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ManOfSteel 06 Oct 2010, 11:42
rugxulo wrote: Last I checked, Vista (Home Premium on up, not that joke called Home Basic) and Win7 both need at least 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of HD to run. OpenSuSE also last I checked "recommended" 1 GB. I know for a fact that XP can run in much much less, but they want to phase that out because "it's old". With GNU/Linux and *BSD, you can choose what you need and remove the rest. This stands for both applications and system tools as well as the features inside these applications and system tools (and the kernel). This means even the latest release can still run on very old machines *if* you choose wisely. It is a very simple thing to do once you are aware of the available alternatives. And today we have the Internet... With Windows, you can barely disable a few resource-hungry processes and features, but you would not be able to reduce that to, say, half of what is required by default. The only alternative is to run deprecated, vulnerable and sometimes unstable versions such as Windows 9x or perhaps Windows 2000. rugxulo wrote: Even Ubuntu needs gigs and gigs for a full install. As I previously said, these are marketed as replacements for Windows and therefore have to support a lot of hardware and have eye-candy interfaces to be able to compete. But there is a choice you can make here. rugxulo wrote: A review of some *BSD I read (perhaps NetBSD) bragged about how it could run in bare console in "as little as 40 MB" ... doing what??? That's a lot of RAM, but the problem is that nobody knows and nobody cares. You would be surprised! Even when I am under X, I use many command-line applications. I can even configure a kernel in such a way that the console switches to high VESA modes. I would then be able to run a window manager/terminal multiplexer, with (E)Links, Midnight Commander, MPlayer, etc. on a shell, and I would never run X unless I needed a graphical application (e.g. photo retouching). Or I could simply run these applications on different vttys. So again, this is a choice you can make. You want a system with point-and-click skinned applications, animated menus, shadows and translucent windows? Get a modern machine. You can live without these superficial "features", care to read a man page and will not cry for help the minute you see the output of dmesg? Very good, you can keep your old machine and still use the latest release. Just do not try to defy logic. Also, is using 40MB of RAM a lot? Even a 10 year old machine has 64 or 128MB! rugxulo wrote: One guy with an ultra modern rig told me, "Compiling is fast enough, it doesn't need to be faster", ugh. Surely he doesn't compile much then. Multicore machines with 2GB or more and the right settings can buildworld in less than an hour. Depending on the machine specs and the settings used, I have seen people completing the entire process in 40, 20 or even 12 minutes! |
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06 Oct 2010, 11:42 |
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edfed 06 Oct 2010, 13:44
TmX wrote:
hem... if an opensource project takes 1 days to compile, it is quite closed. because it will be very hard to do fast testings in order to apply major modifications. but it needs an open mind to understand this. even in pure console, linux is bloated. then, rewrite in asm is only to reduce the memory requirements, increase compilation speed, and filter what is really needed and what is pure waste. like reactos is a project to provide a compatible windows opensource OS, a linux asm version will let it become a very fast and slim OS. |
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06 Oct 2010, 13:44 |
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revolution 06 Oct 2010, 13:59
Well my experience with Linux has been bad. This was not due to bloat but actually lack of bloat (in a sense). Because there were/are no drivers to support the hardware. Without drivers no OS can run on a system.
Some of the "bloat" you are describing is drivers. But without the drivers people couldn't use the OS. Only a few, of thousands of drivers, is actually needed in any one system, but you can't know beforehand which ones to include. So you have to include them all, even the obscure and weird ones that "nobody" uses. Any asm version of any OS will also have to contend with the driver problem. If you have only a few drivers then you limit the places the OS can run and/or you limit the functionality you can provide. However, if instead you have every conceivable driver then you will get complaints about having too much bloat. Either way you can't win. |
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06 Oct 2010, 13:59 |
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bitRAKE 06 Oct 2010, 14:17
With the prevalence of the cloud. All an OS needs is network drivers. Even the hardware detection could mostly be downloaded. The user could even provide some guidance to the process (just to hide the latency
 in the mind of the user). |
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06 Oct 2010, 14:17 |
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ManOfSteel 06 Oct 2010, 14:47
edfed wrote: then, rewrite in asm is only to reduce the memory requirements, increase compilation speed, and filter what is really needed and what is pure waste. Nothing is pure waste or else people would not, well, waste their time on it. It all depends on who you are targeting. |
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06 Oct 2010, 14:47 |
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Octavio 06 Oct 2010, 16:11
ManOfSteel wrote:
And how much time would you need to translate the full linux? Coty wrote: Do you use FASM or GCC? Rugxulo wrote:
Hello Rugxulo ,thats about 3$ of electricity.Definitively i should rename octaos to eco_os or green_os.  |
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06 Oct 2010, 16:11 |
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TmX 06 Oct 2010, 17:46
edfed wrote: hem... if an opensource project takes 1 days to compile, it is quite closed. because it will be very hard to do fast testings in order to apply major modifications. but it needs an open mind to understand this. OK.... guess you should try a very slim Linux distro, something like Tiny Core Linux. It's very small, and I guess only needs several hours to build it from source. |
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06 Oct 2010, 17:46 |
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f0dder 14 Oct 2010, 02:19
edfed wrote:
My server, a humble 1.6GHz Intel Celeron 420 with 2GB of RAM and a slow primary/OS disk (5400rpm, iirc) running gentoo rarely takes more than a minute when building an app (exceptions are the huge stuff like GCC and the linux kernel) - and that's when upgrading to a newer version, which means re-compiling every file. While doing development work, you don't recompile every file - using makefiles, or other build environments, combined with a modular source code split means you only need to rebuild the files that have been changed (and you get the additional bonus of a sane, non-spaghetti, comprehensible project organization). Needless to say, this greatly reduces build-time. Talking about how fast FASM can assembly itself isn't much of a guidance here; while it's quite an amount of work for a single person, it's amount of code is a drop in the water compared to GCC or the linux kernel. Also, the FASM source code afaik doesn't use much of the macro facilities; if you were to "reimplement linux in fasm using macros so it's not an über-impossible task", that would mean different compiling speed (and yes, I'm using the term "compiling" deliberately, since heavy use of macros isn't that far from HLLs). Apart from the idea of rewriting linux in assembly being extremely silly and impossible to achieve, why do you suggest "putting all the source in a single file"? Ooooh, the maintanability horrors of that approach. _________________  - carpe noctem |
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14 Oct 2010, 02:19 |
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Tomasz Grysztar 14 Oct 2010, 09:56
f0dder wrote: why do you suggest "putting all the source in a single file"? Ooooh, the maintanability horrors of that approach. |
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14 Oct 2010, 09:56 |
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revolution 14 Oct 2010, 09:59
Modularised files in fasm allowed me to write fasmarm pretty easily. Without that I would have had a harder time with it.
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14 Oct 2010, 09:59 |
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ManOfSteel 14 Oct 2010, 10:25
f0dder wrote: I wonder which project would take that long to compile on a reasonable machine? Xorg, GNOME, KDE, OOo, etc. ... which is why I don't use DEs and only use binary packages for things like Xorg. |
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14 Oct 2010, 10:25 |
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mindcooler 14 Oct 2010, 13:53
I compiled Openoffice.org on a Pentium-166. Took a week.
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14 Oct 2010, 13:53 |
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f0dder 22 Oct 2010, 17:03
ManOfSteel wrote:
I still stand by my point that while you're doing dev, you don't "make clean" all the time, it's an iterative process - you only recompile modified parts, which should only be very few files per build... unless, of course, your architecture and source file physical structure is a tangled spaghetti mess
Tomasz Grysztar wrote:
Betov... has some pretty peculiar ideas. I partially agree with him, so far as that having a proper IDE with an "understanding" of your project can do a lot of really nice things that help with productivity and maintainability. I don't agree with his idea of single-file projects, though. While I like IDEs, I also like having the ability to edit my source code without firing up a (possibly big and bulky) IDE. Splitting into multiple files means you can use your filesystem hierarchy for logical grouping, which is IMHO a very good ting. It also makes it easier to do code generation as part of your build process, linking to code produces in other languages, and facilitating code re-use through libraries. Of course Betov would argue that you should use DLLs if you want reusability, and that if you want to use existing libraries written in HORRIBLE HORRIBLE languages, you should disassemble their code and include the assembly dump... if that works for him, fine, but I like development tools that don't limit my choices
By the way, while I think the C/C++ preprocessor is a powerful thing (and not something that should be boo-hissed at, when applied properly), I've never been a fan of the header/source split done in C languages... I came from pascal, and it's "unit" split and "using" directive was one of the few things I missed when moving to C and C++. _________________ - carpe noctem |
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22 Oct 2010, 17:03 |
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edfed 23 Oct 2010, 14:02
what i can say after one week of use of linux is:
linux is real shit. it is really bloated, really dumb, but as it is a religion now, nothing can be done with it. as i can see, i cannot install gimp, blender, dosbox, and anything without the internet, and many hours of upgrades. i cannot compile my codes because of the upcase/lowcase file names disticntions. i cannot use linux to code. it is not made for this. and what i feel really bad is the shell interpreter. command line under linux is like a big joke. what i don't understand is: why does linux have so success? is it really because it is open source? or just because some brainfucker made it when there was only MSdos? i strongly believe that any OS project from this board is better than the first linux. and if efforts are concentrated as on linux dev, i am pretty sure that it can kill linux (and windows). because linux is really a crap full of unbalanced libs, packages, etc... something i cannot dare anymore. if i code only in asm, it is because i cannot dare bloat. and linux, it is exactlly the opposite of asm. |
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23 Oct 2010, 14:02 |
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revolution 23 Oct 2010, 14:14
edfed wrote: why does linux have so success? is it really because it is open source? edfed, what you seem to have experienced is the problem with having no central control. Linux is basically anarchy. There are a myriad of packages, perhaps one of them fits your needs perfectly. But finding that perfect one is a huge problem. |
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23 Oct 2010, 14:14 |
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ManOfSteel 23 Oct 2010, 17:44
edfed wrote: what i can say after one week of use of linux is: Not that I am a big fan of GNU/Linux distros but aren't you exaggerating a bit? Maybe you tried a particular distro that has a bloated desktop environment and many huge default applications. There are lightweight minimalist distros, Arch Linux being one of them if I am not mistaken, as well as fairly complete but still lightweight distros. Check sleepsleep's posts for the latter. edfed wrote: as i can see, i cannot install gimp, blender, dosbox, and anything without the internet, and many hours of upgrades. Where do you get your Windows software, eh? Software retailers? edfed wrote: i cannot compile my codes because of the upcase/lowcase file names disticntions. How is case sensitivity impairing your ability to assemble code? Personally I have no problem with it so I don't understand. edfed wrote: i cannot use linux to code. Oh, please! There are members of this very forum who code under GNU/Linux. The same tools are available (by default or not) on all *nix systems and I can tell you from personal experience they can be used efficiently for software development. Heck, most open-source projects are developed on *nix systems and for them first and then ported to Windows. edfed wrote: and what i feel really bad is the shell interpreter. No, really, this is way too much. *nix shell scripting is far superior to any other. These systems can be controlled and managed entirely using a shell. As for the interactive part, most shells are way more flexible and powerful than Windows' command-line interpretor: permanent history, history editing, command/filename autocompletion, aliases, keybinding, etc. If you dislike the terminal emulator, you can install another one. As for the shell itself, it may be possible to change under GNU/Linux, but I am not sure. edfed wrote: why does linux have so success? Does it? As far as I know, its popularity (and therefore success) in the desktop industry is quite insignificant. ~~~~ revolution wrote: edfed, what you seem to have experienced is the problem with having no central control. Linux is basically anarchy. There are a myriad of packages This is ridiculous and unfair, really. There are only a few GNU/Linux base distributions: Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Mandriva, Red Hat, SUSE and Ubuntu. All distros are based on one base distribution or another. Distros are nothing more than the Linux kernel bundled with a group of default applications packaged and configured in a certain way by the people who created the particular distro. Yes, there is a "myriad of packages" just like there are hundreds of thousands of applications on http://download.cnet.com/windows/ or similar websites. If Windows had a license with a free-distribution clause, virtually millions of Windows distros could be made using Windows and third-party applications. revolution wrote: perhaps one of them fits your needs perfectly. But finding that perfect one is a huge problem. How is this different from Windows or any other system? Don't you still have to try all the alternatives and pick the one that "fits your needs perfectly". The only difference is that people who use computers for the first time under Windows automatically have sets of applications shoved down their throats by the manufacturer, retailer, or computer-literate family members or friends. Ever wondered why IE still has almost half of the PC browser market share despite its infamous history as a slow and horribly buggy and insecure application? |
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23 Oct 2010, 17:44 |
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Tyler 23 Oct 2010, 20:46
This may be my fault, partially. The way I told edfed to access the cmdline to execute commands I gave him in PMs was through the F2+alt. edfed, there are many other ways. You can have a real terminal if you hit crtl+alt+F1(hit crtl+alt+F7 to get back to GUI).
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I'm assuming you can't find them... The part about not being able to without internet is kinda pointless for 2 reasons, Windows is the same, and you're complaining about it on the internet. Code:
sudo apt-get install gimp blender dosbox
It's that easy. Or even easier to search for them in Synaptic. How can you say Linux is bloated compared to Windows? What version of Windows were you using, '98? It's true that Ubuntu is big, but it's for usability, just as the size of current Windows is all for something. |
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23 Oct 2010, 20:46 |
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bitshifter 23 Oct 2010, 21:33
I have been studying Linux 1.0 and Minix 3.1 sources for a while now.
Then i put Minix on a disk and booted it... Coming from a MS-DOS background, i was unable to do anything with it. It seems i need to read up on the shells scripting language. But from reading the sources i can say that Minix has some very good ideas on how an OS should be written. There is a bit of bloat even in this tiny version for portability sake. I only use Intel boards, and most likely will do so for the rest of my days. (Or at least until someone forgets about backward compatability and starts fresh) I strongly do beleive that an x86 kernel should be written in x86 ASM. Go ahead and use C for the shell and everything else though. Also AT&T (GCC) inline assembly really grosses me out. Inline assembly in general is bad news, no two compilers are the same. Just my thoughts... |
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23 Oct 2010, 21:33 |
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Fanael 24 Oct 2010, 09:12
ManOfSteel wrote: No, really, this is way too much. *nix shell scripting is far superior to any other. |
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24 Oct 2010, 09:12 |
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