Hello,
My name is Mel Gorman. I'm currently studying final year computer systems
in University of Limerick, Ireland. I have the opportunity to study a
masters (2 years) in the college next year on operating systems and the
direction of the masters is largely up to myself. Ideally, I will be using
Linux as a base. Before I start though, I should mention though that;
1. I'm not a currently a kernel developer and have a bit to learn
before I could be
2. I won't be starting work on this for a while (if at all if the Masters
falls through and I can't find the time to work on it anyway)
3. I'm not fully up to date with current development because final year of
college doesn't allow reading hundreds of emails a day.
4. I've subscribed to the list for the moment until I get some information
or get laughed off the list
5. I am wearing a BIG kernel newbie stamp on my forehead that shields me
from flames. Be nice and remember that even looking at kernel development
is daunting at first and the volume of information is hard to absorb so
try and keep snide comments about clueless newbie to a minimum please.
I took a look through the FAQ and the archives but didn't see much in the
line of what needs to be done next. I'm looking for a list or even
pointers to discussions on what needs to be developed in the kernel that
would be long term and would be suitalbe for a masters - muliple goals are
welcome. Of the top of my head and from asking my local LUG, I got
1. Research OOM issues and ways of resolving it possibly based on
profiling individual users and using system metrics as a limit. IRCC,
there isn't a way implemented yet that everyone is happy with
2. POSIX compliance. Not all of Linux is POSIX complient. Identify the key
areas and update them
3. Optimize the dynamic library load for large numbers of libraries ro
encourage code reuse. Establish a metic loader for judging when static
executables should be used instead of dynamic
4. Look into making Linux a distributed system. Provide a
kernel/userland/some combination of easily distributing tasks across a
multiple number of machines whether task farming or whatever. Possibly
even distributing scheduling and memory management across a number of
machines rather than one machine. Note, this is not RPC, ideally, userland
would barely be aware of the distribution
5. Develop an XML file systems that used a compression scheme that
made the assumption that all files stored are XML files and provide some
support kernel side for quickly parsing them. Probably implement as an
extenstion to an existing filesystem using a mount switch to turn on
compression.
6. Strip down the kernel to act as only a firewall/router making it as
lightweight as possible. Would allow a headless box to be turned into a
firewall or possibly a router easily.
7. Someone suggested implemented the BeOS filesystem to have a multimedia
ready file system for Linux - I'm not definite if this has been done
already or not
So, if anyone has suggestions on things I could start researching into and
trying to implement, I'd highly welcome them as well as comments on the
above idea.. Bear in mind, I'll have to get my degree first (2 months)
before I get to look in detail but I'm starting discussions with my
college now on what could be researched so any information you can provide
is helpful.
Thanks for listening - apologies of this is noise
Mel
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.rutgers.edu
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Apr 23 2000 - 21:00:15 EST