On 19.02.24 10:54, Martin Steigerwald wrote:

Hi,

> Hello world unstripped with gcc compiled C source is
> about 15,5 KiB. Even stripped it is about 14,1 KiB.

Dynamically or statically linked ?

Did you try the same with some embedded libc ?

> AmigaOS boots from hard disk faster than Linux boots from SSD

But hardware is pretty trivial compared to today's machines (just
consider what it takes to get the CPU into protected more and set up
page tables, etc, etc ... not even mentioning peripherals) and very
static.

> Granted, it had no memory protection, multi user and some other features
> that I'd consider essential these days.

Yes, that takes up a lot. And it was only once HW platform.

> However… as Nikolaus Wirth
> correctly states that still does not explain the bloat in current
> software. Even Minix could be booted from floppy disk back in my Amiga 500
> times. On the Amiga :).

Linux did that once, too. But back then it only supported a small
fraction of the HW it does today, and there even was such complex HW
(like eg. GPUs).

But yes: HW designers are usually doing a pretty bad job in clean
interface design. Most peripherals (at least in the pc/server field)
could be fine with standardized interfaces/protocols (eg. USB), and it
wouldn't even cost an really notable greater portion on transistors.

As OS developers, we just need to cope with the HW we have :(

> A good one is a lack of taking the time to think through
> things *before* and *during* writing code.

Indeed, OTOH in many FOSS projects (especially the kernel) we do take
that time and also do continious refactoring.

> All three month a new Linux kernel.

"New" is pretty relative here. Most of the time it's either fixes or
performance improvements, or new drivers (and also lots of refactoring
along the way).

> Do you understand the complete Linux kernel?

Obviously not the complete one, but a huge part of the pieces I'm
actually using (my understanding usually stops on certain really low-
level cpu-arch/model specific aspects, as well as some HW details).
One of the biggest shares of the code base is dealing with crappy HW.

> It would be very beneficial to reduce the pace.

And wait much longer for fixes ?

Well, you're free to use LTS kernels.

> During my little fun project I looked at how Linux
> takes parameters for syscalls from X86_64 registers. It is complete
> insanity.

x86 is complete insanity, indeed.

> How can one design a processor and a syscall interface this way?

I'm still hoping for The Mill ... :o

> IMHO there are leaner and better operating system designs.

I hope you don't count Oberon in here ;-)

Actually used to be passioned Oberon developer, decades ago. It
certainly has a lot of good concepts, but not suited for wide use.

Plan9 also has good concepts. But also not suited for average every-
day-use (indeed nice for certain special applications, eg in the cloud).
It also doesn't deal with really complex HW like GPUs, at all.


--mtx

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Enrico Weigelt, metux IT consult
Free software and Linux embedded engineering
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