I just learned, from reading that wikipedia page, about the falling out he and Linus had.
> I'm leaving the Linux world and Intel for a bit for family reasons. I'm aware that "family reasons" is usually management speak for "I think the boss is an asshole" but I'd like to assure everyone that while I frequently think Linus is an asshole (and therefore very good as kernel dictator) I am departing quite genuinely for family reasons and not because I've fallen out with Linus or Intel or anyone else. Far from it I've had great fun working there.
>just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu
https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en#!msg/comp.os.minix/dl...
(Sorry for the Google Groups link...)
Alan Cox is just as interesting of a figure, though, and this is certainly a cool project. One might berate as to why we need another toy Unix, but I personally like having diverse itches scratched. Not to mention this might be an easier introduction to low-level OS hacking than having to deal with all the cognitive overhead of contributing to larger projects like Linux and the BSDs (and then a non-x86 arch is always nice).
Do you have an opinion on Minix, in this respect?
Again, just a weird, warped thought here... Hell even getting golang or or rust would be cool. Something you can run some code on without a lot of baggage that you aren't using. I love where coreos is heading, and would love to see something even lighter.
Being released in 1976, the Z80 architecture is well known and unencumbered by patents. It's also simple with fixed instruction timing, meaning it can be well tested, leaving few places for a back door to hide. The original hardware probably predates any surveillance programs (edit: and the silicon is being publicly reverse engineered by enthusiasts). There's a satisfying feeling of control, when in charge of a computer that is simple enough to understand in its entirety.
A Z80 won't be the fastest computer, but it might be useful for some tasks. Updates to the Z80, starting with FPGA cores, will be faster than the original, and might form a basis for enthusiasts to develop further. Let's face it, ARM's roots are in Z80 era processors.
* The architecture is already 32 bit.
* There are FPGA reimplementations, including a range of boards from different people, and open source designs (the Minimig) that people have produced working machines from.
* There's been a variety of work on producing more advanced versions of the cores, employing more modern design features.
* The M68k family has MMU support.
* There are Linux ports for M68k, as well as a number of other OS's.
Looking at his Google Plus ports, which includes various ancient hardware as well as a variety of old emulators, I think the retro appeal is more relevant.
http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Oral-History:Tadashi_S...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_surveillance_in_the_Unite...
First page of contents: http://imgur.com/1XCLrsQ
Example instruction description: http://imgur.com/MV6Le34
Hello world: http://imgur.com/5yKJlQ9
Off topic but if anyone is ever in Cheltenham UK (or is prepared to pay postage) I have some old books I want to get rid of. http://imgur.com/AWV9HLn
Also, the M68k programming manuals should still be downloadable from FreeScale (what used to be Motorola's semiconductor division). At least they were when I looked for the last a year ago or so. They are wonderfully clear and detailed.
I like the idea of Minix, and that would be a good direction to move on, but the big companies who are contributing the majority[1] of the current Linux work are vested too much in Linux.
There are other projects targeting the same area, different approach though.
1. http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/09/google...
The beginning of the OP is obviously a joke.
This is a retro computing hobby project for 1970s era microprocessors. It's obviously not intended to be any kind of replacement for Linux or any other OS on modern computers.
If you want to get into a low-level, open source project that is relevant today, I would try RISC-V (http://riscv.org/). It's an ISA and family of processor cores designed to be competitive with the niche that ARM usually fills these days, but fully open source, with a freely implemtable ISA. Now, it's pretty new and you can't buy RISC-V chips yet, but it's done by a team led by David Patterson, who is one of the fathers of the RISC architecture, and it looks pretty promising as a new open ISA and family of processor cores.
Or if you want to work on hardware that is actually available today, ARM would probably be your best bet. Maybe try porting Linux, or an RTOS like NuttX (http://www.nuttx.org/), to an ARM SOC that it doesn't yet run on.
I also had an Atari ST with 8MHz 68000 (no math copro) with Tempus Editor (ASCII) and Tempus Word (word procesor). Both were written in assembler, also incredibly fast -- faster than MS Word on a PC today. Other people used their Atari ST to write their disseration with Signum, and others published professional newspapers with it.
What does a PC really need? A convenient assembler, a few compilers, a screen editor (vi), a simple database, a word processor (TeX), simple TCP/IP and other very basic things. Just the things which Alan focuses on. Unix on a Z80 or on enhanced FPGA cores sounds really interesting.
I am a happy Linux user for decades but I am seriously concerned about the future of Linux. On one hand Linux will probably soon be kept out from hard locked UEFI/Secure Boot systems, on the other hand modern PCs cannot be trusted anymore in case of security anyway. Also many Linux distros follow the questionable systemd way which makes me wonder if Linux will soon be bloated up like Windows. The Linux kernel runs wonderful so far but it already has several million lines of code, and systemd will add a significant level of complexity.
These things are reasons why I consider Alan's approach of "back to the roots" the right way and very promising. Not only the software is open source but also the requirements for the hardware are so low that many people could build their own System V Unix Z80 systems at home. Cheap microcontrollers like the Parallax Propeller could be added to provide VGA output and parallel I/O.
I'd like a large address space and some way to do read and write barriers (for real-time GC).
> These things are reasons why I consider Alan's approach of "back to the roots" the right way and very promising.
What do you think about OpenBSD? The only reason I switched from OpenBSD to Lubuntu on my personal laptop is because of Adobe Flash.
[1] http://symbos.org [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-oBNh0UkQc
I have a
http://s100computers.com/My%20System%20Pages/Z80%20Board/Z80...
almost ready to bring up in my infinite spare time. And a console IO board and memory board.
Apparently, the original socz80 is already supported on Fuzix, so it should run here too. More retro-fun!
"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of QR codes and profile pics
Of Cox'es and their hackings"
https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-DGzr5UFEIXM/AAAAAAAAAAI/A...
There's a fairly hard cut-off between the design of early OSs with no memory protection (e.g. legacy Mac OS, W95, Amiga, DOS, Locomotive basic), and operating systems which ration memory out to processes (NT, BeOS, Linux, BSD, Solaris). The later group depends on hardware features that the z80 didn't have.
Version 7 unix is in the first camp. Whereas BSD had paged virtual memory well before the IP became open. Also, I think NetBSD requires at least a 32-bit word size.
There was a unix-like in the z80 era called Coherent. On the wikipedia page it says, "There was no support for virtual memory or demand paging." I remember it being advertised in the magazines but never got to play with it, would be interested to hear stories.
[multiple edits, had fun thinking about this]
Godspeed.
