Re: [MiNT] New kernel features

[Daniel Pettersson <tam@dataphone.se>]

On Wed, 1 Dec 1999, Guido Flohr wrote:

> Yes, summed up this new functionality will consume a considerable amount
> of RAM, I wouldn't be surprised if it is 30 or 40 kB.  But do you really
> want to argue about that?  If you lack of RAM you count your shortage in
> MB not kB.  And if you cannot supply enough, bad luck for you.  But
> don't expect the rest of the world to bother about a cryptic interface
> just because you insist on running Apache on a 4 MB ST.

When I get these amounts of mail, I just have to respond :-)

I don't mind huge kernels, not at all, if you can disable the memory-hogger
(for example with ifdef) somehow. The talk about patching up old (real) MiNT
1.12-series isn't really a good thing, taking the approach of putting the
current on a diet especially for low-end machines is much better. This
however (imho) shouldn't be done by Frank, but someone else who has the
time, feels the need _and_ has the apropriate hardware.

A web based kernel-builder would be really nice, especially for those who
don't have init and the lot installed. On the other hand though, how much
of the unix-specific things do pure aes-users need? To have a makefile that
configurable would take a lot of work.

> Furthermore: We don't have shared libs.  The more functionality is
> stuffed into the kernel the better because it can be moved out of
> applications.  That will save both RAM and harddisk space.

Yes, but usually you have more space on the HD than in RAM. If everything
is loaded at boot you have to swap it out, and we don't have a stable
VM-system. If replacing uname and ps with 40kb of RAM I'd prefere the
applications. Even on a 14 MB Falcon you have to choose the applications
that you have running carefully, so that you could start a compile (gcc
can easily consume half the memory). If the kernel grows large enough, the
possibility will not even be there. 

Anyway, I like the unix-compatible way, that gives more programs, and
more programs gives more users.

/daniel