Date: Thu, 4 Jun 1998 21:19:49 +0000 (GMT) From: Terry Lambert <tlambert@primenet.com> To: joelh@gnu.org Cc: tlambert@primenet.com, wollman@khavrinen.lcs.mit.edu, eivind@yes.no, current@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: I see one major problem with DEVFS... Message-ID: <199806042119.OAA12140@usr08.primenet.com> In-Reply-To: <199806042005.PAA03968@detlev.UUCP> from "Joel Ray Holveck" at Jun 4, 98 03:05:09 pm
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> > 2) The config program is a barrier for new users. > > > > This isn't an opinion. It's a fact. People who have never used the > > config program in FreeBSD are unlikely to have experience with a > > similar program in the environment they came from, be it Linux or > > be it Windows. > > I had no problem at all with the config program when I started with > BSD. And FreeBSD has the handbook that spells it out easily. You are not a "people", you are an "engineer". A "people" would not have known there was a handbook, nor that the kernel would ever have reason to need to be recompiled, let alone that it was possible to read something to get the information. To paraphrase Nate's law: "the complexity has to live somewhere"; I personally prefer that it live, not in user space code, and not in kernel space code, but in the architecture. Have you ever been to an amusement park with gas powered cars that are on a cement ridge, much like a slot car? These parks never have problems with the animal ride train barrelling into a slot car, flying off the tracks into a bridge abuttment, and then the bridge collapsing on the passgenger cars of the train to the gleeful howls of the tabloid press. Unlike most so-called "modern" countries, the car and train systems at amusement parks are architected such that they do not have intersecting domains. In the same way, OS's must be architected such that there is never a domain containing both members of the set "complex task" and the set "standard user interface" simultaneously. Note the use of the adjective "standard" before accusing me of wanting to "dumb down" UNIX. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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