Re: [Mentalunix-developers] Proposed feature set...

[Clinton E. <men...@cr...>]

> To quickly determine wheather hanging on this list will be of any use
> to me I will now present a list of features that I insist on
> implementing in this "distribution". Otherwise I will unsubscribe. I
> must insist on these features because without them, this distribution
> will be as useless to me as all the others and not even worth my time
> much less my effort.
> 
> Categories: 
> P - performance
> U - usability
> M - Maintainability
> L - Learnability
> S - Security 
> R - Reliability
> 
> Demanded features: 
> 
> P - No binary distributions! Argument: When I installed Mandrake 6.5
> my Athalon had a BogoMips rating of 799. When I recompiled the kernel
> it jumped to 1,500. =) Therefore all software should be compiled by
> and for the host processor. 
> 
If you read the mpkg spec, you would notice on of its "features" is 
that it will be able to grab the source and recompile and entire 
package tree...so, porting to new architectures would be easy(that is 
my justification). Just tell the tool to recompile all of the 
Mental(?) packages, and you have a port. If some of them fail, you 
know the exact packages you need to worry about fixing. But, 
compiling all of the system software during install != good. 
Actually, it is bad. The time involved would not be very nice, not to 
mention some things like ACE or CORBA that require HUGE amounts of 
ram to compile(500+ MB) and disk space(2+ GB during compile). So, the 
distribution ISOs would be in binary form(i386, i486, i586, i686, 
?PPC?), but you could grab a source disc and use the GUI or command 
line tool to recompile your entire tree. Also, on something like the 
i386, kernels that are optimized for different systems(486/586/2+GB 
RAM/SMP/etc) will be included. All in all, I think that meets your 
requirement.

> U/L - Eliminate the use of "Hackish" and use good dictionary ENGLISH
> in as many contexts as possible. Argument: One of the hardest things
> to learn in UNIX is the massive numbers of acronyms and abreviations.
> Even in DOS I have written a batch program called "memory" because
> that is the word that I *think* when I want to learn about the memory
> situation of my computer. While you may argue that "mem" is easier to
> type, it is harder to THINK because I must translate what I think,
> which is always MEMORY, to mem. Its an extra step that *should* be
> avoided.
> 
This is where the newbie manpages come in. It's all going to be 
linked up to linuxnewbie(I'll talk to sensei when we get ready to 
start it) database. We might as well add a whole newbie system in 
with it..make a new shell based on bash that has newbie command 
aliases? Let me explain.
You type memory. It loads mem. Well, if we just aliased it, you would 
have a huge list of aliases, and you would think memory was the 
actual command. So, with a special file..maybe .newbierc with the 
alias in it. Here could be a sample session:

user@host:~$ memory
user, the actual command is mem.
type: nman mem for help
user@host:~$ mem
You have xxxx MB of free ram....

The user could learn easily that way, and the commands would be more 
intuitive. And, the user doesn't become dependent on the 
shortcuts..after learning the command, they are a competent gnu/linux 
user.


> U/M - Seperate progarms out and make things as easy to configure as
> DOS software. For example instead of putting parts of programs all
> over the system in such a way that no human can maintain all of them.
> (as there are no clues as to what belongs to what nor indication of
> even what resources a given program might actually be using...)
> Therefore I demand that irrespective of how storage is allocated to
> jobs, all of say "Apache" reside in one single directory, say
> /programs/netservers/apache/ . Which would *everything* that is
> exclusively a part of the Apache webserver.
> 
No /programs, but there will be a /opt/apps. In /opt/apps, there will 
be symlinks to every program on the system(or rather packages). Here 
is an example:

/opt/apps/apache
...bin
...etc

and stuff like that. The app is centralized(by package name). So, you 
can just cd into the apps dir, and then the appname, and see all of 
the file associated with it. Of course, the dir would be read-only, 
and could be reconstructed if root trashed it by running some rebuild 
command in mpkg.

> S - I have no understanding of "runlevels" therefore they, and other
> unused features like them, should be eliminated. Instead the system
> will be organized in such a way that it is easy to start and stop
> desired or undesired functions at will and with the greatest possible
> ease.
> 
No app planned, but it is an interesting idea. Maybe a program like 
newbie xinit? A newbie init front end in Gtk that had options like 
this(to change runlevels):

[] Single user mode(runlevel S)
[] Text only mode(runlevel 3)
[] graphical Mode(runlevel 5)
etc...
(ok) (exit)

imagine the [] are checkboxes, and the () are buttons. They select 
single user mode, and it would show this:

To switch to Single user mode on the console, type:
telinit S
In single user mode, only the root superuser can be logged in.
This mode is only for usage by experts. It is designed to make
system maitence easy, or for usage after a bad crash, if one or more 
of your drives has died.
switch modes?
(ok) (no!)

I think it would make a good program. I could sketch it out in 
glade(just the GUI, not code) later.

> R - Better console managment. The console should be treated as any
> other device in the system and should be protected from any
> possibility of dissruption by any program. The "reset" command should
> be unneccessary. 
> 
Really hard to do that. Programs like Xemacs on the console change 
the cursor for internal management. Please explain further what you 
mean exactly.



> I hope others on this list will add to these requirements. I want to
> finally see a GOOD operating system for a change. I HATE ALL THESE
> SHITTY OSES!!! =(
> 
> 
> -- 
> If a "bug" in one program causes another to fail, the OS is at fault.
> http://users.erols.com/alangrimes/  <my website.
> 
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> 
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All views expressed are IMHO.
Because MHO is better than yours.
unknown_lamer