15 Jul
2021
15 Jul
'21
8:29 p.m.
On 7/15/21, Adam Thornton <athornton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The thing which Linux has managed to achieve, however,
is the fact
The last time I looked it was actually FreeBSD that had the most
system calls (more than 500). Linux had more or less around the same
number as OpenBSD (more than 300).
UNIX V7 had around 50 -- this is still the golden standard, but
obviously a lot has changed since then...
--Andy
that there is a large and diverse base of
corporate contributions.
That to me is what makes the Linux model so interesting, and has been
a reason for its long-term sustainability.
Although from a somewhat different perspective, it's also why the Linux
kernel syscall interface is so unruly, right?
You've got your...some number in the small dozens of common syscalls, which
are already present for the most part in v6 or v7. These are the ones I,
at least, think of when I think of the Unix manual, section 2.
And then you've got all the other calls added in by (usually) this database
vendor or that storage vendor or the other display adapter vendor to make
their stuff work more efficiently.
And obviously there's a tradeoff there. Elegance departs, and you've
probably introduced some security risk because these syscalls are not
nearly as well-exercised as the common ones, but on the other hand you have
these large companies paying to work on the kernel, and you have them
supporting their product on Linux systems because the system can be bent
into accommodating them more easily, and it will run better there than on
OSes where they don't get to introduce features that benefit their
products, which further drives adoption.