3 Jun
2014
3 Jun
'14
2:23 a.m.
On Mon, Jun 2, 2014 at 3:47 PM, Chris Nehren <cnehren+tuhs(a)pobox.com> wrote:
On Mon, Jun 02, 2014 at 14:52:12 -0400, Dan Cross
wrote:
Well, without knowing me or a thing about me, that's a strong statement.
There is a lot of innovation happening in illumos and BSD.
[snip]
This is my point. s/Linux/(Illumos|.*BSD)/ and the point remains largely
the same.
These aren't new systems trying out fundamentally new ideas; they're making
incremental improvements on things that have come before. That's all well
and good (and it's nice to have an alternative to Linux specifically), but
building on a nearly 50 year old framework isn't particularly innovative,
despite claims to the contrary. Now don't get me wrong, that framework
remains wildly useful, and so that work has value, but my question is more
generally whether anyone has the kind of drive to come up with the sort of
next generation system that Unix represented when Unix was new? Things
like Plan 9 and Akaros are more along the lines of what I was thinking of:
mentioning *BSD or other such systems reinforces my thesis.
- Dan C.
But nostalgia aside, something I find interesting
(and frankly a bit
distressing) is what seems to me to simply be an acceptance that it's all
going to end with Linux. That is to say, no one ever seems to talk about
what will come *after* Linux. Will Linus's kernel truly be the last
kernel
anyone works on seriously? Somehow I very much
doubt that. And yet, you
don't see a lot of talk about evolutionary paths beyond Linux; it's a
sort
of tunnel vision.
You (specifically) don't see a lot of evolutionary paths beyond
Linux because you're not looking for them.