Jody wrote, on 5/5/2007 10:58 AM: > Hello everyone. This is Jody, the current maintainer of the ELKS > project. I wanted to ask for everyone's opinion on what the future of > ELKS should be. I wish that I was enough of a coder to help. Ironically, an OS that can run on 8086 would be a great way to /learn/ to work on OS coding. In fact, I have been waiting for a usable ELKS so that I could begin that learning process. Unfortunately, I suspect that it's not the baby-talk-C work that's needed in order to get the project moving again, but rather the trickier work. So maybe we could phrase the question another way: what prevents people from contributing today? Some ideas: 1. Cost of getting started to develop. Even after reading the archives and starting to study some of the code, I don't even know where to begin -- and suspect that others are in the same boat. Possible solution: If there was a wiki somewhere with a detailed "State of the ELKS" reference page, so that someone could quickly solve a problem or two as they had time, that might help. Categories like "Needs evaluation," "Needs testing," etc. might also be handy. Such a reference might reduce the "startup cost" of contributing. 2. Cost of getting started to test/install/use. I think that the FAQ is good but needs to be improved. A reference of known working hardware would be good. The "How can I help" part of the FAQ refers to Outstanding Projects and Bugs sections of the main site, but I'm not able to locate any such animal. Possible solution: Make it a higher priority to create an installer. Create a reference build that at least works enough to do development on common systems. 3. Speed. Compiling to test on an 8086 is maddeningly slow. Possible solution: For true 8086-only emulation, find a good free emulator, or contact someone who has a commercial one (emu8086.com, for example) and see if they'll cut us a break on a pack of license for core developers. http://www.emu8086.com/ http://pcemu.sourceforge.net/ http://i8086emu.sourceforge.net/ Create some VMware/QEMU images or HOWTOs to make it easier to test some code virtually and take advantage of newer processor speeds. 4. Bang for the buck. Ultimately, I suspect that folks can get a lot more mileage working on other things. Once I get my Compaq Deskpro Model 1 on the Internet, of what use will it be to me other than as a hobby or for bragging rights? Probably not much, unless I use to improve my development skills. I would certainly enjoy getting it working, and would probably learn a lot ... but there are probably diminishing returns thereafter. Possible solution: Try to locate people who are enthused about the work as a hobby. Computer science departments might also be able to locate students interested in cutting their teeth on a simpler OS. Does anyone have any contacts in this area? 5. Critical mass. Today, there's just not a lot of communication or energy in the project (that's observable from outside, anyway). Possible solutions: Modernize a bit. Set up a wiki. Take a head count of people still on the list and ask them about their interests and skill sets. Divide up some of the outstanding tasks. I would be happy to contribute some cash for a software license. I can also help with the wiki if we went that direction. I'll also start dinking around with some emulators to see what the possibilities are. Jody, if you think it's a good idea, could you encourage the subscribers to post their interests and qualifications? How many subscribers are there? Royce -- Royce D. Williams - IP Engineering, ACS personal: [first]@alaska.net - PGP: 3FC087DB/1776A531 work: [first.last]@acsalaska.net - http://www.tycho.org/royce/ - To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-8086" in the body of a message to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
