4 ms·
> the Minix 3 kernel is at ~20kloc, while the Linux kernel is now at, what ~11mloc!? Not even redhat can audit that shit properly. (another reason we need a Hur
by microcolonel 9y ago
> the Minix 3 kernel is at ~20kloc, while the Linux kernel is now at, what ~11mloc!? Not even redhat can audit that shit properly. (another reason we need a Hurd microkernel, but I digress)
Well, I don't think Hurd is going anywhere. They missed a crucial opportunity to move from Mach to L4 and they simply didn't have the manpower. What we might focus on is migrating facilities (drivers, core services like TCP, system services) from Linux, OpenBSD, Illumos, and Minix3(especially that daemon that can restart things even when the filesystem daemon goes kaput) to a well-designed L4 like seL4. At that point, at least we have some hope of taming the beast.
The great opportunity here is that you don't need to care too much which license each driver or service is under, since they're all running in user space. You can have your (yuck) CDDL processes, where you keep your OpenZFS instance. You can have your GPLv2+ processes, where you keep your (maybe a bit dirty, but at least they exist!) Linux drivers.
Also, the major difference in line counts is precisely because of the number of facilities offered by the Linux kernel (most of which you can disable, or would never be enabled in the first place!). Minix3 in its "equivalent" form (containing sufficient drivers for the machine running standard daemons) vs Linux with the same subset of drivers and services would be a much fairer comparison.