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Xref: sserve comp.os.386bsd.questions:12292 comp.os.386bsd.misc:3163 Newsgroups: comp.os.386bsd.questions,comp.os.386bsd.misc Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!spool.mu.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!gatech!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!uunet!brunix!mhw From: mhw@cs.brown.edu (Mark Weaver) Subject: Re: Whats wrong with Linux networking ??? Message-ID: <1994Aug13.012953.5809@cs.brown.edu> Sender: news@cs.brown.edu Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science References: <RSANDERS.94Aug9003813@hrothgar.mindspring.com> <CuA6w1.5tF@calcite.rhyolite.com> <32cs6g$l9t@klaava.Helsinki.FI> <CuDvpC.Irz@calcite.rhyolite.com> Date: Sat, 13 Aug 1994 01:29:53 GMT Lines: 47 In article <CuDvpC.Irz@calcite.rhyolite.com>, Vernon Schryver <vjs@calcite.rhyolite.com> wrote: >[...] Regardless of how different Linux is internally from "real >Unix", to survive as other than a teaching aid like Minux (which is an >entirely respectable goal) it will have to converge to >NetBSD/FreeBSD/4.4BSD-Lite and/or maybe System V on kernel interfaces >so that people can fit kernel code into Linux as easily as the others. Although I personally use NetBSD, I must defend Linux here. I have much more faith that Linux will survive as more than a "teaching aid" than I do for NetBSD/FreeBSD. Furthermore, although I haven't looked at any of the kernels in depth at a source level, Linux feels a hell of a lot faster on my system than *BSD. Part of that is that meta-data is not written synchronously to the filesystem by default, although you can change that. However, regardless of the filesystem, I have found that when I have run Linux, it hardly ever thrashes with my 16mb, whereas NetBSD thrashes very easily. They must be doing something right. >That Linux is very different implies no more than that one would need >thicker glue to convert to and from mbufs. For example, converting >between STREAMS buffers and mbufs is old hat for people in my vicinity. For Linux, it hardly matters. They have such an army of programmers, they'll be happy to rewrite what other companies won't. Right after watching a thread on the 386bsd groups about how the new Adaptec controllers would never be supported, I see an alpha version of a driver floating around the Linux community. I also see patches to the kernel to allow fitting 1992K on an HD floppy and 3984K on an ED floppy. >Think how DOS had to accomodate TSRs, interrupt chaining, and the rest >of the kludges. Think how much better DOS would have been if interfaces >to internal services had been chosen instead of kludged or forced by >3rd party software and hardware vendors I think you should look at the Linux kernel before implying that there is no consistent interface. Mark -------------------------------------------------------------------- Email: Mark_Weaver@brown.edu | Brown University PGP Key: finger mhw@cs.brown.edu | Dept of Computer Science