Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 22nd Sep 2009 15:34 UTC, submitted by google_ninja
During the roundtable discussion at LinuxCon this year, Linus Torvalds made some pretty harsh remarks about the current state of the Linux kernel, calling it "huge and bloated", and that there is no plan in sight to solve the problem. At the same time, he also explained that he is very happy with the current development process of the kernel, and that his job has become much easier.
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RE[2]: Linux needs a design
by bannor99 on Tue 22nd Sep 2009 19:20
in reply to "RE: Linux needs a design"
Member since:2005-09-15
I've tried for years to like Solaris and I've downloaded and tried just about every version in the last 7 years.
Before that, I paid for the x86 kit from Sun for Solaris 2.6 and 7.
The upshot? If you're x86, Solaris is still painfully slow and needs a lot more disk space compared to Linux, xBSD and Windows XP.
The one time I had prolonged use of an UltraSparc, Solaris 8 performed well but I still installed Redhat after several months use.
Why? Because I wanted to see how well Sparc Linux would be and guess what - it was faster, had more apps / tools available at hand ( although Blastwave have long done a good job of providing packages of the common useful *nix tools that were missing.
But, most important of all, the compiler environment back then on Linux ( around 2001-2 ) just freakin' worked!!
Solaris had me digging for the right version of CC; setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH to arcane directories and forever worrying about which version or AR I needed.
On Redhat, 95% of the time, I just typed "make"
RE[2]: Linux needs a design
by vivainio on Wed 23rd Sep 2009 09:44
in reply to "RE: Linux needs a design"
Member since:2008-12-26
Sun have a consistent message for (Open)Solaris, an operating system that has first class support for all of their hardware, i.e. try (Open)Solaris ...
"Consistent message", whatever that means, doesn't matter one bit when you don't know whether the OS will be around 5-10 years from now. It's anyone's guess what will happen with OpenSolaris, but Linux, not being dependent on revenue stream of any one company, just won't go away.
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.More News »
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Member since:
2009-02-28
Very good points.
These themes in addition to the open-sourcing of Solaris is why I switched my C++ software development to OpenSolaris since Feb 2009 and have never looked back.
For me, the 1990's was C/C++ on MS-DOS/Linux and the 2000's was C++ on MS-Win2K. SunStudio on Opensolaris is very fine and the platforms I used before cannot compare.
Dear potential unix users/developers,
except for the Linux/Android combination, you should consider the (Open)Solaris option due to it's mature design.
Solaris has been in use in many sectors of the enterprise world for many years and has had the benefit of being coupled with the scalable processor architecture (SPARC), stimulating the need for Solaris to be designed to handle big iron type (vertical) scalability.
Linux is more x86-centric (AMD, Intel) and these CPUs have never had the scalability potential like the SPARC platform (the x86 design goals are much different to the SPARC design goals). This has allowed Solaris' design to be more advanced than Linux since Solaris had access to an advanced CPU platform (i.e. SPARC) for so many years.
Like the previous poster mentioned, it is impressive that a single Solaris distribution can run a wide range of hardware in an efficient manner.
Consider the scenarios:
- Sun have a consistent message for (Open)Solaris, an operating system that has first class support for all of their hardware, i.e. try (Open)Solaris ...
- IBM/HP flip-flop between Linux and their proprietary unix systems.
Who would you consider ?