Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Thu, Jul 09, 2009 at 06:18:14PM -0400, erik quanstrom wrote: it's also interesting to notice that long comments are often associated with bugs. Literate programming is a magnifying glass. It's very easy to use, but it's not straightforward to use right. My first attempts with a creative problem, with lengthy explanations and so on, were only showing that I was beating around the bush and had no clear idea of what I was doing. It was the same with pure C, except it was not as obvious. -- Thierry Laronde (Alceste) tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com http://www.kergis.com/ Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89 250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
Having seen that video, as well as other examples, I am now more drawn to APL. Any Plan 9 implementations available? ak
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
i don't believe so. i've made a number of false starts and would like to return to it some day. there's some very simple interpreters out there (including one by ken[1] for old unix systems) that might be worth looking at if you want to work on a port and performance isn't critical. note that i haven't found a single APL interpretation that uses the unicode apl characters[2] - a version written with plan9 tools could have a very nice advantage there. there has also been a lot of discussion in the past 1-2 months about K, a successor to APL, in #plan9. you might ask there; i may have missed a more recent development. [1] everyone says the character set is very jarring working in APL. for me, what's worse is the fact that in that community, ken, unadorned, refers to a father of the field, a luminary who's example many seek to follow, but it's a totally different person. here, i mean our ken. [2] i think A+, the APL-with-extensions from Morgan Stanley, could as an option, but trying it out on OS X gave poor results.
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
there has also been a lot of discussion in the past 1-2 months about K, a successor to APL, in #plan9. you might ask there; i may have missed a more recent development. could someone please explain to the ignorant, what is interesting about apl? the last surge of interest i recall in the language was in 1983. ibm offered an rom for the mga (monochrome graphics adapter) that substituted the odd apl characters for the equally-odd pc character set's bucky-bit characters. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 13:52:35 +0100 Robert Raschke rtrli...@googlemail.com wrote: On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 1:14 PM, erik quanstrom quans...@quanstro.netwrote: there has also been a lot of discussion in the past 1-2 months about K, a successor to APL, in #plan9. you might ask there; i may have missed a more recent development. could someone please explain to the ignorant, what is interesting about apl? the last surge of interest i recall in the language was in 1983. ibm offered an rom for the mga (monochrome graphics adapter) that substituted the odd apl characters for the equally-odd pc character set's bucky-bit characters. - erik Don't view it as a programming language, view it as an executable mathematical notation instead. And as such notations go, it is very rigorous; but also a bit esoteric when you come at it from a programming background. The J dialect of APL (http://www.jsoftware.com, essentially the continuation of Ken Iverson's development efforts after APL) is a great tool for thinking about generalised operations on vectors, matrices, cubes, etc. There's a great self-published book on graphics and image processing called Fractals Visualization and J by Cliff Reiter. The learning curve is very steep (unless you've never programmed and are used to lots of math). And there is a tendency of adherents to strive for the shortest possible expression(s) to solve a problem. That means it all looks a bit opaque from the outside. But it is possible to write J code that is elegant and easy to understand, even if you come back to it after some time. I took a look at Q recently. The ancestry of Q is APL - K - Q but then there's a disjunction, the open-source Q being written and maintained by a different person with no reference to the Ken chap who authored K. I think the open-source Q is an independant implementation not this Ken's implementation of Q, but it's possible Ken didn't create Q at all. I'm a little hazy on that detail. The difference between K Q is primarily that K uses single letters and various other ascii characters where Q uses words, making the learning curve for Q slightly shallower. The open-source Q has also been unmaintained for the last 2 years or so. (It fails to work correctly in 64-bit Linux.) Development has moven on to Pure, which delightully is implemented as a front-end to LLVM, that new compiler collection that's written in C++. Q is at any rate easy to compile works correctly on 32-bit Linux, as far as I can tell. The core package of Q is very light on it's dependencies too. Q seems pretty easy to learn if you can wrap your head around the idea of writing in quasi-mathematical abstractions, which is the part I'm struggling with. I'm sticking with procedural for now. -- Ethan Grammatikidis Those who are slower at parsing information must necessarily be faster at problem-solving.
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
The J dialect of APL (http://www.jsoftware.com, essentially the continuation of Ken Iverson's development efforts after APL) is a great tool for thinking about generalised operations on vectors, matrices, cubes, etc. There's a Plan 9 port of J 3.02 in /n/sources/contrib/miller/j/8.j 386 executable only, as I don't have permission to share source, but I can compile for other $objtypes on request.
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:10 PM, erik quanstromquans...@quanstro.net wrote: I expect to see code immediately, by the way, finished or not, and you better be around to answer my questions. You have something here: these are central software-development tenets of agile/scrum/xp/lean/kanban du jour, and help the open-source community work. Essentially, done is an elusive illusion, so enlist others throughout the process. i'm just going to take a guess that you have never had egg on your face caused by publishing code before it's time? We could all do with a bit more egg on our face. No one here is super-guru coder who can do without peer review, many are here just starting out and need lots of guidance. Within project teams I always publish my sandbox, if it compiles its committed. The benefit is not only peer review, but also so folks know what I'm working on (avoiding duplicate work). The only things which are not public have not cleared the IP lawyers (yet). Within the labs, everyone's sandboxes were visible (compiling or not). So to answer... name operating systems that develop in this way? Inferno and Plan 9 were both developed this way - everyone's code was visible to everyone else working on the project, often in a single tree. Integration problems were discovered sooner rather than later, and it was always easy to get help with a particular problem because anyone could immediately see the source. was under the impression that even, e.g., linux code is submitted in fairly complete fashion and tends to get rejected even on style grounds. Possibility of rejection is no reason to not to submit for review (just make sure folks understand the status of the code), or otherwise make your code visible. -eric
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
Indeed, Voltaire had it right. Better is the enemy... (of my enemy is my friend??) On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 9:10 PM, erik quanstrom quans...@quanstro.netwrote: I expect to see code immediately, by the way, finished or not, and you better be around to answer my questions. You have something here: these are central software-development tenets of agile/scrum/xp/lean/kanban du jour, and help the open-source community work. Essentially, done is an elusive illusion, so enlist others throughout the process. i'm just going to take a guess that you have never had egg on your face caused by publishing code before it's time? i can't stand my own silly mistakes, unfinished and crap code. why should i look at anyone elses? by the way, can you name operating systems that develop in this way? i was under the impression that even, e.g., linux code is submitted in fairly complete fashion and tends to get rejected even on style grounds. i think the idea that is illusary is that there is no difference between code that doesn't work and code that does work but might be improved. part of the craft of programming is to know when something is actually finished. the mistake is to improve things that work well enough. i think one could write quite an interesting book critiquing modern software development for failing to stop at good enough. but one would need to be quite a bit smarter, more educated and less lazy than i. i'll satisfy myself by quoting some such people. (oddly #1 and #3 are missing from fortune) Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. - rob pike, Notes on Programming in C Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. - niklaus wirth When in doubt, use brute force. - ken thompson - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
Why would it take a book? DMR made the point succinctly in his critique of Knuth's literate program, showing how a few command-line utilities do the work of the Don's elaborately constructed tries. because, evidently, one book was not enough. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
Why would it take a book? DMR made the point succinctly in his critique of Knuth's literate program, showing how a few command-line utilities do the work of the Don's elaborately constructed tries. Do you have a URL for this? Micah
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/9 Micah Stetson mi...@stetsonnet.org: Why would it take a book? DMR made the point succinctly in his critique of Knuth's literate program, showing how a few command-line utilities do the work of the Don's elaborately constructed tries. Do you have a URL for this? I looked this up yesterday, and there is some discussion on literateprogramming.com -- the discussion actually illustrates how to take the shell script and make *it* literate programming instead. It actually wasn't DMR, it was McIlroy. Micah --dho
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
i think one could write quite an interesting book critiquing modern software development for failing to stop at good enough. Why would it take a book? DMR [sic] made the point succinctly in his critique of Knuth's literate program, showing how a few command-line utilities do the work of the Don's elaborately constructed tries. Do you have a URL for this? Yes, sorry I didn't look it up earlier. Bentley, J., Knuth, D., and McIlroy, D. 1986. Programming pearls: a literate program. Commun. ACM 29, 6 (Jun. 1986), 471-483. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/5948.315654 It is McIlroy (not DMR), but it looks like he focused on, not writing a literate program, but the engineering benefits of constructing a pipeline from common tools, vs Knuth's elaborate, single-purpose program. From the paper: To return to Knuth’s paper: everything there---even input conversion and sorting---is programmed monolithically and from scratch. In particular the isolation of words, the handling of punctuation, and the treatment of case distinctions are built in. Even if data-filtering programs for these exact purposes were not at hand, these operations would well be implemented separately: for separation of concerns, for easier development, for piecewise debugging, and for potential reuse. The small gain in efficiency from integrating them is not likely to warrant the resulting loss of flexibility. And the worst possible eventuality eventuality---being forced to combine programs---is not severe. The simple pipeline given above will suffice to get answers right now, not next week or next month. It could well be enough to finish the job. But even for a production project, say for the Library of Congress, it would make a handsome down payment, useful for testing the value of the answers and for smoking out follow-on questions. Jason Catena
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Thu, Jul 09, 2009 at 02:47:37PM -0500, Jason Catena wrote: Yes, sorry I didn't look it up earlier. Bentley, J., Knuth, D., and McIlroy, D. 1986. Programming pearls: a literate program. Commun. ACM 29, 6 (Jun. 1986), 471-483. DOI= http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/5948.315654 [The article is reproduced in D. E. Knuth, Literate Programming, CSLI ISBN 0-9370-7380-6] For the task to be done print the k most common words in a file, the Unix approach and the Unix tools give everything to create a program far more rapidly than the from scratch approach adopted by D. Knuth. But because the tools exist (are already written... but in what language? Easily understandable? Maintainable? etc.). But this does not mean that _in general_, literate programming has not its strength especially for complex and weaven program... or even for writing the tools, the bricks one combines in a pipeline like McIlroy does. I don't think that TeX and METAFONT could have been written correctly, or could be understandable in something else than WEB (unfortunately not CWEB; that would simplify greatly porting). [For another thread: MetaPOST can be used instead of gnuplot. But not easily for 3D like plotting. Unfortunately, MetaPOST too is WEB not CWEB. And the ad hoc conversion of some Pascal to C (web to C) seems alas the simplest way. Even the Pascal compilers that could be ported to compile on Plan9 (if there are) would probably not allow a straightforward compilation of the WEB based programs.] -- Thierry Laronde (Alceste) tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com http://www.kergis.com/ Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89 250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
But this does not mean that _in general_, literate programming has not its strength especially for complex and weaven program... or even for writing the tools, the bricks one combines in a pipeline like McIlroy does. I'll say amen, especially for a system of many little parts. My point wasn't to bash literate programming at all. Rather I'd say that big elaborate constructions of many aspects are fragile, hard to understand and work with, and of limited use. Instead, let our tools combine bits of code into a bigger whole, and reuse the tools for other wholes (cf Lego bricks). I've used LaTeX and noweb daily since the first quarter of 2007 to write papers that are literate programs. They work well to organize and document collections of many small command-line guide files, shell scripts, makefiles, data files, C and lex source, and a real-time gnuplot driver I downloaded from the page of a guy at NASA. (I posted a few recent simple examples, in the tufte-handout style, at http://swtools.wordpress.com/papers/ . I plan to ask for a publishing release for the really interesting ones now behind a corp firewall.) Thierry Laronde Jason Catena
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
For the task to be done print the k most common words in a file, the Unix approach and the Unix tools give everything to create a program far more rapidly than the from scratch approach adopted by D. Knuth. But because the tools exist (are already written... but in what language? Easily understandable? Maintainable? etc.). the problem i have with literate programming is that it tends to treat code like a terse and difficult-to-understand footnote. it seems to me that literate programs tend to spend too much time commenting on straightforward code or code that is easier read than explained. ironicly, the assumption seems to be that one is illiterate in the computer language at hand. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 1:34 PM, erik quanstromquans...@quanstro.net wrote: the problem i have with literate programming is that it tends to treat code like a terse and difficult-to-understand footnote. And thus, we have literate programming meets APL. ;) -Jack
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
structure, on extremely clever constructions (on the BWK gibe that I won't be smart enough to debug it later), and to describe how the code segment interacts with others and maps to the problem domain. it's also interesting to notice that long comments are often associated with bugs. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 16:34, erik quanstromquans...@quanstro.net wrote: For the task to be done print the k most common words in a file, the Unix approach and the Unix tools give everything to create a program far more rapidly than the from scratch approach adopted by D. Knuth. But because the tools exist (are already written... but in what language? Easily understandable? Maintainable? etc.). the problem i have with literate programming is that it tends to treat code like a terse and difficult-to-understand footnote. it seems to me that literate programs tend to spend too much time commenting on straightforward code or code that is easier read than explained. ironicly, the assumption seems to be that one is illiterate in the computer language at hand. I'd guess that depends a great deal on the author's style. In the paper I quoted, I wouldn't say that's true at all of Knuth's discussion. I personally am very aware of this tendency, and only comment to introduce a bit of code and place it within the overall structure, on extremely clever constructions (on the BWK gibe that I won't be smart enough to debug it later), and to describe how the code segment interacts with others and maps to the problem domain. Jason Catena
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:44:20 -0800 Jack Johnson knapj...@gmail.com wrote: On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 1:34 PM, erik quanstromquans...@quanstro.net wrote: the problem i have with literate programming is that it tends to treat code like a terse and difficult-to-understand footnote. And thus, we have literate programming meets APL. ;) -Jack http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=GBhl=en-GBv=a9xAKttWgP4fmt=18 *This* is what can happen when a literate programmer meets APL!
[9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html 'nuff said. :-) Arnold
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 10:48:58AM +0300, Aharon Robbins wrote: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html 'nuff said. :-) Is it my english that is not sufficient ? [Note: it is written Google Chrome while I think it should be Google Chrome OS] The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. If I read correctly, this is not Plan9 based. And it seems a terminal will be available as open source, while the apps and the data will be in a cloud... that is not controlled by the user. (I have nothing against closed source---I make it too---. But the terminal is definitively not the bulk of a cloud. Everybody being allowed to build and sell terminals, ok. But terminals to access what belonging to who?) The majority of the current thinking is re-discovery of Plan 9 architecture: separate terminal, CPU and fileserver. And Plan9 was thought with SMP from the beginning. So why all is always Linux based ? And no, I have no problem accessing my data wherever I go, because it is _my_ data. -- Thierry Laronde (Alceste) tlaronde +AT+ polynum +dot+ com http://www.kergis.com/ Key fingerprint = 0FF7 E906 FBAF FE95 FD89 250D 52B1 AE95 6006 F40C
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
So why all is always Linux based ? Because linux has an army of volunteers hacking up drivers for everybody's weird undocumented ever-changing hardware. The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. It says linux kernel with no mention of multi-gigabyes of linux libraries and commands. The optimistic interpretation is that they've rediscovered Ron's idea of borrowing a linux kernel as a minimal (sic) device driver layer to put a sensible OS on top of, and throwing everything else away.
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 Richard Miller 9f...@hamnavoe.com: So why all is always Linux based ? Because linux has an army of volunteers hacking up drivers for everybody's weird undocumented ever-changing hardware. The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. It says linux kernel with no mention of multi-gigabyes of linux libraries and commands. The optimistic interpretation is that they've rediscovered Ron's idea of borrowing a linux kernel as a minimal (sic) device driver layer to put a sensible OS on top of, and throwing everything else away. Well a more realistic interpretation is somewhat more advanced than what's under android's hood, but still lacking full POSIX, we'll see. Kind regards, Anselm
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
But if it is just for a terminal, there is a lot of drivers you don't need. (Well, the video card is generally not the easier to correctly drive...) Exactly. And wi-fi. And ethernet if it's a cheap broadcom chip. And sound if it's not usb. And bluetooth so you can use your phone as a modem. And so on.
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:02 AM, Richard Miller9f...@hamnavoe.com wrote: The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. It says linux kernel with no mention of multi-gigabyes of linux libraries and commands. The optimistic interpretation is that they've rediscovered Ron's idea of borrowing a linux kernel as a minimal (sic) device driver layer to put a sensible OS on top of, and throwing everything else away. You can be sure we wont be so lucky. A huge amount of gnu/gnome guck is assured. uriel
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:41 AM, Richard Miller9f...@hamnavoe.com wrote: But if it is just for a terminal, there is a lot of drivers you don't need. (Well, the video card is generally not the easier to correctly drive...) Exactly. And wi-fi. And ethernet if it's a cheap broadcom chip. And sound if it's not usb. And bluetooth so you can use your phone as a modem. And so on. And C++ and Java and Flash and (C++ is assured, given that Chrome itself is all C++) uriel
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
You can be sure we wont be so lucky. A huge amount of gnu/gnome guck is assured. Your evidence? a new windowing system doesn't sound like gnome to me.
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
My evidence is familiarity with the garbage chrome depends on, you can expect Cairo, gtk/glib, dbus and the rest of the freedesktop.org 'standard' crap pile at the very least. And they will need to do flash somehow, so I would not be surprised if 'window system' in this context simply means 'window manager' to keep compatibility with all the plugins, input methods, font management and other junk that X provides. I could be wrong, but I have not seen any evidence that could contradict any of this. uriel On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:40 PM, Richard Miller9f...@hamnavoe.com wrote: You can be sure we wont be so lucky. A huge amount of gnu/gnome guck is assured. Your evidence? a new windowing system doesn't sound like gnome to me.
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 Uriel urie...@gmail.com: My evidence is familiarity with the garbage chrome depends on, you can expect Cairo, gtk/glib, dbus and the rest of the freedesktop.org 'standard' crap pile at the very least. And they will need to do flash somehow, so I would not be surprised if 'window system' in this context simply means 'window manager' to keep compatibility with all the plugins, input methods, font management and other junk that X provides. I could be wrong, but I have not seen any evidence that could contradict any of this. android doesn't use X and its browser application is still WebKit based. So ideally they will really do a new window system, but we'll see. Kind regards, Anselm
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
It says linux kernel with no mention of multi-gigabyes of linux libraries and commands. The optimistic interpretation is that they've rediscovered Ron's idea of borrowing a linux kernel as a minimal (sic) device driver layer to put a sensible OS on top of, and throwing everything else away. ha! that's a good one. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
But if it is just for a terminal, there is a lot of drivers you don't need. (Well, the video card is generally not the easier to correctly drive...) Exactly. And wi-fi. And ethernet if it's a cheap broadcom chip. And sound if it's not usb. And bluetooth so you can use your phone as a modem. And so on. the same could be said of linux. 5 years ago when i got a wireless card, i needed to use ndiswrapper to get it going. i also couldn't find a proper driver for my modem, either. but people still built stuff with linux. you can't say that an army of volunteers sprung up and created linux, nor can you say that linux created an army of volunteers. it's like the field of dreams. but it's too big to build by yourself. so you have to build some and a few will come and help build some more. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 2:02 AM, Richard Miller 9f...@hamnavoe.com wrote: So why all is always Linux based ? Because linux has an army of volunteers hacking up drivers for everybody's weird undocumented ever-changing hardware. The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. It says linux kernel with no mention of multi-gigabyes of linux libraries and commands. The optimistic interpretation is that they've rediscovered Ron's idea of borrowing a linux kernel as a minimal (sic) device driver layer to put a sensible OS on top of, and throwing everything else away. I believe the L4 crowd had been doing that as well for a while. No offense to Ron, he's a super-bright guy! But I'm not sure that idea is patently his :-). L4 processes could run on hardware that L4 didn't support by adding L4 to linux for IPC to deal with device interrupts etc etc. Someone ported IOKit from Mac OS X to Linux for this as well. That guy was promptly hired (killed perhaps) by Apple. :-) Dave
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On 07/08/2009 02:37 PM, Richard Miller wrote: So why all is always Linux based ? Because linux has an army of volunteers hacking up drivers for everybody's weird undocumented ever-changing hardware. The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. It says linux kernel with no mention of multi-gigabyes of linux libraries and commands. The optimistic interpretation is that they've rediscovered Ron's idea of borrowing a linux kernel as a minimal (sic) device driver layer to put a sensible OS on top of, and throwing everything else away. But that's still a huge hog and spaghetti code; needs a lot of cleanup, which I don't think is going to happen in the near future. -- Balwinder S bdheeman DheemanRegistered Linux User: #229709 Anu'z li...@home (Unix Shoppe)Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192 Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India Plan9, T2, Arch/Debian/FreeBSD/XP Home: http://werc.homelinux.net/ Visit: http://counter.li.org/
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On 07/08/2009 02:21 PM, tlaro...@polynum.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 08, 2009 at 10:48:58AM +0300, Aharon Robbins wrote: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html 'nuff said. :-) Is it my english that is not sufficient ? [Note: it is written Google Chrome while I think it should be Google Chrome OS] The software architecture is simple - Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. If I read correctly, this is not Plan9 based. And it seems a terminal will be available as open source, while the apps and the data will be in a cloud... that is not controlled by the user. (I have nothing against closed source---I make it too---. But the terminal is definitively not the bulk of a cloud. Everybody being allowed to build and sell terminals, ok. But terminals to access what belonging to who?) The majority of the current thinking is re-discovery of Plan 9 architecture: separate terminal, CPU and fileserver. And Plan9 was thought with SMP from the beginning. So why all is always Linux based ? And no, I have no problem accessing my data wherever I go, because it is _my_ data. I think, Google did not choose Plan 9 due lack of device drivers, poor IPv6 support and confusing redundant fragment of code lurking around in /sys/boot or 9load, but a compared with Linux a compact, clean and much more efficient FreeBSD could definitely have been a better choice. -- Balwinder S bdheeman DheemanRegistered Linux User: #229709 Anu'z li...@home (Unix Shoppe)Machines: #168573, 170593, 259192 Chandigarh, UT, 160062, India Plan9, T2, Arch/Debian/FreeBSD/XP Home: http://werc.homelinux.net/ Visit: http://counter.li.org/
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
you say I think, Google did not choose Plan 9 due lack of device drivers, poor IPv6 support and confusing redundant fragment of code lurking around in /sys/boot or 9load, but a compared with Linux a compact, clean and much more efficient FreeBSD could definitely have been a better choice. but then But that's [linux] still a huge hog and spaghetti code; needs a lot of cleanup, which I don't think is going to happen in the near future. i think you're going to have to pick a lane. and having fought with both the linux and plan 9 boot process, i can assure you that the plan 9 boot process is simplier and more straightfoward. /sys/boot is trivial compared to a linux initrd. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 erik quanstrom quans...@coraid.com: you say I think, Google did not choose Plan 9 due lack of device drivers, poor IPv6 support and confusing redundant fragment of code lurking around in /sys/boot or 9load, but a compared with Linux a compact, clean and much more efficient FreeBSD could definitely have been a better choice. but then But that's [linux] still a huge hog and spaghetti code; needs a lot of cleanup, which I don't think is going to happen in the near future. i think you're going to have to pick a lane. I don't think so. We already have IPv6 support and it's not that bad. Having more drivers and supported commodity architectures would be a good thing. I'd love to do this, but I don't think anybody's going to match my salary to port drivers, do ACPI, add amd64 support for workstations, etc. I don't think that adding drivers would make it a `huge hog' or require `spaghetti code'. (Linux kernel code isn't really `spaghetti code', it's just poorly organized and some of the architectural decisions, I'd classify as `spaghetti architecture' -- once you find it though, the code isn't so bad to read, in general). and having fought with both the linux and plan 9 boot process, i can assure you that the plan 9 boot process is simplier and more straightfoward. /sys/boot is trivial compared to a linux initrd. I can stand up for this statement. Not only is it trivial compared to initrd, the following of the boot process is much easier. I was doing some work on an ARM architecture port for Plan 9 (for an already dead product, the Siemens SimPAD). Figuring out where the *(#Q*(#...@$ source for the boot stuff was in Linux was a huge hassle and took me days. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:27 PM, erik quanstromquans...@coraid.com wrote: you say I think, Google did not choose Plan 9 due lack of device drivers, poor IPv6 support and confusing redundant fragment of code lurking around in /sys/boot or 9load, but a compared with Linux a compact, clean and much more efficient FreeBSD could definitely have been a better choice. but then But that's [linux] still a huge hog and spaghetti code; needs a lot of cleanup, which I don't think is going to happen in the near future. i think you're going to have to pick a lane. I think his lane is that Linux is complex, bloated, poorly designed, etc and that FreeBSD would have been a better choice. I have to agree with that and having fought with both the linux and plan 9 boot process, i can assure you that the plan 9 boot process is simplier and more straightfoward. /sys/boot is trivial compared to a linux initrd. And how! - Dan C.
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
But don't underestimate the value of the interesting ideas in the linux kernel that get the performance, e.g. RCU. I don't think there are any OSes that have scaled to 4096 CPUs at this point besides Linux. i thought that massively parallel harvard-arch machines had generally fallen out of favor in favor of blue gene-style hardware. is this incorrect? - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
I'd love to do this, but I don't think anybody's going to match my salary to port drivers, do ACPI, add amd64 support for workstations, etc. i told myself this for years. it turns out to be a mistaken idea. now that i know, i regret the years i spent doing other things. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 erik quanstrom quans...@coraid.com: But don't underestimate the value of the interesting ideas in the linux kernel that get the performance, e.g. RCU. I don't think there are any OSes that have scaled to 4096 CPUs at this point besides Linux. i thought that massively parallel harvard-arch machines had generally fallen out of favor in favor of blue gene-style hardware. is this incorrect? I think it depends on the application. I have a friend who studies fluid dynamics for scramjets and he was mentioning how doing some of those calculations requires ultra-low latency. The algorithms they need to use require multiple passes, and each calculation is affected by surrounding `blocks.' With infiniband and whatnot, this might be moot (he's doing his stuff on 32-core systems right now, so it's not even to that degree), but perhaps there are still applications that still significantly benefit from that architecture. They are quite the opposite of `embarrassingly parallel' problems (a la distributed.net / SETI / Folding). That said, I have no idea what the performance / latency characteristics are of a system with 32 cores and 32 CPUs connected with infiniband / some other proprietary high speed interconnect, or what that would look like performance-wise if it was scaled to 4096 cores versus quad-CPU boards with interconnects. - erik -dho
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 erik quanstrom quans...@coraid.com: I'd love to do this, but I don't think anybody's going to match my salary to port drivers, do ACPI, add amd64 support for workstations, etc. i told myself this for years. it turns out to be a mistaken idea. now that i know, i regret the years i spent doing other things. I certainly don't know anybody who is hiring people to do this sort of work in Plan 9. - erik --me
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 erik quanstrom quans...@coraid.com: I'd love to do this, but I don't think anybody's going to match my salary to port drivers, do ACPI, add amd64 support for workstations, etc. i told myself this for years. it turns out to be a mistaken idea. now that i know, i regret the years i spent doing other things. I certainly don't know anybody who is hiring people to do this sort of work in Plan 9. maybe you just don't know it. - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 Uriel urie...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Devon H. O'Delldevon.od...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think so. We already have IPv6 support and it's not that bad. Having more drivers and supported commodity architectures would be a good thing. I'd love to do this, but I don't think anybody's going to match my salary to port drivers, do ACPI, add amd64 support for workstations, etc. ACPI will never, ever, ever happen, so people better get over it (and if anyone is naive enough to waste their time trying, it will end up as a useless atrocious mess that wont boot even in a 100th of the systems out there, much less suspend or do anything useful). ACPI support doesn't need to suspend or do thermal zones. It just needs to be able to read the ADT and get MP / interrupt routing table information. This is doable. Have you ever read any of the ACPI spec? I have. As for amd64, it is already done, we are just not worthy to have access to it. Without this getting into a holy war, what Geoff told me was that the amd64 work was for headless CPU servers, which is only mildly useful to me anyway. uriel
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Devon H. O'Delldevon.od...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/7/8 Uriel urie...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Devon H. O'Delldevon.od...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think so. We already have IPv6 support and it's not that bad. Having more drivers and supported commodity architectures would be a good thing. I'd love to do this, but I don't think anybody's going to match my salary to port drivers, do ACPI, add amd64 support for workstations, etc. ACPI will never, ever, ever happen, so people better get over it (and if anyone is naive enough to waste their time trying, it will end up as a useless atrocious mess that wont boot even in a 100th of the systems out there, much less suspend or do anything useful). ACPI support doesn't need to suspend or do thermal zones. It just needs to be able to read the ADT and get MP / interrupt routing table information. This is doable. Have you ever read any of the ACPI spec? I have. The spec doesn't matter much, given that most BIOS out there totally ignore it. As for amd64, it is already done, we are just not worthy to have access to it. Without this getting into a holy war, what Geoff told me was that the amd64 work was for headless CPU servers, which is only mildly useful to me anyway. If it was released perhaps somebody would add the missing drivers, who knows... As things stand, we will never know. uriel
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 Uriel urie...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Devon H. O'Delldevon.od...@gmail.com wrote: ACPI support doesn't need to suspend or do thermal zones. It just needs to be able to read the ADT and get MP / interrupt routing table information. This is doable. Have you ever read any of the ACPI spec? I have. The spec doesn't matter much, given that most BIOS out there totally ignore it. I think you're unfamiliar with the spec as it relates to what I mentioned. --dho
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:30 PM, erik quanstromquans...@coraid.com wrote: But don't underestimate the value of the interesting ideas in the linux kernel that get the performance, e.g. RCU. I don't think there are any OSes that have scaled to 4096 CPUs at this point besides Linux. i thought that massively parallel harvard-arch machines had generally fallen out of favor in favor of blue gene-style hardware. is this incorrect? The two fastest machines in the world right now are arguably opteron clusters. Well, one is opteron+cell, the other is a cray xt4, but hey ... the basic software running on them is straight linux cluster-style software. ron
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:50 PM, Urielurie...@gmail.com wrote: As for amd64, it is already done, we are just not worthy to have access to it. Ah! I knew there was a reason! ron
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 1:10 PM, Devon H. O'Delldevon.od...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/7/8 Uriel urie...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Devon H. O'Delldevon.od...@gmail.com wrote: ACPI support doesn't need to suspend or do thermal zones. It just needs to be able to read the ADT and get MP / interrupt routing table information. This is doable. Have you ever read any of the ACPI spec? I have. The spec doesn't matter much, given that most BIOS out there totally ignore it. I think you're unfamiliar with the spec as it relates to what I mentioned. Devon is right on all counts. ron
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
Without this getting into a holy war, what Geoff told me was that the amd64 work was for headless CPU servers, which is only mildly useful to me anyway. If it was released perhaps somebody would add the missing drivers, who knows... As things stand, we will never know. Speaking of the amd64 port, I had thought that Bell Labs was planning on releasing it at some point in the future, but that it currently wasn't quite perfect and they didn't want to have to field complaints... I can't say that I blame them... But, it would be nice to see eventually. Are there plans to let the amd64 port out of the labs at some point in the future? Many thanks! -Ben winmail.dat
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 Benjamin Huntsman bhunts...@mail2.cu-portland.edu: Without this getting into a holy war, what Geoff told me was that the amd64 work was for headless CPU servers, which is only mildly useful to me anyway. If it was released perhaps somebody would add the missing drivers, who knows... As things stand, we will never know. Speaking of the amd64 port, I had thought that Bell Labs was planning on releasing it at some point in the future, but that it currently wasn't quite perfect and they didn't want to have to field complaints... I can't say that I blame them... My understanding from Geoff was exactly this. But I don't want to speak for him or introduce this as fact. I'm unaware of the exact status at this particular time. But, it would be nice to see eventually. Are there plans to let the amd64 port out of the labs at some point in the future? Agreed. Many thanks! -Ben Before my signature, I'd really like to reiterate that I did not bring up amd64 to open a can of worms. -dho
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 1:04 PM, Urielurie...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 9:56 PM, Devon H. O'Delldevon.od...@gmail.com wrote: 2009/7/8 Uriel urie...@gmail.com: On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 6:56 PM, Devon H. O'Delldevon.od...@gmail.com wrote: I don't think so. We already have IPv6 support and it's not that bad. Having more drivers and supported commodity architectures would be a good thing. I'd love to do this, but I don't think anybody's going to match my salary to port drivers, do ACPI, add amd64 support for workstations, etc. ACPI will never, ever, ever happen, so people better get over it (and if anyone is naive enough to waste their time trying, it will end up as a useless atrocious mess that wont boot even in a 100th of the systems out there, much less suspend or do anything useful). ACPI support doesn't need to suspend or do thermal zones. It just needs to be able to read the ADT and get MP / interrupt routing table information. This is doable. Have you ever read any of the ACPI spec? I have. The spec doesn't matter much, given that most BIOS out there totally ignore it. As for amd64, it is already done, we are just not worthy to have access to it. Without this getting into a holy war, what Geoff told me was that the amd64 work was for headless CPU servers, which is only mildly useful to me anyway. If it was released perhaps somebody would add the missing drivers, who knows... As things stand, we will never know. uriel Yeah, it's too bad nobody else on this planet could conceivably ever write a port. Since you're so hot on the idea, why not port it yourself? I expect to see code immediately, by the way, finished or not, and you better be around to answer my questions. Or are you too busy perfecting your /sys/doc mirror and bitching on irc? John -- I've tried programming Ruby on Rails, following TechCrunch in my RSS reader, and drinking absinthe. It doesn't work. I'm going back to C, Hunter S. Thompson, and cheap whiskey. -- Ted Dziuba
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
Before my signature, I'd really like to reiterate that I did not bring up amd64 to open a can of worms. -dho I just thought I'd ask the question since it came up, as I've been wondering also. However, I don't think it needs to be a can of worms if we as a community don't make it into one. After all, we're all on the same side. If the Bell Labs folks don't want to release it, we can either wait for them to do so, or as John suggested, port it ourselves. Personally, I'll wait... :) I also want to take the opportunity to thank the Labs folk and others here who release outstanding code for free and still take the time to communicate with the rest of us mortals... Time and effort greatly appreciated. -Ben winmail.dat
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
ACPI will never, ever, ever happen, so people better get over it (and if anyone is naive enough to waste their time trying, it will end up as a useless atrocious mess that wont boot even in a 100th of the systems out there, much less suspend or do anything useful). I've been wasting time on acpi, and will do waste more time soon. ISNT __IT _FUN? sorry, this is just a case convention I've recently seen and I love it. BTW, useless, who knows; but atrocious?, the interpreter is pretty. but what could I say about it?
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
2009/7/8 Francisco J Ballesteros n...@lsub.org: ACPI will never, ever, ever happen, so people better get over it (and if anyone is naive enough to waste their time trying, it will end up as a useless atrocious mess that wont boot even in a 100th of the systems out there, much less suspend or do anything useful). I've been wasting time on acpi, and will do waste more time soon. Another person in Plan 9 has been working on an AML interpreter that presents the ADT in a filesystem (at least, that was what I envisioned and explained to him). I believe he has also contacted you regarding some USB ethernet device, so perhaps you two will want to work together to some point? If I can be of any use as well, let me know. I've got a small bit of experience with ACPI (fixing some issues in FreeBSD's acpica support for Intel Blades). ISNT __IT _FUN? sorry, this is just a case convention I've recently seen and I love it. It's certainly fun from a WTF were they thinking perspective. Hardware engineers are rarely amazing programmers. BTW, useless, who knows; but atrocious?, the interpreter is pretty. but what could I say about it? --dho
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
Another person in Plan 9 has been working on an AML interpreter that presents the ADT in a filesystem (at least, that was what I envisioned and explained to him). I believe he has also contacted you regarding some USB ethernet device, so perhaps you two will want to work together to some point? If I can be of any use as well, let me know. I've got a small bit of experience with ACPI (fixing some issues in FreeBSD's acpica support for Intel Blades). Well, the thing has to be ready for use at boot time (even before chandevreset, IMHO). Thus I took care to write this in a way that does not require processes or other external artifacts (but for memory allocation and i/o, of course). Providing a file system interface could be done, but the problem is the interpreter itself, not providing the tree as a file system. But time will tell. Thanks for saying. Any idea is welcome in any case.
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
I expect to see code immediately, by the way, finished or not, and you better be around to answer my questions. You have something here: these are central software-development tenets of agile/scrum/xp/lean/kanban du jour, and help the open-source community work. Essentially, done is an elusive illusion, so enlist others throughout the process. Jason Catena
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
I expect to see code immediately, by the way, finished or not, and you better be around to answer my questions. You have something here: these are central software-development tenets of agile/scrum/xp/lean/kanban du jour, and help the open-source community work. Essentially, done is an elusive illusion, so enlist others throughout the process. i'm just going to take a guess that you have never had egg on your face caused by publishing code before it's time? i can't stand my own silly mistakes, unfinished and crap code. why should i look at anyone elses? by the way, can you name operating systems that develop in this way? i was under the impression that even, e.g., linux code is submitted in fairly complete fashion and tends to get rejected even on style grounds. i think the idea that is illusary is that there is no difference between code that doesn't work and code that does work but might be improved. part of the craft of programming is to know when something is actually finished. the mistake is to improve things that work well enough. i think one could write quite an interesting book critiquing modern software development for failing to stop at good enough. but one would need to be quite a bit smarter, more educated and less lazy than i. i'll satisfy myself by quoting some such people. (oddly #1 and #3 are missing from fortune) Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. - rob pike, Notes on Programming in C Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. - niklaus wirth When in doubt, use brute force. - ken thompson - erik
Re: [9fans] Google finally announces their lightweight OS
On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 23:10, erik quanstromquans...@quanstro.net wrote: I expect to see code immediately, by the way, finished or not, and you better be around to answer my questions. You have something here: these are central software-development tenets of agile/scrum/xp/lean/kanban du jour, and help the open-source community work. Essentially, done is an elusive illusion, so enlist others throughout the process. i'm just going to take a guess that you have never had egg on your face caused by publishing code before it's time? I have, often enough that I got past it really bothering me personally. Rather, the only way to get changes out to the people that need it, when they need it, is to release after some sanity test. Users of my system tested it far better than I can, and faster. For the people who found problems, I fixed them ASAP. For people who didn't see any difference, my code passed. For those who needed the primary change, they got it quick and got on with their jobs. To none of these groups was it worth significantly lengthy testing on my part to make sure everything was perfect, so long as I quickly fixed any knock-on, secondary errors. Managers don't think like that though. i can't stand my own silly mistakes, unfinished and crap code. It's just a process of learning how to build better theories that map problem to program domains. Tomorrow you won't be able to stand code you consider correct, finished, and great today. why should i look at anyone elses? To find giants on whose shoulders you may stand. A capital reason to study Plan 9. by the way, can you name operating systems that develop in this way? i was under the impression that even, e.g., linux code is submitted in fairly complete fashion and tends to get rejected even on style grounds. Everywhere pair programming is used. Less obviously, every OS is incomplete and has rough edges made better through open source, where it's done. This was most of my original point, that your demands are essentially what many customers who can code want. Why else would people on this list complain about not being able to see Bell Labs' broken AMD64 code? i think the idea that is illusary is that there is no difference between code that doesn't work and code that does work but might be improved. Whether code works depends on your point of view, what your requirements are for the code. Just like any system that we build, and any aspect from which we consider it. part of the craft of programming is to know when something is actually finished. the mistake is to improve things that work well enough. Why bother with Plan 9, or write software at all? Windows and Unix are essentially finished, and good enough for what almost all people want to do with a computer. So we could say improving the state of the art with Linux or Plan 9 are mistakes. The only code we should bother to write is completely novel in concept. i think one could write quite an interesting book critiquing modern software development for failing to stop at good enough. Why would it take a book? DMR made the point succinctly in his critique of Knuth's literate program, showing how a few command-line utilities do the work of the Don's elaborately constructed tries. but one would need to be quite a bit smarter, more educated and less lazy than i. i'll satisfy myself by quoting some such people. (oddly #1 and #3 are missing from fortune) Rule 3. Fancy algorithms are slow when n is small, and n is usually small. - rob pike, Notes on Programming in C Inside every large problem is a small problem struggling to get out. - niklaus wirth When in doubt, use brute force. - ken thompson Agree, but these are off the point of when to release code, however well-spoken and perceptive. - erik Jason Catena
