[ros-dev] HP webOS goes opensource

[Ameen Ross]

Op 18-1-2012 13:27, Adam schreef:
> Old, but relevant in today's world. Let's face it... the mainline
> kernel is getting huge.
Agree, but a good portion of that is actually drivers and many other 
things that can easily be left out.

> "on the *developers'* terms" - this effectively means "on the terms of
> who wrote the software" - not "on the user's terms" - so you'll still
> get some bloated distros out there.
If you're running a distro with a kernel too bloated to your tastes you 
can switch to a more light-weight distro. Not the case with Windows, 
although the question of whether or not that's a good thing is a whole 
debate of itself.

> Again, "*as the developer wants it to be*" - And yes, this goes for
> Windows too. Microsoft probably wants it to be bloated, so it makes it
> bloated.
The difference here is that with Windows, Microsoft is the only 
developer and with Linux, anyone doing an embedded appliance or a distro 
has that freedom.
> Though I can agree with "So, unlike Windows, which can only be what
> Microsoft dictates, ..." - but bear in mind that when it comes
> to Windows then Microsoft is the developer anyway. It's on the
> developers' terms.
...isn't that exactly the point?
> I'd love to see the kernel uClinux uses... I reckon it's not the
> mainline kernel, but a modified version of it. Again... it's up to the
> *developer* as the quote above mentioned.
I'm surprised you've never heard about it. Although it does confirm my 
suspision that you didn't thoroughly read the article ;)
Lots of stuff runs uCLinux actually, mostly embedded d.
> Just go over to http://kernel.org/ - the source code for the Linux
> *kernel* in *compressed* form is 74MB plus! And that is compressed by
> the way. You'd need to have a very stripped down kernel to the max.
> Which would have been fine if it was "highly modular" as it is claimed.
Your tone sounds as if you oppose the statement in the article that 
Linux is highly modular.

> Personally I'm happy seeing ReactOS the way it is going and I think
> they're taking the right direction. The last thing ReactOS needs is to
> listen to some kid going about some super fantastic UI (or other
> Linux-specific feature) present in Linux and attempting to say it should
> be in ReactOS as an "improvement" of some sort.
Did anything I say imply my opinion is contrary to that? Unless you read 
it to mean something else than I intended, that's impossible.

The NT kernel just takes a different approach than the Linux kernel, 
concequently the ReactOS project takes a different approach than the 
Linux distros. Not any approach is "right" or "wrong", they're just 
different approaches catering to different requirements.

It's sort of like the font rendering issue. Mac OS does pretty 
rendering, but Microsoft chose rasterized/readable rendering. Neither is 
better than the other, just a different approach to the problem.