Kernels - What's in and what's out.
Albert Cahalan (albert@ccs.neu.edu)
Tue, 7 May 1996 13:47:26 -0400 (EDT)
>>> somebody about the upcomming OS/2 Merlin. Apparently Merlin will
>>> have voice recognition in the OS. Won't that be nice in Linux...
>>
>> Voice recognition sounds really cool, but it doesn't belong in the kernel.
>>
>> Don't be misled by the reports of various vendors jumping onto the
>> bandwagon and adding support for Java in the OS. I think that all
>> this really means is that support for Java will come bundled with
>> the base OS. (I.e, the Java VM and a certain base set of classes
>> will come along with the OS. You won't need to purchase them as
>> a seperate product.) I don't think this means that there will be
>> any tight integration into the kernel.
>
> It always amazes me how, whenever any "fantastic" thing that anyone else
> is doing, (read other OSs), people always say, "Oo, oo, Linux can do that!
> Let's stick it into the kernel!" Most of these things don't belong in the
> kernel, and besides, most of these things ALREADY exist in Linux. Like
> voice recognition, (can't remember where I saw it, but someone's already
> done it for Linux). You just have to know where to find it. I'm not trying
> to be nasty to these people who think this way, just merely saying that,
> IMHO, a simple kernel is a happy kernel - keep out the garbage!
You need some sort of hook in the kernel. The bulk of the voice
recognition software can go in user space, but the kernel needs
to supply some way to put characters into the keyboard buffer.
If not, then voice will only work under X or some other special
environment.
The bulk of the code should be a real-time process locked into
memory. You wouldn't want your voice software to get swapped out.