[Oberon] Pepino LX9, USB, and other hardware running OBERON

[Lars]

On Sat, February 20, 2016 1:30 am, Douglas G. Danforth wrote:
> Lars,
> The "design" of Oberon is all modular based.

Are you sure though, because you can still have many many many things
being modular, while some things are locked away inside the kernel, i.e.
monolithic.  The problem is "modular" means different things to different
people. Andrew T. of Minix has a very different view on what is a truly
modular micro kernel, and you have to write layers of code to communicate
messages, which Linus Torvalds does not like as it adds extra layers.

OpenBSD is similar, and Plan9, to linux, as it is monolithic...

Rob Pike and others have made comments about truly modular kernels that
Andy T. of Minix thinks are superior:

http://harmful.cat-v.org/software/andy_tanenbaum

https://web.archive.org/web/20110816173017/http://fred.cambridge.ma.us/c.o.r.flame/msg00025.html


And also Linus Torvalds:

"The idea of abstracting away the one thing that must be blindingly
fast, the kernel, is inherently counter productive."

  -- Linus Torvalds on Microkernels

"If you want an application to be portable, you don't necessarily create
an abstraction layer like a microkernel so much as you program
intelligently."

  -- Linus Torvalds on Microkernels

So when I say modular and micro kernel we have to be sure that we are
talking about the same thing...

> For Project Oberon 2013 see this
> <https://www.inf.ethz.ch/personal/wirth/ProjectOberon/PO.System.pdf>.
>

Thanks, will have a look.


> The kernel lies at the bottom of the module hierarchy. It contains the
> procedures for dynamic storage allocation and retrieval as described
> before. The procedures are New, Mark, and Scan .
> Kernel also contains the driver routines for the disk....

Kernel contains driver routines...

"Microkernels allow non-fundamental features (such as drivers for hardware
that is not connected or not in use) to be loaded and unloaded at will"

"in the Monolithic kernel device driver reside in the kernel space . while
In the Microkernel device driver reside in the user space."

Note these quotes could be wrong, as they are pulled from "teh internets"
and the whole idea of a micro vs monolithic kernel is not fully
understood. Some people disagree on what a micro kernel is.

I am guessing, but not sure, and may be 100 percent incorrect, that Oberon
operating system is still a monolithic kernel with drivers shoved in the
kernel, whereas Andy Tanenbaum would put them in user space. However I am
not an operating system expert yet, and am basically talking out of my
rear end.