Re: Microkernels & Ada (Was for the AdaOS folks)

["Warren W. Gay VE3WWG" <ve3wwg@NoSpam.cogeco.ca>]

Adrien Plisson wrote:
> Warren W. Gay VE3WWG wrote:
> 
>> Others criticize microkernels on the performance issue. This
>> point is harder to ignore, but I personally believe that this
>> also will become an insignificant issue with time. Each year
>> we see more powerfull CPU chips, and in a short period of
>> time, it looks like we may soon have dual, quad and
>> octo-core CPU chips. The efficiency factor becomes less
>> important with these types of advances in hardware.
> 
> that is part of the problem. we count to much on CPU power. when 
> computers were slow, we had powerful and efficient software. now 
> computers have 512 times more memory and are more than 300 times faster. 
> what i see is: software are getting bigger and bigger with no really 
> added features, and they perform almost as slowly as 20 years ago, if 
> not slower. in those dark ages, developpers were taking great care not 
> to cripple software with useless features and wrote efficient software.
> nowadays, developpers don't think a bit when designing software and rely 
> on CPUs power growth to take care it.

I don't disagree completely on this, because there certainly is
an amount of useless featuritis in products like M$ Office etc.
This is mostly a matter of getting people to pay again for
software they already have (marketing).

But some of the bloat is justifiable. A developer's time is
costly, and because CPU time is cheaper now, it doesn't make
sense to have developers counting bytes unless it multiplies
into sizable quantities (I'm talking of the general purpose
(GP) programming areas - not embedded programming). Another
example is that I run my programs with all of the Ada checks
and assertions on, unless efficiency is more important. I
can afford to do that because CPUs are fast enough that I
don't have to care.

>> You can bet on the fact that if everyone used a microkernel
>> designed O/S today, Intel, AMD, IBM and others would be
>> working hard to fix some of that "overhead" problem. The
>> rest of the overhead may not be worth going after, but the
>> big problems would get attention.
> 
> and what about them designing something new too ? Intel once had very 
> good ideas with the i432. why don't they try again ?

If everyone started using Ada based O/Ss, perhaps the idea
would get ressurrected at Intel. The trouble with radical
hardware designs, is they must pay off in a shorter period
of time, and of course need a "market". I can't see that
happening until its O/S starts to "demand" better/matching
hardware.

>> I firmly believe that others could do the same thing. The
>> point is that more _research_ needs to be done on _SAFE_
>> and _SECURE_ operating systems. We have enough fully
>> featured (M$) and fast (*NIX) systems, but I'd like to
>> see a secure and rootless O/S for starters.
> 
> i disagree here ! i am facing people everyday that don't know how to use 
> their computer. they are just lost in the middle of all the features 
> available to them. this kind of people need something simple and 
> efficient. an OS which provides them with the tools they need to do what 
> they WANT to do, and nothing more. in the vein of the macintosh some 
> years ago...

I won't disagree with this point. Obviously, there is a
wide range of users, when it comes to capability. Given
the needs of new/simple users, perhaps there is an
opportunity to do something here.

Your mention of the old "MacIntosh" is a good point. My late
father-in-law left DOS kicking and screaming, and eventually
got the hang of Windows. He found DOS much easier.

The problem IMHO, is rooted in the range of features (choices),
that a user must be aware of. It is too much for a new user.
Its like the old joke about Model-T Fords where you had the
choice of colour as "black, black or black". Too many choices
(options), bewilder new users. Or here's another bad example:
McAfee antivirus cannot be setup ahead of time, so the
poor grandmother using the PC is later prompted about what
should be allowed on TCP/IP ports. How is she to know how
to answer those prompts?

The old MacIntosh only allowed the user to do one thing at
a time. You didn't have to teach the Mac user about minimising,
multi-processing, and how to get those minimised windows
back etc.

So yes, I would agree that "user interface" designs can be
improved. Once such improvement might be a "novice mode", to
simplify what the user must know. Do single-tasking for
novice users perhaps.

> (and if Man was not that violent we wouldn't need any security feature)

True, and if man didn't steal, you wouldn't need car keys
either. But we must accept the given situation and provide
solutions for them.

>> This wasn't true when UNIX was being initially developed. It
>> need not be the case for a new design. The design just needs
>> to solve a problem. For example, a secure O/S is needed for
>> firewalls (hence my interest in a rootless O/S).
> 
> you are right ! we should stop developping full-featured monsters we 
> can't manage, let's keep things simple.

A large part of it is about "control". Going back to DOS,
when you only had maybe 50 files, it was easy to know and
administer that environment inside and out. When I do a
virus scan on my family computer and I see 127,000 files.
How can I know about spyware files, except that I run a
spyware utility. How do I know the utility got them all?
Take away IE cache files, and it is still over 37,000 files
to manage.

But # of files is not the whole issue. I think we have to
accept that there will be increasing amounts of "software"
as we demand more functionality. But how do we do this and
make it manageable? Perhaps DLL files (and share libaries)
should be put into archives (ar). Win32 could start
applying real permissions on a better organized file
systems, as another example. These are nearly trivial
things to do technically, yet they are left undone.

M$ needs to stop with this "gee whiz, look at what we
can do" and be more sensible. People told them that
running Active-X controls in IE was bad news a
long time ago, yet they refuse to address that issue.
This is clearly a "trade safety for features" issue
(one could argue that marketing wins over safety).

>> It doesn't need to take the world by storm either. It took
>> years before suddenly everyone realized they needed a *NIX
>> server (thanks to the Internet & www). I am sure that other
>> opportunities are in the wing.
> 
> i don't see any... as you said earlier: "People are often stuck on what 
> they know". so will they really create something new as internet and the 
> www was ? but i hope one day we will see something changing. or maybe we 
> will create our own oppotunity !

Linus created his own opportunity, so why not. Thomas Edison
had many failures before he got a successful light bulb. By
trying ideas in new operating systems, you will probably find
out many things that don't work well. But along the way, you
might hit on some winning new ideas.
--
Warren W. Gay VE3WWG
http://home.cogeco.ca/~ve3wwg