From owner-freebsd-hackers Mon Oct 2 19:46:56 1995 Return-Path: owner-hackers Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) id TAA24753 for hackers-outgoing; Mon, 2 Oct 1995 19:46:56 -0700 Received: from trepan.io.org (taob@trepan.io.org [198.133.36.8]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.6.12/8.6.6) with ESMTP id TAA24723 for ; Mon, 2 Oct 1995 19:46:45 -0700 Received: (from taob@localhost) by trepan.io.org (8.6.9/8.6.9) id WAA29014; Mon, 2 Oct 1995 22:46:31 -0400 Date: Mon, 2 Oct 1995 22:46:29 -0400 (EDT) From: Brian Tao To: dennis cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: FreeBSD 2.1 will require a minimum of 8MB for installation. In-Reply-To: <199510021727.NAA10736@etinc.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk On Mon, 2 Oct 1995, dennis wrote: > > Thats the point. Smaller is better for everyone. First you say FreeBSD would be catering to idiots with a small install kernel image, now you're saying that it would be better for everyone. Are you then implying that we're all idiots? ;-) > Is it OK to write bad code because 'processors are fast" and "memory > is cheap"? So you're saying that "small is beautiful" if it is the result of efficient code, not lack of functionality. A couple years ago, I simply would not have believed a decent OS could not fit in under 2 megs of RAM (coming from the Apple II world does that to you). Now I realize that companies with marketable products don't have the luxury of hiring programmers to write algorithms in hand-tuned assembler for maximum performance. I don't think the "more hardware is better" mentality is at work here in the FreeBSD camp. We are simply caught in a bad situation where there isn't enough time to implement a good and proper solution (loadable device drivers, on-disk filesystem, what have you), so an alternative must be found. The hack-and-slash solution of deleting unneeded drivers isn't my favourite method either, but I'd rather have that than god-knows how many users between now and 2.2 turned away because they couldn't even install the damn thing. -- Brian Tao System Administrator, Internex Online Inc. "Though this be madness, yet there is method in't"