Studying Tanenbaum vs Torvalds

[srg]

Hi

I've just been reading the Tanenbaum vs Torvalds debate (arguably the Greatest flamewar of all time, and it's interesting to see how the world has changed since then.

Tanenbaum reckoned that (now remember this was in the days of the 386) the superfast RISC chips would take over the x86 line, which must have seemed logical - hah!

It's interesting that Linux was designed as an efficient stopgap for things like the GNU OS to come out, well we're still waiting for that. It's kind of funny that something like this will, in later years, come to dominate the OS market, even becomming a rival to the mighty microsoft (I mean mighty as in size of user base).

Also there was one guy that said that:

if the Gnu OS follows the example of all other Gnu software, it will require a system with 128MB of memory and a 1GB disk to use

I'll second that! ;D

Well this is what I see when I look at most linux distrubutions. I say most, there are some nice an small ones (my NexGen machine runs one).

Also Tanenbaum also wondered how Torvalds was going to control the development of his system, and Torvalds said "I won't".

This is interesting as Torvalds seems to have definate control over the Linux kernel (or am I wrong?), although there are ports that I'm not sure he has any control of.

Saying that though, the rest of the GNU/Linux system is definatly fragmented, especaily arround packaging systems.

srg
[sub]*edit:s/Tarvalds/Torvalds/g applied: 3 matches*[/sub]

[Pype.Clicker]

There is not *one* GNU/Linux system ... and if most distributions are now requiring DVDs, that's mainly because of tons of applications (useful for you or not) that you can find in it.

I don't think anybody will wory about the fact it requires 1GB on my 80GB harddisk, given the software it provides (installing the same amount of softs under another OS would certainly consume as much space), and iirc, X, emacs and mozilla are still the main memory-eater on my system.

Keep in mind that was almost said 10 years ago when a single CDROM could host the whole content of your disk even without compression ... If only CDROM burners had been available

[Candy]

on the original post, s/Tarvalds/Torvalds/g. Keep the names correct please.

[BI lazy]

aaaaach, ye ole nitpick! Not a sweet candy thou' you are. *rofl*

Well, I've read that argument too. doesn't read like a flamefest as is usual nowadays where the sweet *ye_bloody_sunzabitchaz* comes along quite easy but rather like a real good argumentation - mixed with a bit of polemics.

Tanenbaums points are as well placed as Torvalds ones. The both of them just have needed time to come to accept each others point of view. Well, and I consider Minix still a better OS to learn from than Linux with all its tricks and production system methods.

[stonedzealot]

Just to clarify one thing that sorta pissed me off in the original quote. No, Mr. Torvalds does not have "very definate [sic] control" over the Linux kernel. There is a base kernel (hosted at kernel.org) that *is* Linux. Torvalds still develops for it (as seen in the changelogs) and is still the go-to-guy when important people want to talk Linux, but he's hardly in control of the kernel. The way I understand it is all of the full time developers of the kernel (which, yes, would include him) come together and decide a general direction and specific goals every once in awhile. For example, last year they were focused on a few things, including better USB support and the massive changes going to the brand new 2.6.0 line of kernels. This year, it's desktop support. So to say that Torvalds has any measure of definite control (like say Gates had over Windows) is foolhardy.

As for ports...other than the ports to different platforms (all that are included in the kernel.org version) and probably some other efforts to port Linux to very obscure platforms (like watches), I don't think this is what you mean. There are other versions of the kernel, aside from the kernel.org vanilla series. Meanwhile, different distros (especially huge ones like Redhat/Fedora) have their own kernel versions rooted in that vanilla kernel. Also, there's the new SELinux (another kernel based on the vanilla kernel that's Security Enhanced by the NSA). And that's just to give two examples.

[DennisCGc]

Hi

I've just been reading the Tanenbaum vs Torvalds debate (arguably the Greatest flamewar of all time, and it's interesting to see how the world has changed since then.

Tanenbaum reckoned that (now remember this was in the days of the 386) the superfast RISC chips would take over the x86 line, which must have seemed logical - hah!

It's interesting that Linux was designed as an efficient stopgap for things like the GNU OS to come out, well we're still waiting for that. It's kind of funny that something like this will, in later years, come to dominate the OS market, even becomming a rival to the mighty microsoft (I mean mighty as in size of user base).

Also there was one guy that said that:

if the Gnu OS follows the example of all other Gnu software, it will require a system with 128MB of memory and a 1GB disk to use

I'll second that! ;D

Well this is what I see when I look at most linux distrubutions. I say most, there are some nice an small ones (my NexGen machine runs one).

Also Tanenbaum also wondered how Torvalds was going to control the development of his system, and Torvalds said "I won't".

This is interesting as Torvalds seems to have definate control over the Linux kernel (or am I wrong?), although there are ports that I'm not sure he has any control of.

Saying that though, the rest of the GNU/Linux system is definatly fragmented, especaily arround packaging systems.

srg
[sub]*edit:s/Tarvalds/Torvalds/g applied: 3 matches*[/sub]

Uhm ::) what's the url of it ? I'm just interesting to read it

[Solar]

Entering "Tanenbaum Torvalds" in Google gives you almost 8000 hits. I just looked, links #1, #4, and #9 are actually copies of the thread.

BTW, link #8 is this very thread here on mega-tokyo.com...

[srg]

Well, I'm sorry If I hurt anyone's feelings, this was just my oppinion. Anyway, there are a lot of FreeBSD people of concider Linus a bit of a dictator I'm afraid (FreeBSD is steered by an elected group of people).

Anyway, Any Linux Distro I seem to touch seems to turn to Incompatibiities and crashes.

I'm sticking to windows for now.

srg

[Solar]

Well, I'm sorry If I hurt anyone's feelings, this was just my oppinion.

I don't see anybody's feelings hurt here. Well, wangpeng did put his point rather bluntly, but the fact remains that between Linus and Alan Cox (IIRC), there's very little you can do without having their OK.

Anyway, there are a lot of FreeBSD people of concider Linus a bit of a dictator I'm afraid (FreeBSD is steered by an elected group of people).

I think "benign dictatorship" is about the only way to really get a product out of the door without losing focus. (Which is why I don't put my OS under a freely redistributable license, and why I don't make the PDCLib repository world-writeable.)

Andy Finkel of AmigaOS fame once said, "Give me a standard large enough, and a Committee to discuss it, and I will prevent the Earth from moving." A coworker of mine is currently in Sydney, attending a meeting of the C++ standards committee, and he was rather sympathetic towards this quote. FreeBSD is probably very lucky in having found a bunch of people that actually agrees on goals and means. They're also in the lucky position not having to build something really new, but rather building on a solid base that was already there.

Anyway, Any Linux Distro I seem to touch seems to turn to Incompatibiities and crashes.

Hm... I had severe issues before, too, and I still don't think Linux will ever "feel" as well as AmigaOS once did for me, but I tried Gentoo (2004.0 release) and was quite surprised how smooth it works to have your software compiled from source. If you feel familiar enough with bash shell to handle the somewhat tricky early stages of bootstrapping a Linux installation, you should give it a try.

I'm sticking to windows for now.

My favourite prayer before Gentoo times: Thanks, oh ye flippin' gods, for Cygwin... ;D

[srg]

I've tried Gentoo but got compile errors half way through installation, so I've never even got Gentoo to work. >:(

srg

[Solar]

Depending on your USE flags, and your starting point (stage 1...) it is even very likely to get compile errors... but it is rather easy to get them sorted out (using gentoo.org, google.com, and irc.freenode.org#gentoo) - and once you have it up and running, the maintenance is a real charm, compared with the other ones I tried (RedHat, SuSE, Knoppix / Debian, FreeBSD).

[srg]

Depending on your USE flags, and your starting point (stage 1...) it is even very likely to get compile errors... but it is rather easy to get them sorted out (using gentoo.org, google.com, and irc.freenode.org#gentoo) - and once you have it up and running, the maintenance is a real charm, compared with the other ones I tried (RedHat, SuSE, Knoppix / Debian, FreeBSD).

hmm I'll give it a go. BTW if someone was installing Gentoo on their only machine as their ownly OS, that would make life very difficult.

Anyway I have heard great things about Gentoo being very self sufficient and automated to maintain.

[Solar]

BTW if someone was installing Gentoo on their only machine as their ownly OS, that would make life very difficult.

I did just that, with nothing but a Knoppix CD and the downloaded tarball to get me started. During the bootstrap you have Knoppix to get you online, after the bootstrap you have gentoo itself (or you could fall back to booting Knoppix again).