If the size of the kernel and the resources consumed by the OS is
really *that* important, might I suggest using something line Minix?
The author of Minix didn't make the mistakes that Linus made and kept
out a huge amount of needless bloat from becoming part of the standard
OS. I believe that Minix still runs on an 8086 with two floppies.
Minix, like WinNT, also uses a microkernel, which is a modern OS
design technique, rather than the 1950ish kernel that Linus built.
Oh, uhm, I guess I should put a :-> in here somewhere...
Seriously though, unlike Minix, Linux was never intended to be the
"smallest useful OS", rather, it is "what Linus wants it to be". I
really doubt that you will be able to convince him that the size of
Linux is a real problem, or that it is headed in the wrong direction.
I really like the glee that Linus shows when he gets a patch that
*removes* large amounts of code. It is obvious that he wants to keep
Linux lean and mean, but that doesn't mean it should be tiny.
I also respect Andy Tannenbaum for knowing what he wanted his OS to be,
and that was to be a very minimalistic OS which could be run on really
cheap hardware and small enough that comp sci students could
understand it in a semester class. He might have said a few things
that he may now regret, but I doubt that he regrets the direction he
kept Minix going in.
-wayne
-- Wayne Schlitt can not assert the truth of all statements in this article and still be consistent.- To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/