Re: LINUX is obsolete
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Re: LINUX is obsolete
In article <12595@star.cs.vu.nl> ast@cs.vu.nl (Andy Tanenbaum) writes:
>
> MINIX was designed to be reasonably portable, and has been ported from the
> Intel line to the 680x0 (Atari, Amiga, Macintosh), SPARC, and NS32016.
> LINUX is tied fairly closely to the 80x86. Not the way to go.
If you looked at the source instead of believing the author, you'd realise
this is not true!
He's replaced 'fubyte' by a routine which explicitly uses a segment register
- but that could be easily changed. Similarly, apart from a couple of places
which assume the '386 MMU, a couple of macros to hide the exact page sizes
etc would make porting trivial. Using '386 TSS's makes the code simpler,
but the VAX and WE32000 have similar structures.
As he's already admitted, a bit of planning would have the the system
neater, but merely putting '386 assembler around isn't a crime!
And with all due respect:
- the Book didn't make an issue of portability (apart from a few
"#ifdef M8088"s)
- by the time it was released, Minix had come to depend on several
8086 "features" that caused uproar from the 68000 users.
>Andy Tanenbaum (ast@cs.vu.nl)
joe.
--
joe@jshark.rn.com