Re: 1GB/2GB/3GB User Space Splitting Patch 2.6.8.1 (PSEUDO SPAM)

[Dave Jones <davej@redhat.com>]

On Thu, Aug 26, 2004 at 08:24:38PM +0000, jmerkey@comcast.net wrote:
 
 > What do you plan to do when the driver base becomes as 
 > large as the one in WIndows 2000/XP

There's a slew of drivers for ancient hardware in Linux that will /never/
be supported in Windows 2000/XP. Given we also support a majority of modern
hardware, chances are we're either comparable, or maybe even surpassing
Microsoft in terms of number of drivers shipped.

 > and you don't have enough memory to load all the drivers.

Since when do we load /all/ the drivers ? That would be silly.

 > Right now, iptables barfs even with 3GB of address space when you load up
 > about a dozen virtual network interfaces ?

I'll hazard a guess this has nothing whatsoever do to with address space sizes.

 > Microsoft had this same problem (only at a much sooner juncture in their
 > platform evolution) and went to VM support in the kernel
 > itself to increase virtual address space for kernel apps, file systems, and
 > drivers when thye hit the wall.    It's coming time to start thinking about
 > it.  

If we did stupid things like trying to load every single driver, maybe.
But we don't, so I think you're chasing ghosts.

		Dave