Risc System/6000

[jim frost]

rcd at ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn) writes:

>madd at world.std.com (jim frost) writes:
>...[deleted: someone else's shot at AIX]
>> Here I've got to stand up for IBM a little.  SunOS is a bug, hairy,
>> hulking monster of an operating system...

>(I particularly enjoy the typo big->bug...or, hmmm, WAS it a typo?)

Pretty amusing typo, I will admit :-).

>>...And I *like* SunOS for the
>> most part.

>OK, if I interpret this aright, AIX 3.0 is found to be no more b{iu}g,
>hairy, and hulking than SunOS.  I'm not sure that's much of a compliment,
>Jim!  (As an aside to the rest of you:  Do you really think humongous
>kernels are OK, or at least not a problem to worry about?

Nope, I hate 'em.  If you ask me the kernel should be minimal and
everything should be a process.  Mach is on the right track, although
there are some things that I just don't like about it.

Once you've gone and paged the kernel, you're asking for trouble.  If
it's got to be paged, what's the reason for leaving it in the kernel?
Gag.  It lacks cleanliness.

>(Jim - I don't mean to make fun of you, but where *were* you standing up
>for IBM?  I really don't think "not much worse than SunOS" is all that
>kind!)

Nope, I wasn't particularly standing up for IBM, I just don't want
people damning IBM for a huge OS and praising Sun when the latter is
about the same size, and when Sun has put some pretty interesting
things in the kernel to make them more usable than they might be as a
user-level process.  I don't like the SunOS monolithic kernel, but I
do like the fact that the system is very usable.

jim frost
saber software
jimf at saber.com