3 ms·
> tons of drivers for everything imaginable Better than going the Multics way, which was being theoretically portable but not actually capable of being ported
by msla 1y ago
> tons of drivers for everything imaginable
Better than going the Multics way, which was being theoretically portable but not actually capable of being ported off a very short list (two... a list of two) mainframe computers that implement an architecture with no future.
- musicale 1y agoI certainly agree that drivers and portability are Linux's best features (NetBSD scores even better on portability and compatibility.) The point of the comparison was to say that the code and memory size cost of Multics (and its core functionality and abstractions) was considered prohibitive in 1969 when Unix was being created, but is basically in the noise for systems like Linux in 2025. Sadly segmentation fell out of vogue and was dropped from x86 because ... no OS ended up using it! (Though it was used in the 32-bit implementation of Google Native Client, a sandboxed environment for safely running x86 code.) But a Multics-informed design is not inherently unportable or antithetical to drivers. Ring-based security can allow for better isolation and easier driver development. Maybe even ingesting and reusing all of those linux drivers?