[TUHS] Macs and future unix derivatives

Will Senn will.senn at gmail.com
Tue Feb 9 14:13:14 AEST 2021


On 2/8/21 9:58 PM, M Douglas McIlroy wrote:
>> Do they *really* want something which is just V7 Unix, with nothing else?
>> No TCP/IP, no hot-plug USB support?  No web browsing?
>> Oh, you wanted more than that?  Feature bloat!  Feature bloat!
>> Feature bloat!   Shame!  Shame!   Shame!
> % ls /usr/share/man/man2|wc
>      495     495    7230
> % ls /bin|wc
>     2809    2809   30468
>
> How many of roughly 500 system calls (to say nothing of uncounted
> ioctl's) do you think are necessary for writing those few crucial
> capabilities that distinguish Linux from v7? There is
> undeniably bloat, but only a sliver of it contributes to the
> distinctive utility of today's systems.
>
> Or consider this. Unix grew by about 39 system calls in its first
> decade, but an average of 40
> per decade ever since. Is this accelerated growth more symptomatic of
> maturity or of cancer?
>
> Doug
I couldn't have said it better. I was looking at 'man syscalls' and 
shaking my head just a couple of days ago. I also just thought, hey, 
wouldn't it be nice to get a printed copy of the latest manpages - uh, 
that ain't gonna happen - 3000+ manpages, sheesh. Not sure I was 
thinking 'man widget_toolbar' would provide me with any deep insights 
anyway, maybe that's why its in mann.

Will
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