Linus Torvalds Rejects RISC-V Changes For Linux 6.17 For Being Late and 'Garbage' (phoronix.com) 173
"Linus Torvalds has used his authority to reject the RISC-V architecture changes for the Linux 6.17 kernel," reports Phoronix:
Only on Friday were the RISC-V code updates submitted for the Linux 6.17 merge window. The Linux 6.17 merge window is expected to wrap up on Sunday with the Linux 6.17-rc1 release... [T]his pull request has been rejected by Linus Torvalds for Linux 6.17 on the basis of being late in the merge window especially with his international travels this week being known. And he's unhappy with some of the code included as part of this merge request. .
Here's the text of Torvalds' response...
> RISC-V Patches for the 6.17 Merge Window, Part 1
No. This is garbage and it came in too late. I asked for early pull requests because I'm traveling, and if you can't follow that rule, at least make the pull requests *good*.
This adds various garbage that isn't RISC-V specific to generic header files.
And by "garbage" I really mean it. This is stuff that nobody should ever send me, never mind late in a merge window.
Like this crazy and pointless make_u32_from_two_u16() "helper".
That thing makes the world actively a worse place to live. It's useless garbage that makes any user incomprehensible, and actively *WORSE* than not using that stupid "helper".
If you write the code out as "(a
In contrast, if you write make_u32_from_two_u16(a,b) you have not a f%^5ing clue what the word order is. IOW, you just made things *WORSE*, and you added that "helper" to a generic non-RISC-V file where people are apparently supposed to use it to make *other* code worse too.
So no. Things like this need to get bent. It does not go into generic header files, and it damn well does not happen late in the merge window.
You're on notice: no more late pull requests, and no more garbage outside the RISC-V tree.
Now, I would *hope* there's no garbage inside the RISC-V parts, but that's your choice. But things in generic headers do not get polluted by crazy stuff. And sending a big pull request the day before the merge window closes in the hope that I'm too busy to care is not a winning strategy.
So you get to try again in 6.18. EARLY in the that merge window. And without the garbage.
Torvalds' message drew a conciliatory response from the submitter of the patches. "I'll stop being late, and hopefully that helps with the quality issues."
Here's the text of Torvalds' response...
> RISC-V Patches for the 6.17 Merge Window, Part 1
No. This is garbage and it came in too late. I asked for early pull requests because I'm traveling, and if you can't follow that rule, at least make the pull requests *good*.
This adds various garbage that isn't RISC-V specific to generic header files.
And by "garbage" I really mean it. This is stuff that nobody should ever send me, never mind late in a merge window.
Like this crazy and pointless make_u32_from_two_u16() "helper".
That thing makes the world actively a worse place to live. It's useless garbage that makes any user incomprehensible, and actively *WORSE* than not using that stupid "helper".
If you write the code out as "(a
In contrast, if you write make_u32_from_two_u16(a,b) you have not a f%^5ing clue what the word order is. IOW, you just made things *WORSE*, and you added that "helper" to a generic non-RISC-V file where people are apparently supposed to use it to make *other* code worse too.
So no. Things like this need to get bent. It does not go into generic header files, and it damn well does not happen late in the merge window.
You're on notice: no more late pull requests, and no more garbage outside the RISC-V tree.
Now, I would *hope* there's no garbage inside the RISC-V parts, but that's your choice. But things in generic headers do not get polluted by crazy stuff. And sending a big pull request the day before the merge window closes in the hope that I'm too busy to care is not a winning strategy.
So you get to try again in 6.18. EARLY in the that merge window. And without the garbage.
Torvalds' message drew a conciliatory response from the submitter of the patches. "I'll stop being late, and hopefully that helps with the quality issues."
Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:4, Informative)
With WSL2, it's on my Windows 11 desktop and has been for a few years, working side-by-side. I get the steak AND the salad.
Dual booted since 90s, now on Win and Mac dekstop (Score:2)
With WSL2, it's on my Windows 11 desktop and has been for a few years, working side-by-side. I get the steak AND the salad.
Same here. And I've been doing BYO PCs and dual booting since the mid 1990s. With my carefully selected parts both Windows and Linux have been running flawlessly for decades.
And I'm getting a jump start on ARM Linux (Debian) via Parallels on an ARM based Mac.
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It's been on my desktop since 1997.
Gotcha beat. Had a DEC Alpha AXPpci 33 running Linux in 1994. Installed from 30 or so floppies.
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Funny)
30 floppies in the mid-1990s... are you sure you're not remembering Windows 95, grandpa?
Re: Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:2)
Did a floppy install in '94 too. CD-Rom support was sketchy back then. On PCs it was all proprietary interfaces, no IDE standard.
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I barely knew about them at the time and was unhappy when I learned about the many. Company I worked for at that time was doing all SCSI hard disks and CD drives. I got lucky and got an external NEC CD drive (on clearance) that has SCSI and it worked very well. Also got early Linux CDs including SLS, Yggdrasil, and I forget what else. I tried several, liked SLS which became Slackware, which is still my primary Linux distro. I used to boot from a pair of floppies, but fortunately never had to install from a
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Yeah I just remembered- the CD drive often (usually?) connected to a sound card. They often were sold together. IIRC some sound cards had 2 or 3 CD drive interface connectors, so could support most drives. Ugh.
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I was installing FreeBSD from two floppies and a network connection. 30 floppies is tragic.
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I was installing FreeBSD from two floppies and a network connection. 30 floppies is tragic.
It was faster to use 30 floppies if you had to install on several computers or wanted/needed to re-install many times. Downloading everything over dialup every time was tragic. You could put the 30 floppies content on a local NFS server for even faster installs although if that's what you meant although.
Re: Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:2)
Windows 95 didn't have that many floppies.
Office 95 on the other hand...
Last floppy based install Win 3.1 ... (Score:3)
30 floppies in the mid-1990s... are you sure you're not remembering Windows 95, grandpa?
By mid 90s both Linux and Windows 95/NT had CD-ROM. Last floppy based install for me was DOS and Windows 3.1.
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I purchased Windows 95 on CD - but my sister bought a new computer which came with the OS on 30 or so floppies. And of course she screwed something up badly within a couple weeks, and had to reinstall...
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For me, Windows 95 always came on CD-Rs with a bunch of games and some porn thrown in for good measure, all for a tenner.
Simpler times...
Re: Last floppy based install Win 3.1 ... (Score:3)
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Why'd ya wait so long, a solid year behind the early adopters.
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It's been on my desktop since 1997.
Gotcha beat. Had a DEC Alpha AXPpci 33 running Linux in 1994. Installed from 30 or so floppies.
I think by '94 I brought home Linux and FreeBSD CD-ROMs from the local computer swap meet.
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Yggdrasil (1993). After that never leaved linux.
Dual booting since 486DX2 days (Score:2)
It's been on my desktop since 1997.
Dual booting since 486DX2 days, '94ish.
Now running Intel based Debian Linux on the Windows desktop via Windows Subsystem for Linux and ARM based Debian on the Mac desktop using Parallels. And embedded Linux on SBC.
Re:Dual booting since 486DX2 days (Score:4, Interesting)
Taking a trip down this particular memory lane always makes me happy. Started university science/tech studies in 94. The diverse types of networked Unix machines on campus was a whole new world opening up. Spent many nights on campus in front of an SGI Indy computer. Joined the nerdiest student organization. Not a lot of love for Microsoft in that group. Interesting group of people who would help rookies get going in the right direction - but get to the point where you should get self going, and answers to questions turned into the simple phrase "man man".
Installed Slackware from floppies in late 94 or early 95 on my 486DX 33MHz. Had to get a new compatible video card. Remember my fear during installation of setting the infamous dot clock frequency, with the supposed risk of frying your monitor.
The next year moved into campus organized housing with 10 Mbps Ethernet. Such happy times! At some point after Linux got SMP support, I got myself a Tyan Tomcat dual processor motherboard with two pentium processors. You could compile the experimental 1.3.x linux kernels - and encode MP3 files - twice as fast! Nice for experimenting with parallell algorithms and related programming frameworks.
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't consider that a "kind and gentle" response, but if he described the code accurately, it does seem warranted.
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No F bombs, no anatomical suggestions. Unlikely to leave nothing but a smoking pair of shoes if said in person...
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, I've long been critical of the F-bombing and insults.
There's no personal attacks here and while strongly worded the complaints are direct, reasoned and actionable, not emotion driven. He is right that the function is less clear than a16|b. He's also right that big PRs shortly before merge windows close will either miss the window or scrutiny, so don't put them close to the window.
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Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
No OS user has a problem with Linus being rough with people who try to push lousy code into the kernel. Most of them have no idea what a kernel is to begin with, or who Linus is, much less read the LKML or any coverage of what happens there.
The reason Linux isn't dominant in the desktop space boils down to two primary causes. Microsoft's strongarm tactic, and most people buying a computer the same way they buy a toaster; as an appliance which they replace when it starts smelling funny. Most people wouldn't even consider reinstalling the OS on their computer, much less replace it with something else. Of those who do, a huge chunk are already using Linux.
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:4, Informative)
No OS user has a problem with Linus being rough with people who try to push lousy code into the kernel.
Agreed, many systems running Linux are used in high reliability and safety critical applications. There is no place for crappy code in the kernel or important run time libraries, so we are definitely relying on people like Linus being tough on people who let problematic code into PRs.
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:4, Interesting)
Many systems running Windows are used in the same situations. Windows is perfectly fine when put in a system with controlled updates, controlled choice of drivers, and don't spend your time. Browsing the internet for malware to hit your system. The Windows kernel is actually quite a tight piece of code and that is reflected in the fact that most people haven't seen a bluescreen in a decade, it's just the userland above it sucks balls.
I think the OP was reflecting on the fact that the user doesn't care what the developer says, all they ever see of their OS is the desktop environment. I'm sure there's just as many people at Microsoft calling each other's code rubbish on the internal Teams server, probably while complaining about said Teams server.
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Many systems running Windows are used in the same situations. Windows is perfectly fine when put in a system with controlled updates, controlled choice of drivers
It isn't, though. For example all kinds of things which you can do on Unix[likes] without disturbing users require a reboot on Windows. This creates real and measurable impact to users.
The Windows kernel is actually quite a tight piece of code and that is reflected in the fact that most people haven't seen a bluescreen in a decade, it's just the userland above it sucks balls.
Yes, but that stuff matters! Also, there was all that time when pretty much the whole graphics driver ran in the userland because Microsoft couldn't get any performance any other way, which is where most of the blue screens came from. They were a LOT scarcer in NT 3.51 than in any version of Windows since until, ironically, V
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Many systems running Windows are used in the same situations. Windows is perfectly fine when put in a system with controlled updates, controlled choice of drivers
It isn't, though. For example all kinds of things which you can do on Unix[likes] without disturbing users require a reboot on Windows. This creates real and measurable impact to users.
The Windows kernel is actually quite a tight piece of code and that is reflected in the fact that most people haven't seen a bluescreen in a decade, it's just the userland above it sucks balls.
Yes, but that stuff matters! Also, there was all that time when pretty much the whole graphics driver ran in the userland because Microsoft couldn't get any performance any other way, which is where most of the blue screens came from. They were a LOT scarcer in NT 3.51 than in any version of Windows since until, ironically, Vista.
You aren't kidding about how it matters. I have a functionally identical application for Windows and MAcOS (SmartSDR) The Mac version has more features, but that is an aside.
The Windows version works "most of the time", but is prone to audio issues, and occasionally needs Revo'ed. What is more it doesn't work at all on ARM architecture, while the Mac version runs on ARM or Intel.
Driver problems that are trivial in MacOS, but somehow a wall too high in Windows? And W11 is pretty shaky with audio drivers,
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It isn't, though. For example all kinds of things which you can do on Unix[likes] without disturbing users require a reboot on Windows.
Systems which have active users are not mission critical systems. Systems which are mission critical and can't handle a reboot are not mission critical. A service setup in a way that it can't handle rebooting a server also isn't mission critical.
Stop applying late 80s computer practices to your mission critical systems.
Yes, but that stuff matters!
Indeed which is why it was moved away. I mean were you trying to argue against my point? You made it for me. You even acknowledged that things have been significantly more stable since the Vi
Re: Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:3)
Thatâ(TM)s not the only reason; the other two big ones are:
1. There is far greater parity between Windows and Linux in terms of stability and security over the past 15 years or so.
2. Linux has never had the software range MS
has had, and the best Linux software is also on MS plus a lot more.
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Those are reasons as well, though not as big. On the first one, Windows keeps changing just to change, for several reasons. In contrast, for those who want to do so, a modern Linux can be managed largely the same way it has been managed for decades. There is much less tinkering to keep Linux just working, and no need to mess with irregular major UI changes.
But sure, there has been more software available for Windows. Most of it runs on Linux as well, since both emulators for older OS'es and Wine have been v
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
On the contrary, I would suggest that MS could have used a few code reviews like that over the years.
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Window's kernel is perfectly functional and stable. It has had such code reviews and strict QC for 2 decades now.
Now if only we had more Linuses in the userland (that goes for both Windows AND Linux) then the world will be a better place.
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It seems like they used to, when Bill was involved.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com... [joelonsoftware.com]
A fuck counter in the meeting, just to count how many times he said it.
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
I just meant that with Linus ranting like a rabid whippet, it is no wonder that Linux is not yet dominant in the desktop consumer space.
Indeed, Linus should have followed the example of Bill Gates, who famously gained dominance in the desktop market by being such a very nice guy.
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Indeed, Linus should have followed the example of Bill Gates, who famously gained dominance in the desktop market by being such a very nice guy.
Linus should have followed the example of Steve Ballmer, who showed us the proper way to rant [youtube.com]
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:4, Interesting)
This lie really needs to stop. It's true, in publicly accessible server share, Linux is dominant, at somewhere above 57%. But in total server shares, Windows almost certainly is dominant. Anyone who works out in the real world and is honest knows this.
So in figures that no one can verify Windows is dominant. That is like saying I am the best golfer in the world but no one has seen me play golf. Also you neglected the part where Windows pays almost no role in the portable market.
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I have worked at several large companies, in both industrial, finance and high technology, and they pretty much universally have a factor of five to ten times more Linux servers than Windows servers, if not even higher. In total server shares, Linux absolutely crushes Windows. Especially now that most small businesses don't even have a server.
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it is no wonder that Linux is not yet dominant in the desktop consumer space.
What's the connection? 1) No consumer at all will be in contact with Linus. Consumers don't even know he exists. 2) How is your rationale consistent with the fact that linux is the dominant OS in many professional applications?
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
You think nobody ever gave a code review at Microsoft like that?
The only difference is that you can see it here.
Re: Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:2)
So you think the development chats in private offices inside of Microsoft and Apple are any better?
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
Sounds like everything is fine, since the other side has responded and the response is.
OK, sorry. I've been dropping the ball lately and it kind of piled up
as taking a bunch of stuff late, but that just leads to me making
mistakes. So I'll stop being late, and hopefully that helps with the
quality issues
That is, the content of the Linus comment is acknowledged, people have planned to rectify the issues, there are apparently not hurt feelings and the RISC-V community and everyone else will get a safer update one cycle later.
Shit happens sometimes even to the best, which may well have been the case here.
What's not to your liking?
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Insightful)
Phoronix posts some decent stuff but a lot of it is clickbait, trying to taint Linus as some sort of dictatorial sociopath. The kernel has survived more than three decades because its founder still gives a damn about code quality.
A couple of dozen contributors, one big merge and the maintainer probably didn't write or review the helper function that Linus got annoyed about. This right before the release.
Just because it compiles and 'works' doesn't mean you should ship it and as a maintainer, he'll do a more thorough job next time.
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Yeah, I agree, it appears to be a thing blown out of all proportion that will be forgotten next week with the fortunate side effect of less bad code in the kernel.
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>"What's not to your liking?"
Can't speak for who you are replying to, but Linus' post was unnecessary long, repetitive, and hostile. He is right, of course, but that doesn't mean it needs to be so caustic.
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Aw, come on, he's tamed a lot with age, you surely remember what it was like in the 90s and the early 00s...
Seriously though, probably the reason for this minor tantrum is the frustration coming from him expecting these problems and warning against it, and then them appearing anyway.
https://www.techspot.com/news/... [techspot.com]
I haven't followed LKML closely for too many years to have an opinion if there is a better way to deal with code quailty problems reappearing in every new architecture. Given the track record, I'
Re:Year Of Linux On The Desktop (Score:5, Informative)
It IS worth noting that he did not once insult the programmer, he kept his opinion strictly to the code and its lack of quality. That's a big (and meaningful) step! And honestly, it looks like it worked.
It WAS garbage code. Even good programmers/people write bad code sometimes, and I'd rather someone tell me that the code is bad than not so I can fix it.
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Yes! Criticisms of the code, actual specific concrete criticisms that you can fix are valuable. Vague criticisms and personal insults are not. The latter caused a number of good people to leave kernel dev. It looks like Linus has fixed his shit, and the former is a very different kettle of fish.
Year Of Linux On The MS Windows Desktop (Score:2)
Sounds like everything is on schedule for desktop dominance by the year 2140.
Nah, the "Year of the Linux Desktop" has already evolved into the "Year of Linux on the Microsoft Windows Desktop". The Windows Subsystem for Linux is diminishing the need for for dual booting, or a separate Linux box. Now we have games, commercial software, pretty much all the major FOSS apps which have downloadable Windows binaries, and Linux and all the toolchains that run under Linux (thinking embedded), etc ... all on the same convenient desktop.
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Linux is the only safe desktop, windows isn't ours anymore, it's theirs and when you install windows 11 , they will own you too
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Why should I switch to Linux from Windows ?
Give me a reason that I care about, not a reason you care about
You have been telling me , nonstop, for 25 years that OSS is good
and you know what ? I don't care, and if I haven't changed my mind in 25 or so years, I"m not gonna change now
let me repeat that I don't care about OSS and you are not gonna change my mind.
My main use of office is to make graphs in excel. every 5 years or so, I download the latest open office thing, or libre thing, and give it a whirl, and
Actual quote from Linus, mangled in summary (Score:5, Informative)
If you write the code out as "(a
In contrast, if you write make_u32_from_two_u16(a,b) you have not a f%^5ing clue what the word order is. IOW, you just made things *WORSE*, and you added that "helper" to a generic non-RISC-V file where people are apparently supposed to use it to make *other* code worse too.
Apparently EditorDavid is new to Slashdot and doesn't know how to escape metacharacters. The actual text in TFA, quoting Linus:
If you write the code out as "(a << 16) + b", you know what it does and which is the high word. Maybe you need to add a cast to make sure that 'b' doesn't have high bits that pollutes the end result, so maybe it's not going to be exactly _pretty_, but it's not going to be wrong and incomprehensible either.
In contrast, if you write make_u32_from_two_u16(a,b) you have not a f%^5ing clue what the word order is. IOW, you just made things *WORSE*, and you added that "helper" to a generic non-RISC-V file where people are apparently supposed to use it to make *other* code worse too.
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Re: Actual quote from Linus, mangled in summary (Score:2)
Maybe the committer is overworked. I guess this is a volunteer? Makes sense for Linus to react this way though.
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"This is something I might write if I am lazy"
This goes beyond "lazy". They actually expended *additional* effort to make things *worse.*
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It's not a great idea to use + here. A logical OR is better. When doing binary manipulation, avoid introducing arithmetic, even if in this case it will work.
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If you don't know how to use HTML, you can also adjust your settings. But HTML is fine.
That's why Linux wins. Quality. (Score:2)
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Where waste of any type matters (Lean, Toyota).
Pity about Toyota's code, which we know to be trash after the code reviews (not NASA's worthless one, but the good one from the Barr Group) revealed that they not only don't follow industry best practices, they don't even follow their own documented guidelines.
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Pity about Toyota's code, which we know to be trash after the code reviews (not NASA's worthless one, but the good one from the Barr Group) revealed that they not only don't follow industry best practices, they don't even follow their own documented guidelines.
That was true back then; is it still true now, a number of years, and many expensive lawsuit-settlements later? (I suppose it's possible that Toyota has learned nothing from the experience, but that doesn't seem like the most likely outcome from a company that generally prides itself on quality and reliability)
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I'd bet there's been improvements, but I'd also bet there's still embarrassments.
Can't be any worse than modern Bosch stuff :D
No nonsense attitude (Score:3)
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Next, 10 youtube video explainers (Score:2)
An entire industry of YouTube based explainers will now proceed to interpret Linus's latest statements for the next two weeks.
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He considers it a new rehashing of old mistakes.
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Linus is not particularly impressed with it either.
Linus has said he doesn't know Verilog and knows little about FPGA and ASIC design.
He considers it a new rehashing of old mistakes.
RISC-V is an upgraded MIPS, which was a pretty good architecture.
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I hope he's come to terms with us all being on AMD's ISA then :)
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RISC ISAs are tied to a very specific approach about how the hardware underneath should be implemented. If the hardware isn't implemented the way the RISC instructions imply, then the entire implementation becomes far less efficient than modern non-RISC designs. (The entire concept of RISC are fixed format, fixed timing, instructions that can be decoded with a simple logic based decoder instead of microcode. But that design has performance limits, to get higher performance you need an approach closer to AMD
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The entire concept of RISC are fixed format, fixed timing, instructions that can be decoded with a simple logic based decoder instead of microcode. But that design has performance limits, to get higher performance you need an approach closer to AMD/Intel/Transmeta's "Translate multiple instructions into microcode and identify areas where multiple instructions can run simultaneously in real time"
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. Are you trying to say that RISC CPUs can't be pipelined?
that is a positively insane comment (Score:2, Informative)
Did you drop Computer Architecture 101 after the first six weeks?
The major differences between Intel (and similar like Motorola 68k which are all obsolete now) and RISC are (a) that the CISC designs traditionally included instructions designed to make handwriting assembly language un-painful, for example instructions designed for converting binary coded decimal, (b) that the CISC designs were traditionally non-orthogonal (RISC designs are too, for example register 0 in MIPS is always literally "zero," but C
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the variable-length instructions take up a horrific amount of silicon to decode in parallel.
That was true back when the dominant processor was the 486, but the x86 decoder is minuscule compared to the rest of a modern processor.
Money and R&D can overcome arch difficulties (Score:3)
... it clearly has a space in the embedded arena where you're trying to keep the CPU component down to less than a million transistors, and performance isn't an issue ...
Its so small and low cost that the Raspberry PI Pico microcontroller, a dual ARM core device, added dual RISC-V cores in its Pico 2 upgrade. On restart the device recognizes whether you flashed ARM or RISC-V code and starts up the respective cores automatically.
But it's being portrayed as some kind of future general purpose CPU that will ultimately appear in desktops and servers and... well, that's not going to happen, so it's disappointing to see so many chase that when it won't happen.
Given the miracles Intel pulled off keeping the x86 ahead of PowerPC, I'd be reluctant to make predictions like that. Tons of money and R&D can overcome architecture disadvantages.
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Linus is opposed to anything RISC.
Linus is so opposed to it that it is supported in the kernel since 2017 even though it represents a tiny fraction of systems?
He prefers Intel's ISA, probably because he learned it first.
[sarcasm]Yes that is why only Intel is supported in Linux and not AMD. Not ARM. Not IBM Power. Not MIPS. Just Intel.[/sarcasm]
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Yes. Linus lets things into the kernel that he doesn't like.
No you said: "Linus is opposed to anything RISC." He is so opposed to it he lets in other RISC architectures. Or are you just lying?
But he likes the x86 ISA.
Not what you said. You said "Intel ISA". Considering his personal PC has been AMD, Intel, and Apple M1 Macbook over the years, that does not appear true either.
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Linus has been ranting against RISC and in favor of x86 architecture for decades. https://yarchive.net/comp/linu... [yarchive.net]
He opposes it, that doesn't mean he won't let it in the kernel. He let Itanium support into the kernel.
Linux is a corporation guided project (Score:2)
Linus is so opposed to it that it is supported in the kernel since 2017 even though it represents a tiny fraction of systems?
Linux is no longer a hobby project. It is largely guided by corporations, paying devs to take things in the direction they want. As it should be in open source. Want something, can't do it yourself, then pay some dev to do it for you.
Learned x86 first ... explains so much of world (Score:2)
Linus is opposed to anything RISC. He prefers Intel's ISA, probably because he learned it first.
That pretty much describes the current state of the world. Learned x86 first, sticking with it.
:-)
Thankfully I learned 6502 and 68K first. It's probably why I like assembly language. I'd probably hate it like everyone else if I had started with 16-bit x86. 32-bit x86 was tolerable.
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x86 was wonky because a big complicated decoder would have taken up a lot of silicon at the time, relative to the rest of the CPU. Instructions weren't decomposed into RISCy micro-ops like they all are today. The first x86 processor to do that was a Cyrix chip I think? AMD's first x86 processor which did it was the Am586, for Intel it was Pentium. Today an x86 decoder (which is a relatively complex beast compared to decoders for other instruction sets) is a very small piece of the CPU.
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Of course, that explains why they could get away with complexity, but that doesn't explain why it's trash.
It's not so much getting away with complexity as that it would have cost more to have less of it in the instruction set. But if you want to speak to that specifically, part of the reason the instruction set is trash is that the architecture is trash — by modern standards, anyway. For example, from a certain point of view, x86 has zero general-purpose registers because some of its instructions (a ton of them really) require that operands and offsets go into specific registers. But this also made the pr
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Sadly the LKLM is hidden behind some ridiculous "protection".
Try searching for the LKML instead ;D
In the not too far future you will be able to get it from the internet archive, but they don't index it very often.
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A mailing list that requires you *subscribe* to it *before* you start being sent messages? What kind of crazy world is this?
(hopefully that sets off your sarcasm detector...)
Re:THE REAL CODE (Score:5, Informative)
If you write the code out as "(a << 16) + b", you know what it does and which is the high word. Maybe you need to add a cast to make sure that 'b' doesn't have high bits that pollutes the end result, so maybe it's not going to be exactly _pretty_, but it's not going to be wrong and incomprehensible either.
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For those wondering what he did...
And for those who'd like to know HOW to see the markup of another post, just reply and click "Quote Parent". You don't actually need to post it.
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I select the text I'm interested in, right-click, and then click "view selection source".
On an inferior browser it might be some other sequence of clicks.
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for the record, you can use some HTML entities here on slashdot. My favorite is — but obviously & is pretty good too for obvious reasons
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"( a TWO-GREATER-THAN-SIGNS-FOR-BINARY-SHIFT-LEFT 16 ) + b"
[cough] .. "two *less*-than signs"
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Linus had a good code example, and Phoronix quoted it. However, Slashdot turned it into ")a".
The original code... and no I can't get it to display the two characters either using tags or backslashes...
"( a TWO-GREATER-THAN-SIGNS-FOR-BINARY-SHIFT-LEFT 16 ) + b"
(a << 16) + b.
What I typed to get that was "(a << 16) + b".