[unios] Priorities

[Anders Petersson]

From: Anders Petersson <anders.petersson@mbox320.swipnet.se>


>> > Let me bring up an important topic: What properties are priorited in
UniOS.
>> >
>> > This is my alpha version priority list:
>> > Primary goals: (implemented from the beginning)
>> > 1) Technically generic and good solutions
>> > 2) Flexibility/Portability
>> > 3) Stability
>> > 4) Security
>> > Secondary goals: (implemented as time goes by)
>> > 5) Performance
>> > 6) Easy administration
>> > 7) Ease of use
>
>
>Performance only on the 5th place ? To me, performance (speed) is on the
>second place after stability. Linux is good because it's fast and
>stable,but it's not flexible in the ways we want.

Yes, performance on fifth place. Computers get faster all the time. The
faster they get, the more willing are people to trade speed for other
advantages. Like high flexibility and security.
I understand that users will not simply accept that software becomes
slower, even if they get a high security or whatever... But we should take
the attitude of first constructing a technologically consistent system, and
then see how it can be made fast (even if a good construction should be
pretty fast already). The opposite would be to first make a fast system,
and afterwards begin to look at how the system could be given the other
properties we want it to have. That's simply th wrong way to go, and that
is why I did not put it on the primary goals list.

>> > Nice to have, but not that important: (maybe implemented)
>> > 8) Small size
>> > 9) Easy installation
>
>Easy installation just is a part of ease of use. It might not be important
>to people who do know about computers and the OS, but for 80% of PC users 
>this is not the case.

I broke 'installation' out of the 'use' category because of the big
difference between them. You would rather want to struggle with the
installation once than struggle with the software each time you want to use
it.

>> I agree with this.  Seems reasonable.  I would put performance as a higher
>> priority, but it's a trap :)  Performance as a top priority would mean
that we
>> have to work very much harder on making it cross-platform.
>
>Why ?  Performance is (partly) a responsibility of the kernel, so each
>platform will have it's own optimizations that can make the OS faster, so
>the real-performace dependent or "performance-making" code will be in the
>hardware-dependent part of the kernel or HAL. 

You can't optimize the system before you have designed it. When doing the
development, we don't need the OS to be fast. When (or if) the OS becomes
more finished, we look into optimizations. 
However, we do need to make the design possible to optimize... but that's
not my view on the design. Guess why the priority one on my list is
there... My most important reason for being here is that I want to make a
consistent and clever system for the next age in computer software.

binEng

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