[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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