What kinds of things would you want in the GNU OS?

[Steve Summit]

In article <1989Aug4.080124.26687 at algor2.uu.net> jeffrey at algor2.UUCP (Jeffrey Kegler) writes:
>...I think the features of a GNU OS should be:
>4) Some solution to the problem of kernel size...
>The kernel size problem has become so major that it outranks all other
>new features in my mind. ...  V6 UNIX was
>elegant.  The kernel I now run is an ugly ungainly thing.  I would
>like to see the elegance of V6 return (without losing all the new
>features added since V6).
>From what I can gather of what is going on at FSF, they are well ahead
>of me on the above considerations...

Don't hold your breath.  The FSF may be many things, but they
don't seem to be too interested in small, minimalist programs.
Full-featured code has its price, and the existence of virtual
memory makes it easy to pay.  (But not free; a friend of mine
can't run GNU emacs and a large image-processing application at
the same time, because his workstation runs out of swap space.)
GNU emacs is nearly twice as big as the 4BSD Unix kernel (which
some feel is bloated itself); I am sure that the GNU Unix kernel
will rectify this imbalance.

                                            Steve Summit
                                            scs at adam.pika.mit.edu