Hardware references.

[Kragen]

On Fri, 9 Oct 1998, John Morrison wrote:
> Ray Dillinger wrote:
> > means handling dynamic libraries and time-sharing and security
> > and all the other awful details of a "real" operating system,
> > eventually.
> 
> I'm not sure I agree there.  I see DLLs/DSOs as poor substitutes for
> dynamic Lisp (or Java) bindings.  And who cares about time-sharing in an
> era of $340 PCs?

Well, if by "time-sharing" you mean "multitasking", I care a lot about
it.  I don't want to use one $340 PC to generate my fractals, another
$340 PC to connect to my ISP, a third $340 PC to alternately write my
documents and format them with TeX and print them, a little $20
printer-buffer box, and a fourth $340 PC to read my mail and run
mailing lists on (although not both at once, so maybe a fifth.)

> I mean, the GNU HURD has lost out to Linux even if it may have
> been (technically speaking) more of the Right Thing (and also even if
> Linux user-mode code is substantially GNU code).

The design was probably more of the Right Thing.  Linux is lots faster,
though, partly due to Mach.

Kragen

-- 
<kragen@pobox.com>       Kragen Sitaker     <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
A well designed system must take people into account.  . . .  It's hard to
build a system that provides strong authentication on top of systems that
can be penetrated by knowing someone's mother's maiden name.  -- Schneier