[rescue] moussh [was Transplanting a Sun Fire V210 motherboard - PSU requirements?`]

[Mouse]

>>> How does moussh compare to other implementations?  [...]
>> It's different.  It's got a bunch of stuff I'm not aware of in any
>> other implementation ([...]).  And, of course, it's lacking in some
>> respects as compared to others.
> Nice.

I hate monocultures.  (Come to think of it, that's another, albeit
nontechical, respect in which I'm proud of it: I'm not just speaking
out against monocultures, I'm actively providing an alternative in this
case.)

>> Things I'm particularly proud of:  [...]
> I wonder if I could get it to build on 4.3BSD. ;)

Hm.  Probably.  I'd certainly be up for helping resolve any issues you
have with it.  At the very least I'd like to hear about them; I like to
hear about portability issues with my code - even when I decide to
write off particular bits of portability I like to do so knowingly.

>> As useful as POSIX has been, I think it's doing the computer world
>> harm now, in that something that doesn't at least mostly fit a POSIX
>> framework more or less can't be done.  [...]
> POSIX is a rather nonstandard standard. ;)

Yesss...but the problem is not the standard codifying the paradigm, but
the paradigm's dominance in the first place.

>> So, yeah, I would start by questioning everything.  Processes.
>> Filesystems.  Sockets.  Do we need them?  What do they provide?  Are
>> there other ways to satisfy the same underlying desires?  [...]
> I'd also question "everything as a file" and "everything is a stream
> of bytes".

Well, yes.  Everything-as-a-file depends on having files, though, so if
(for example) I do away with filesystems as we currently know them then
everything-as-a-file perforce goes away too.

Everything-is-a-byte-stream is, I think, even more central.  Files are
just nonvolatile storage applied to bytestreams....

> Implement proper message busses, and nonblocking queues.  Take a hint
> or two from VMS with regards to filesystem.

I went through my larval phase under VMS (many versions ago, back in
the '80s) and still recall many aspects of it fondly.  It certainly
will be an influence, one way or the other, on pretty much anything I
do along these lines.

So, of course, will (almost?) every other OS I've used - negative
influence, in the case of the ones I didn't/don't like. :-)

>> What about UI paradigms?  There are a lot of those [...]
> Please kill X.  It is time for it to die.

Why?  (Not that I disagree, but I'm interested in what you think is
wrong with it.)

> A standard graphics subsystem that all drivers hook in to would be
> nice as well.

X is pretty close to that in its more recent implementations.  (I don't
like the implementations, but not because I disagree with the paradigm
at the level you just outlined it; I consider them bad fleshings-out of
a good paradigm.)

> It would cause less issues and incompatibilities (nvidia rendering
> fonts differently than amd on linux is an example of this issue)

If nvidia and amd would just friggin' _document_ their bloody hardware,
people could build software without such incompatabilities.

Yet people continue to buy undocumented hardware.  From a very high
level perspective, I see this as the user base getting what it
deserves.  (The problem, of course, is that tyranny of the majority
inflicts the resulting crapola on everybody else too.)

> I find just planning on fascinating.  I'm unable to implement my own
> due to lack of knowledge.

Lack of knowledge is fixable. :-)

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