[rescue] Total corporate madness (

[Meelis Roos]

>    Linux on non-x86 platforms is also a "port of a 'very x86' OS".  I
> like Linux (as I do FreeBSD) but only on x86 hardware.

It might been true in 1.0, 1.2 and maybe even 2.0 times but definitely
not in 2.2 and onward. Just take a look into the development (like
follow linux-kernel mailing list for some time) and see yourself if you
don't believe. No API change goes through if it does not fit for some
architecture.

That said, x86 is definitely the architecture that gets most
arch-specific optimizations and hacks (*) because there is a vast amount
of developers for x86 port and only some major developers for each other
port.

Not that I believe that Dave would change his mind about Linux :) but I
felt like I need to correct this.

(*) Sometimes it makes me really wonder why they don't even try to fix
the PC architecture. They had 32bit/33MHz PCI, it was not enough for
graphics. Instead of using 64bit/66MHz PCI, they developed AGP that had
the same specs but was not PCI. OK, they needed to remap memory ranges
for the hardware but instead of introducing proper IO-MMU, they made a
half-ass AGP GART. Like this wasn't enough, Intel is putting a special
new bus for gogabit ethernet into the new chipsets instead of going to
PCI-X all the way. And AGP GART has not been the last half-assed
IO-MMU... Looks like Intel wants to specifically make proprietary
interfaces ot profit from them, and the users suffer. And they see it as
normal because they haven't seen better solutions.

-- 
Meelis Roos (mroos at linux.ee)