Re: replacing X Window System !

[Pavel Machek <pavel@suse.cz>]

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