Re: [TUHS] Macs and future unix derivatives

Theodore Ts'o writes: I'm with Doug here. Some time ago, I was asked to give a talk at OSU based on my life with UNIX. Mostly figured out what to say while driving down there. I started the talk by posing the question of what makes UNIX great. I said that while many people had different answers, to me it was the good abstractions and the composability of programs that it supported. I then asked why so many people had forgotten that which started a very lively discussion. When I look at linux (and pretty much anything else today), the loss of good abstractions is quite evident and in my opinion is responsible for much of the bloat and mess. This didn't begin with linux. To me, it started when UNIX moved out of research. Changes were made without any artistry or elegance. And it happened in BSD-land too. I never liked the socket interface, would have preferred to open("/dev/ip"). But, as Clem and I have discussed, the socket API was the result of the original code coming from elsewhere (BBN I think), and the political desire to keep the networking code separable from the rest of the kernel. At this point in time, I feel that linux is suffering from the tragedy of the commons. I'm not interested in getting into an argument over this. My opinion is that I think that more direction would have helped. I think that there was a golden era for contribution that has passed. There was a time when because of cost of machines and education that open-source contributors were somewhat of the same caliber. But now that machines are essentially free and every java programmer thinks that they know everything, the quality of contributions and especially design has dropped. While I use linux, it's no longer a system that I trust in any way. It's huge, bloated, rats-nest undocumented code. Yes, I know that a small percentage of people like Ted spend a lot of time on the code and therefore know it well. But I find it an impenetrable mess. When I first had a need to look at the UNIX kernel, it was easy to figure out what was going on. Not so with linux. Of course, I'm getting old and maybe not as good at this stuff as I used to be. You might claim that the code is stable and debugged, but if that was the case then I wouldn't be getting a new kernel on practically every daily update. To me, it also seems like linux is focused on two ends of the spectrum with the middle mostly ignored. Lots of focus on embedded and data centers. As a desktop system, it's tolerable but generally annoying. Again, somewhat a function of the tragedy of the commons; the environment consists of programs with little consistency. I think that if one compared the user interfaces to, let's say, gimp, audacity, and blender, the common features would be close to the null set. And those are just a few "major" programs. So a more interesting question to me is, when is linux going to die under its own weight, and what if anything will replace it. With the exception of Windows, most everything today has some roots in UNIX. If one was going to reimagine a system going back to the UNIX philosophy, what would it look like? Is there likely to ever be an opportunity for a replacement, designed system or are we stuck with the status quo forever? Jon