.

~~~
wheels
Probably about the same. I think the biggest thing was splitting away from
using a BSD kernel since the BSD projects are typically more, hmm, pedantic?
Difficult to break into? Whatever. But the GNU led projects that have dealt
with a lot of external contributors like GCC have fared quite well.

~~~
blasdel
No, GNU-led projects have had plenty of drama, GCC especially -- there was a
huge forking fracas in the late nineties, and the FSF's politically-motivated
crippling is largely the motivation behind LLVM's clang.

------
dryicerx
On a side note, the FTP he mentions still functions, and still contains the
directory minix. Pretty amazing that directory structure remained for 17
years. Anyway, reading on...

edit: Oh, it's A. Tanenbaum, my OS class used his book...

~~~
mahmud
My OS class used his book, my networking class used his book, my compiler
class used his book, my distributed computing class used his book ..

and by "class" I mean self-teaching :-P

AST is a legend and altered my life for the better. I can safely say that I
paid more attention to AST's writings on my 18th year on earth than anything
my friends or family have said. I had OSD&I and the Amoeba book on my desk,
standalone linux with a bad winmodem, and floppies upon floppies of assembly
language tutorials I downloaded at an internet-cafe. Life was good then. Code
was good then.

~~~
jf
Life was good back then. And it keeps getting better!

Back then would you have ever DREAMED that IBM would be buying Sun, and that
Sun would have open sourced almost all of its cool technology?

------
adi92
Wikipedia article about this

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum-Torvalds_debate>

------
andr
Summary: 1992 usenet message from the creator of Minix, explaining that Linux
is no good because it's monolithic and closely tied to x86.

In fairness, Linux evolved so that it's no longer x86-specific, and insmod
makes it somewhat non-monolithic. Had it not evolved, AST might have been
right and Linux might have died, particularly due lack of portability.

~~~
cperciva
_insmod makes it somewhat non-monolithic_

No. This is a common misconception due to the overloading of the adjective
"monolithic". In the context of microkernels vs. monolithic kernels, kernel
modules are irrelevant, since they operate within the same (monolithic)
address space as the main kernel.

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anuraggoel
Adding [1992] to the title would be much appreciated.

~~~
trickjarrett
And linking to groups.google.com is much different than linking to google.com
I think... I was expecting the Google OS announcement (not really, but I still
expected something more than a discussion group discussion)

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asciilifeform
Yes, though not for the stated reasons:

Rob Pike: _"We really are using a 1970s era operating system well past its
sell-by date."_

[http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/11532...](http://interviews.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/18/1153211&tid=189&tid=156&tid=130&tid=11)

And, elsewhere, by others:

[http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/b2c0190dc3...](http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/b2c0190dc30c3e5f?hl=en&pli=1)

 _"You can say the burden is on us old-timers to tell you what's missing or we
shouldn't be whining. But I don't see it that way. I see the burden is on the
victors, who have the resources and who claim their way is better, to show us
that they won for good reason."_

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whughes
" What is going to happen is that they will gradually take over from the 80x86
line. They will run old MS-DOS programs by interpreting the 80386 in software.
(I even wrote my own IBM PC simulator in C, which you can get by FTP from
ftp.cs.vu.nl = 192.31.231.42 in dir minix/simulator.) I think it is a gross
error to design an OS for any specific architecture, since that is not going
to be around all that long. "

Shocking how wrong he ended up being about the x86 line. It makes me wonder
what predictions we make today will come out to.

~~~
rcoder
Honestly, this isn't all that far off -- modern Intel and AMD chips have
essentially nothing in common with the old 8086 line, and in fact use
microcode heavily to "emulate" the classic instruction set.

Of course, it took them a few years longer than he thought to get there, but
the basic idea is sound.

------
simplegeek
Couple of years back, I was on the verge of starting a PhD with AST but some
strange things happened :(

To me, AST is a god.

------
rbanffy
And still we look around and all but one OS we use today are Unix-like
operating systems... And the one that's not is a security nightmare sending
almost all the spam and running each every botnet in existence.

Is _this_ the best we can do?

------
Ennis
Wow. I studied University using this guy's OS book. Definitely a visionary and
pragmatic.

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jodrellblank
_Making software free, but only for folks with enough money to buy first class
hardware is an interesting concept. Of course 5 years from now that will be
different, but 5 years from now everyone will be running free GNU on their 200
MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5._

I guess I should take more note when I predict things I think would be
technically good ideas...

~~~
mahmud
A "good idea" would be a Lisp OS running on a "commodity" multicore, super-
power-efficient RISC processor with a hardware MMU accelerated garbage
collection and programmed in SSA-assembly.

~~~
asciilifeform
Working on it.

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st3fan
Yeah. Classic.

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c00p3r
btw, Windows and Java are what actually became obsolete - first because of
that's simply enough, second - because there is no such goal as 'runs
everywhere' anymore.

Linux is just a mainstream, which means it starting to fall.

