Re: [dev] Suckless operating system

On 14 June 2010 01:59, David Tweed <david.tweed_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 14, 2010 at 12:38 AM, Connor Lane Smith <cls_AT_lubutu.com> wrote:
>> On 14 June 2010 00:16, David Tweed <david.tweed_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
>>> One of the issues to consider is that what computers are used for
>>> changes with time, and decisions that one may classify as "the
>>> suckless way of doing things" at one point in time may mean that it's
>>> not effectively useable in some future situations.
>>
>> If the system is sufficiently modular it should be relatively future-proof.
>
> I meant to suggest that design decisions and architectures might need
> changing as new use cases come to light rather than that a single
> design should be future proof-ish, and that this is in fact desirable.
> However that means that saying something is "suckless" has to be
> implicitly qualified with "for current needs". To pick a really simple
> example, consider the changes to booting that happened since the
> arrival of netbooks. What was once a relatively rare process, with the
> corresponding "suckless" design being to keep things simple, has
> become something where sub 5s booting is wanted, which requires more
> complicated techniques. That's not to say that old-style booting was

I think the Unix philosophy is quite future proof, also with
parallelization in mind. So if new requirements arise then it's rather
a question if a new tool or new way of combining them is needed.

Regarding the boot speed I disagree. I think short boot cycles can be
achieved with rather more simple init systems than the insanity people
got used to like the SysV style Debian insanity. A simple BSD init
based or even more simple system always outperforms any "smart"
technique in my observation.

Cheers,
Anselm
Received on Mon Jun 14 2010 - 07:20:45 UTC