Re: L4-HURD , POSIX, UNIX

[olafBuddenhagen]

Hi,

> Well, from my viewpoint, I rather like the idea of a persistent
> system. I spoke to someone briefly on the matter, telling him that I
> didn't yet have all the details, and even though I didn't have all the
> details yet, he seemed to think the idea of a persistent design was
> pretty innovative. He and I both agree that a system that can recover
> itself to within a few minutes is potentially a very good way to keep
> people more productive when bad things happen to the system.

I think we all agree that this kind of recovery *is* a killer feature.
But it isn't tied to persistance; there are various mechanisms that
could achieve this, not at all necesserily as radical.

> Personally, as long as we have a way to get most POSIX applications
> running on the Hurd, I do not mind a new design.

Getting POSIX applications running isn't enough. What we need to make
sure is that UNIX users feel comfortable on the system, that it looks
familiar to them.

Of course, this still leaves quite a lot of choices about the internal
architecture of the system. However, as for user-visible changes,
radical concepts like system-wide transparent persistance are definitely
ruled out IMHO.

-antrik-