Return-Path: Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org via listexpand id S964965AbWEVAW7 (ORCPT ); Sun, 21 May 2006 20:22:59 -0400 Received: (majordomo@vger.kernel.org) by vger.kernel.org id S964966AbWEVAW7 (ORCPT ); Sun, 21 May 2006 20:22:59 -0400 Received: from gprs189-60.eurotel.cz ([160.218.189.60]:5764 "EHLO amd.ucw.cz") by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S964965AbWEVAW6 (ORCPT ); Sun, 21 May 2006 20:22:58 -0400 Date: Mon, 22 May 2006 02:22:17 +0200 From: Pavel Machek To: Neil Brown Cc: Al Boldi , Adrian Bunk , linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Subject: Re: replacing X Window System ! Message-ID: <20060522002215.GC25184@elf.ucw.cz> References: <200605200733.08757.a1426z@gawab.com> <20060520102526.GH10077@stusta.de> <200605201419.55428.a1426z@gawab.com> <17519.1323.822630.868492@cse.unsw.edu.au> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <17519.1323.822630.868492@cse.unsw.edu.au> X-Warning: Reading this can be dangerous to your mental health. User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.11+cvs20060126 Sender: linux-kernel-owner@vger.kernel.org X-Mailing-List: linux-kernel@vger.kernel.org Content-Length: 1833 Lines: 40 Hi! > > With a stable API, I can just implement whatever w/o caring whether it is > > included into the kernel. Now that's freedom! > > > > That's userspace. > > Improve what is in the kernel so that it presents to userspace > whatever API you need, and write stuff in userspace to your hearts > content. I'm sure that there is no need for the entire 'X' server to > be in the kernel, and I'm equally sure that there are advantages in > the kernel providing more services for an X server than it currently > does. You need to find that balance. It may be hard, but there are > people here who will help. You add bits of functionality - people > will question them and require you to justify them. Some will make it, > some won't. Bit by bit you will arrive at a workable solution. > > As a sort of example: were I to start writing an NFS server for Linux > today, I wouldn't put it all in the kernel. I would figure out the > minimum services I needed from the kernel and add them one at a time, > at each step modifying the userspace NFS server to use this > functionality. Some of it would be quite tricky - particularly > achieving zero-copy reads and single-copy writes. But I'm sure it is > possible, and I'm sure there are people here who would help point me > in the right direction. I'm sure it is still possible to rewrite knfsd into userspace :-). With splice & friends, maybe it is now easier to do 0-copy... Pavel -- (english) http://www.livejournal.com/~pavelmachek (cesky, pictures) http://atrey.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~pavel/picture/horses/blog.html - 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/