boricj

39 ms·

391.
by boricj 4y ago
Implementing POSIX as a compatibility layer on systems not designed to be Unix-like is possible. You can even skip a fair number of the most problematic parts and still run useful programs. OpenVMS doesn't have fork(), just vfork() and
392.
by boricj 4y ago
xv6 is pretty much the best osdev beginner's ressource out there. Once you've mastered it, "Operating Systems: Design and Implementation" is still a worthwhile read even though it's getting a bit old. After that, it
393.
by boricj 4y ago
It's not just the lack of active maintainers. MINIX 3 is a technological dead-end on multiple fronts and the various grants and funding sources have dried up. The micro-kernel is mostly unchanged from its previous incarnations. It can
394.
by boricj 4y ago
Maybe that's because AFAIK the various frameworks out there for building applications are strongly opiniated on a given paradigm. We have libraries, but we don't really have composable components that can be assembled into arbitra
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by boricj 4y ago
I've been thinking for a while about how to architecture systems and I wonder if perhaps we could generalize something like Fuchsia's device driver stack design [1] for arbitrary systems and eliminate this monolithic vs microservi
396.
by boricj 4y ago
It reminds me of a funny story back when I was a student. We had a week-long group project in the first year whose theme was "a 360° pong". Our group decided that it meant the paddles had to travel in a circle around the playfield
397.
by boricj 4y ago
> MINIX is a microkernel architecture - running drivers in userspace is one of its core features/selling points, and one that differentiates it from (modular) monolithic kernels such as Linux. So, this isn't a very solid line o
398.
by boricj 4y ago
Taken from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33200171#33203269 This publication ( http://www.minix3.org/docs/jorrit-herder/asci06.pdf ) claims that MINIX3 could saturate a 1 Gb/s Ethernet li
399.
by boricj 4y ago
Extrapolating your position makes me think your ideal operating system wouldn't be an offshoot of the Linux kernel. It would be a general-purpose, fully asynchronous, MMU-less, zero-copy, single address space operating system secured t
400.
by boricj 4y ago
The point is that most users and use-cases of networking don't have high requirements on bandwidth or latency that warrant a network stack design focused on high performance. Let the ones who want to live on the edge do so if they wa
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by boricj 4y ago
> Be the change you want to see in the world. I have made dozens of commits to MINIX3, including a brand-new ISO 9660 file system implementation ( https://github.com/Stichting-MINIX-Research-Foundation/minix... ). I h
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by boricj 4y ago
I did not anticipate a Hacker News discussion about a remotely exploitable Linux kernel WiFi vulnerability requiring some network benchmarks on an unusual network stack architecture, but I'll oblige: This publication ( http:/&#x2F
403.
by boricj 4y ago
> Ah yes, the magic web-browser that doesn't do any kind of networking at all. The web browser isn't Netflix trying to serve hundreds of gigabits per second of encrypted video streams from a single server. Do you really need th
404.
by boricj 4y ago
Note that the Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate was in 1992, over thirty years ago. The security of computer systems might have improved since then, but the fallout of security issues has massively increased. Managing your bank accounts wirelessly
405.
by boricj 4y ago
> Many will cry about that performance hit (including me) because for over a decade our computers have gotten faster marginally, but our software has gotten slower and bloatier at an increasingly rapid pace. We're talking about netw
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by boricj 4y ago
Can we please stop running network drivers and network stacks in kernel mode by default? It's 2022 and we've got more than enough compute power nowadays that the performance hit for running these in user-land is negligible for mos
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by boricj 4y ago
Just do it. Seriously, you don't even have to know programming to contribute. Writing documentation, porting software, trying to boot on real hardware, trying out websites with the web browser, looking for bugs in the user interface...
408.
by boricj 4y ago
The small production run coupled with the price suggests that it's basically an evaluation board in a laptop form factor. As-is, it's probably mostly of use for people that want to hack on RISC-V (operating systems, ports, applica
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by boricj 4y ago
Unix's original design dates back from the late 1960s, where processor speed was measured in megahertz and memory size was measured in kilowords. Design choices that were reasonable then do not necessarily translate well to the 21st ce
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by boricj 4y ago
Is it because they can't distribute licenses for non-VSI versions of OpenVMS? Depending on their license agreement maybe VSI can do new VAX releases, but since OpenVMS VAX system still kicking are running at best a 20 years old release
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by boricj 5y ago
Not a military analyst, but I'll try. Also French, so highly biased. That sounds a bit like the F-35, which was supposed to be a common platform for three different military jets with highly conflicting requirements (US Air Force wants
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by boricj 5y ago
French here, last I've heard of it Dassault and Airbus were deadlocked on the split of industrial responsibilities and couldn't seem to be able to find an agreement. Hopefully I'm wrong, but this was starting to sound more an
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by boricj 5y ago
From the same person that made WinBtrfs and Quibble, a Windows NT Btrfs installable filesystem and bootloader. And yes, with all of that one can boot and run Windows natively on Btrfs, at least in theory.
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by boricj 5y ago
How does it compare to other fantasy consoles? This reminds me of the Chip16 virtual machine.
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by boricj 5y ago
Python on the TI-84 series is run on a separate ARM Cortex-M0+ micro-controller with 256 KiB of Flash and 32 KiB of RAM, hooked to the ASIC with what appears to be a UART. In other words, it's just about the worst performing Python imp
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by boricj 5y ago
As someone who has done some OS development and sysadmin work, I can relate to that quote. The 1st edition of Unix is over 50 years old and some of the legacy cruft that has accumulated since is so sedimented I swear it's going to turn
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by boricj 5y ago
To add some perspective, log4j has gone for 20 years with only two major versions. Assuming that they are following semantic versioning, that means they added new features/fixes in a backwards-compatible way and only broke compatibilit
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by boricj 5y ago
I'm indeed working on it (meta-issue progress tracking is over there: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/issues/8605 ). However, bootstrapping pkgsrc is a stressful test of reliability, stability and
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by boricj 5y ago
And yet you've described how "range(n)" is implemented in exquisite details, whereas the caller only cares about its interface. A beginner would further only care about its observable effects, which here would be at best some
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by boricj 5y ago
You forgot to explain how the CPython interpreter works, how the operating system works, as well as how a computer works, how a modern super-scalar, out-of-order multi-core microprocessor works and the physics behind silicon-based integrate

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