Re: How innovative is Linux?

[Alan Cox]

On Sat, 23 Jun 2007 18:19:43 +0200
Grozdan Nikolov <microchip@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> On Saturday 23 June 2007 18:12, you wrote:
> > On Saturday 23 June 2007, Alan Cox wrote:
> > > A few innovations that afaik first appeared the Linux kernel
> > > - Making multiple hosts appear transparently as one IP address
> > > - Futex fast hybrid locking
> > > - Single pass checksum fragment and send fragments in reverse order
> > > - Reiserfs - very innovative design, but innovation isn't neccessarily
> > > success
> > > - JFFS/JFFS2 - flash wear levelled file system avoiding all the problem
> > > patents
> > > - Loadable modules for a non-microkernel
> >
> > - ALSA framework and drivers
> > - Direct Rendering Infrastructure

DRI is based on SGI work and Mark Kilgard and the SGI folks definitely
did the real visionary work in that area.

> > - hotplugging
> >
> 
> hmm, wasn't loadable kernel modules first implemented in SunOS 4.x together 
> with the proc system ?

Proc type stuff is a lot older than Linux or Unix AFAIK. Loadable modules
ditto but the full load/unload/autoload stuff I've not seen pre-Linux.
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