The world's changed a lot since 1995 (almost half my life ago? dang.) when I started playing with ELKS. The Raspberry Pi and Beaglebone Black are both much more powerful than any desktop, old or new, I could possibly buy then, and so much cheaper! Also, UNIX v6 is now truly free and has been ported to x86-32. If I were to start today, I would probably look at a Cortex M3 microcontroller, which has very limited memory, but quite a bit of CPU power relative to an 8088. (But I probably would have taken up a different project altogether, probably a usable lightweight Linux distro/userspace for Pentium III's or some such. But probably I'd tilt a completely different windmill altogether.) The solutions leading to getting something that looks vaguely UNIXy working on an M3/M4 might be quite interesting in general, I suspect a new C compiler/runtime with memory guarding built in would be needed. And even with the overhead of run-time checking - or even executing bytecode - it could still be faster than an 8088! I'll have to think about this... there *is* an answer to "Where does ELKS fit into the 2014 world?" but I don't have it yet. On Fri, Apr 18, 2014 at 1:03 PM, Jody Bruchon <jody@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 4/18/2014 3:26 PM, Edoardo Liverani wrote: >> >> I'd really like to help this project as I'm going to use it a little, >> and I would enjoy to help hosting a website with updated links, to >> generate updated and working precompiled images, istructions etc. >> I have a shared hosting plan I can use, whom should I ask to get >> current website sources and the permission to update a little and >> re-publish them? >> My question is particularly for @Jody cause he is the latest who >> managed to maintain the project sources. > > > I am still here to maintain the project. Unfortunately, I've run into a > couple of major issues with it that make its future questionable. > > * I'll happily move and clean up the website to my own hosting if there is > renewed interest in the project. I'll overhaul it while I'm at it. > > * The compiler we use, bcc, suffers from some serious limitations and > misbehavior. In particular, nothing can require more than 64K of code, > including the kernel. The compiler needs some work or we need a new > compiler. As I would like to see ELKS target other classic CPUs (65816, > 68000, maybe 6809, etc.) a compiler change may be the best option. The > compiler is the biggest obstacle. > > * What can/does ELKS offer compared to other small OSes such as NuttX? > > * The hardware ELKS is made to work on is (to my limited knowledge) becoming > rare. Quite a few 8086/88 machines have by now suffered capacitor failures > that have rendered them inoperable and probably junked. Most PCs going in > the garbage now are Pentium II/III/4 systems, all of which enjoy Linux > compatibility and are far more capable under Linux than under ELKS, even if > they only have 16MB of RAM. > > * The "E" in ELKS means "embedded" and yet the only platform it was ever > developed for was 8086/88 PCs and the Psion SIBO. The 808x target made more > sense 10 years ago, but embedded and low-power computers today are dominated > by 32-bit ARM and MIPS cores that happily run Linux (if they have enough > RAM, that is.) What should ELKS be targeting today? > > * The project has no active real-hardware testers to call upon. No one has > real hardware AND time for the project AND wants to test changes. I > personally have no 8086/80286 hardware but have a plethora of functioning > Compaq 486 and Toshiba Pentium laptops, all of which have Linux on them. > Without real hardware and a skilled, willing owner that can test ELKS on it, > there can be no proper development. I can use emulators but they don't > emulate the many various quirks and "just non-standard enough to piss you > off" hardware of the early IBM PC era (I'm thinking about you, Tandy.) > > * I have a TRS-80 CoCo and an Apple IIgs. Maybe we should port ELKS to > those. ;-) > > I would like to hear what anyone reading thinks. Please reply either to me > OR the ELKS list since I (obviously) subscribe to it and prefer not to > receive duplicate messages. > > -Jody > -- > 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 -- 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
