[TUHS] Macs and future unix derivatives

Nemo Nusquam cym224 at gmail.com
Wed Feb 10 04:29:50 AEST 2021


On 08/02/2021 22:58, M Douglas McIlroy wrote:
> % ls /usr/share/man/man2|wc
>      495     495    7230
> % ls /bin|wc
>     2809    2809   30468
Whoa! Is this Linux?  On my Solaris 10 boxen, I find:

[~]=> ls /bin |wc
     1113    1113   10256
[~]=> ls /usr/share/man/man2|wc
      219     219    2299

N.
> 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



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