FreeLists / openbeos / [openbeos] Re: BeOS design flaws

[revol@xxxxxxx]

> Great and educational post.  I just hope that everyone realises that 
Hmmm... Not sure it was targeted to this list, btw; from, to, reply-to, cc, 
bcc... who said using email was easy ? I should wait to be fully awake before 
answering my mail;)

> So BeFS has bugs.  Nothing new or unexpected.  As long as the 
> architecture is modular, BeFS can be thrown out and replaced with 
> something better.  If the architecture isn't modular (and for BFS I 
> expect it to be tied to the kernel), then you have to fix these 
It is not actually, since the kernel uses a virtual filesystem layer
(for those who don't know what it is:
http://www.atnf.csiro.au/~rgooch/linux/docs/vfs.txt it tells for Linux
but most is true also for BeOS)
The BFS itself is implemented in 
/boot/beos/system/add-ons/kernel/file_systems/bfs
So it's not really a problem to change it, except converting one partition
from one fs to another.

> problems.  BeInc couldn't risk breaking binary compatibility and had 
> the burden of economies to worry about.  With OpenBeOS, these problems
> dont exist.  The choice of one file system over another is academic - 
We still need to think about users that don't wan't/can't change their fs
So we need to support both.

> as long as the initial philosophy stays the same.  As our (and 
> society's) experience grows, we implement better ideas and designs and
> 
> throw out the old.  Microsoft went from Fat16 to Fat32 to NTFS.  Whats
> 
> stopping us from going form BeFS to XFS in the future? (this is not a 
The fact that converting on the fly from BFS to XFS is IMO harder than from 
FAT16 to FAT32. I hope I'm wrong.
Of course new installations doesn't have to deal with that :)

> question, just an illustratrative point).
> Try and remember what initially brought us to a new OS from a company 
> called BeInc.  It wasn't the applications, or hardware support or games
> available which made us adopt a new OS.  It was a realisation of the 
> following philosophy:
>     "Screw legacy, lets do whats right."
M$ tried it with NT... (did they ?)

> Basically, throw out the old-and-near-the-end-of-its-lifespan code and
> start fresh, and build on the experience you've acummulated.  The 
> initial version of OpenBeOS will also be crap.  But as we gain 
> experience, we will redo the individual modules (kits) and with each 
> iteration create a better OS.   And that, my friends, is the BeOS 
> philosophy. 
> 
> >[skipped]

François.