3 ms·
> Linux, for instance, is based around a core—called a kernel—that was originally designed for use in servers and only later modified for desktop systems As fa
by dbaupp 15y ago
> Linux, for instance, is based around a core—called a kernel—that was originally designed for use in servers and only later modified for desktop systems
As far as I understand the history of Linux, this is just plain not true: Linux was originally a toy project with little focus on either desktop or server systems.
Am I missing something?
- baddox 15y agoI'm not sure what Linus' personal intentions were when he first started it, but perhaps the article is talking about the fact that Unix was originally developed for mainframes.
- rwmj 15y agoUnix was originally developed on what were called minicomputers[1]. These were a distinct class from mainframes, which have always run a whole separate class of proprietary OSes such as IBM's MVS. Of course nowadays Linux runs pretty well on IBM's mainframes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer
- rbanffy 15y agoAnd its first incarnation ran on a PDP-8. I think my analog watch has more computing power than that ;-)
- mtts 15y agoI think what this is referring to is that Unix is not especially designed to give priority to desktop processes. BeOS was.
- rbanffy 15y agoIndeed, that's completely untrue. What BeOS did was to make the front-end as multithreaded as possible and as high-priority as possible. Which is reasonable for a desktop single-user OS, but completely unacceptable for a multi-user server OS.