“As the Linux community prepares to congregate next week in New York for the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo, the center of attention, as always, will be Linux creator Linus Torvalds. A little more than a year ago Torvalds released the 2.4 kernel and has spent much of the year working on numerous 2.4.x versions to further stabilize and strengthen Linux. After handing the 2.4 kernel over to Marcelo Tosatti to maintain late last year, he turned his attention to the 2.5 development tree. Torvalds took time out to exchange e-mail with eWEEK Senior Editor Peter Galli about his work on and vision for 2.5.” Read the interesting Q&A at eWeek.
Torvalds Looks Ahead
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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now, the kernel hackers will be able to focus on divice support since the kernle does everything that one would need it to do……once 3.0 hits, it will do it all, and small refinmnets will come just making it sharper and sharper………..I bet 3.x is the last major release for a long time, unless some new technology comes along that can make a kernel function better…..well perhaps 4.0 come along when Linus reaches his goal of a smart kernel that taylors itself to the system on a dynamic/hot basis.
Very good Mike, seems like you’re a real hot guy
Linus comments on Micro Kernals in his ‘autobiography’ “Just for fun” are hilarious… verging on stupid. After all his “I’m apethetic to all other OS’s and I really don’t care about anything much” comments, it really does let him down. It’s almost like he’s a cartoon of himself these days. A bit like Bill Gates.
The chief problem with the Internet is the vast number of complete and utter morrons that can’t act civilized.
Hail Mike Bouma, bringer of foul speech!
Although I think Linux is great, I do wish they could move towards a more Micro-kernel way of working, I personally think it would be great to be able to separate the sub-systems more, this should also have the side benefit of allowing distributors to bolt together a more custom linux kernel, i.e. this scheduler, that vm, this driver set…
I am sure I am not the only one who has seen the kernel source grow and grow until it is what it is now….what maybe 70MB!, surely it would be better to split it up more.
I think the fact that you ever have to recompile the kernal is utter insanity!! Kernal modules are a kludge imho, I want a full modern driver implementation, with device drivers that can almost be hot swapped (or installed by a layman in the very least) ala most other Modern OS. All drivers, not just a few. I don’t want to have to ‘configure the kernal’ or care which modules were compiled into it etc. A micro kernal architecture would go a long way towards providing this.. ah well.
kernel modules _are_ a huge kludge and a micro-kernel would be a better way of doing things for sure. i guess linux hates them because of his “big flame” with tanenbaum, although, tbh, tananbaum did start it
if you have a good distro then you _never_ have to recompile. i built my kernel on this box when i installed it from scratch and i havent touched it since. sure, i build more modules, but i could have just built them all and let the kernel decide what to load. otherwise a simple “modprobe” loads them.
matt, yep kern modules are a kludge. now if xmach could just get up to speed that my fbsd 5-current is at, well, the world would be a better place.
^_^
I dont see any reason why the linux kernel team can’t move towards a micro kernel approach, apart from as matt said, the political issue of monolithic vs micro-kernel.
I just the love the idea of ripping out the a major sub system such as networking and replacing it with another one, even if it involves a reboot, at least no compilation needed.
Please stop posting childishly and cowardly under my name. Take notice of my IP number if you question the validity of fake postings. (it ends with … speed.planet.nl)
How about protecting your forum with passwords?
It seems that the trolls have discovered osnews.
>How about protecting your forum with passwords?
Maybe we will.. Soon.
I added the IP verification some months ago, when someone started impersonating my husband. I only display part of the IP address on the forum, but I store elsewhere the full IP. I have already banned 3 people over the last few months for innapropriately using our forums and exploiting our service in such a manner. A bit of respect for each other is desirable, otherwise, we indeed will have to add passwords.
I just the love the idea of ripping out the a major sub system such as networking and replacing it with another one, even if it involves a reboot,
no reboot will be necessary! the microkernel is the _only_ part of the entire system that cannot be replaced on-the-fly. a few kludges and it can, but i’d prefer a smaller kludge-less version. since the microkernel is so small it (this is the theory) has less bugs and needs to be upgraded less often
and useful things come out of this. imagine a pda that is connected via wireless to the net, and youre browsing your favourite site (osnews, obviously
. then you drive out of town and loose the connection. the connection manager can replace the network module with a dummy one that serves from the page cache. presto – no caching needed in the browser or the default network module – a smaller, more flexible system. and the same system works for any network service (as long as cache info can be considered still relevant)
PS: is it worth considering voluntary passwords, so when i post logged in my name appears without the IP next to it (although i imagine you’d still want to store it). that way we can authenticate mike (and others) by seeing if they have no IP next to their name?
Ummmmm…..why not stop your whining and do it your self?
start the Micro-Linux Kernel Project……come up with a dynamic loader and perhaps even a program that allows you to pick and choose Servers systems that you Down load and place in a server directory………you get what you want, and Linus gets what he wants…..if your Idea is better, not only will distros pick your version of Linux, the god auffle Hurd project will be stoped since you will have complete what Hurd is attempting to do, but you will have a more mature code base 🙂
sound good?