Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id ; Sun, 25 Mar 2001 12:56:23 -0500 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id ; Sun, 25 Mar 2001 12:56:12 -0500 Received: from fe040.world-online.no ([213.142.64.154]:42489 "HELO mail.world-online.no") by vger.kernel.org with SMTP id ; Sun, 25 Mar 2001 12:55:56 -0500 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: Gerry To: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: Larger dev_t Date: Sun, 25 Mar 2001 19:55:15 +0200 X-Mailer: KMail [version 1.2] In-Reply-To: In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: <01032519492002.00897@localhost.localdomain> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7BIT Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Ok, i don't really know much about the kernel at all, but here's my opinion anyway.. To use 64bit pids when 32bit is enough just to "make things easier" doesn't sound like a good idea to me. Eventually it might wrap around (fx. as on that supercomputer Jamie Lokier talked about) to overwrite running processes, and cause death and destruction. Bye bye stability. Even if it doesn't wrap, using double the space necessarry for something every single process has is a waste of space. Linux is supposed to be able to run on a large range of systems, and some of them don't have that kind of luxury. Sure, the kernel can be modified for those (rare) cases, but still, using something that's not necessary just sounds like bad practice to me.. Never assume luxury.. Gerry - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/