Re: [Gnewsense-dev] The Linux kernel, no longer as monolithic as it once was?

[Kim Hawtin]

Hi,

Travis wrote:
> Kim wrote:
> > Linux on the other hand, was driven more by being able to support the 
> > available hardware, but had one key difference. The X Windows System
> > was a completely separate project and pushed in different direction
> > to the kernel team. That changed a while back, but kernel support for
> > video devices didn't seem to be such big deal, although theres been
> > plenty of discussion in that space. Its also been the leading example
> > where many kernel folks use X as the ideal user space service idea
> > for drivers. Around 2004 there was a push to make lots more hardware
> > drives user space applications/services. That way the kernel could be
> > smaller and more general purpose, rather than having many very
> > different non interoperable interfaces.
>
> How did that effort turn out, if you know? 

I don't know, but there is still an ongoing bun fight about what to do 
with all the libraries built upon libraries built upon libraries built 
upon libraries ... that nobody uses any more. Read X input, X libs and 
widgets, etc ...

> It sounds like one of those
> deals where the kernel could comply with the GPL while also doing a
> run-around as to enable usage of non-free blobs like nVidia's
> X11 driver.

Some how I luckily missed all that while doing server land sysadmin. I 
have a crappy lowend video card that just seems to work with the open 
drivers ;)

> > For example in FreeBSD you had all sorts of different low level
> > devices, char streams, several block devices, different types of
> > memory devices, etc, etc. At some point they made everything a
> > stream. How has that worked out? Well, it was generally slow at
> > first, but its fast now... arguably faster than Linux in some regards.
>
> Did this occur during the major 5.x development?

I think so, I remember I was maintaining FreeBSD 4.[3456] servers at the 
time. 2001 ish? So thats about right. I believe that OpenBSD lead the 
way there, standardizing the interfaces to make implementing drivers 
much easier. Perhaps FreeBSD did it first, can't remember, but I was 
working on routing with the early WiFi gear at the same time on those 
two platforms, drivers were hell on Linux at the time.

cheers,

Kim