Re: Future of ELKS

[Miguel Bolanos <mike@linuxlabs.com>]

Greetings,

On Thu, 2004-05-20 at 05:42, Javier Sedano wrote:
> Hello, elksers,

Elksers ... hehe 

> 
> 	firstly, could you remember us the information to access the IRC? I can 
> not even find the list archive...

Yes sure no problem:

server: irc.freenode.net
chan:	#elks

I will be upgrading the website today and will ensure that this info is
easily found there.

> 
> 	Being a plain elks user, and not a elks hacker, I would like elks (et 
> al.) to focus on:
> 
> 	1) Be more "user friendly". Of course, and elks user is probably a 
> hacker, at least to an extent, so "user friendly" does not mean "dumb 
> winuser friendly", but neither should mean "only-the-programmer 
> friendly". It should not be a specific feature, but an elks way of live. 
> I would like that anybody able to compile and run a Linux kernel was 
> able to compile and run an elks kernel.
> 	I know it is not the kind of work that hackers love (I hate it!), but 
> it is mandatory for plain final users.

OK I still don't get very clear your idea of  "User friendly"... when u
refer to Linux kernel compilation.. i guess u mean kernels dialog ? We
are working a making elks work like regular linux kernel... but this
will take a little while.. and having dialog .. hehe this will take yet
another bit more. Anyways if this is not what you mean, please tell some
more specific ideas of your definition to "User friendly" :)

> 
> 	2) Include a good swap support. There is some support for swap, but it 
> is one of such hacker-only features.

Yes this is going to the TODO.

> 
> 	3) Include IP support. Again, it is available for hackers, and only a 
> few interfaces are supported (slip?, ppp?), and are a bit hidden and the 
> routes are very, very hard-coded. Ethernet support, at least for some 
> cards (NE2000, that common 8bit 3com whose name i can not remember,...) 
> would be really great.

Is on the TODO since a while :)

> 
> 	4) Self contained compiler. The compiler should be able to compile 
> itself, and thus run on elks (as you know, other open source compilers 
> compile themselves in the "./configure; make; make install" procedure). 
> Also, a "make" runnable on elks is needed.

we will see what comes along with this gcc-8086 thing.

> 
> 	5) More applications. Editors, web browsers, email/news clients,... 
> What about games? Can roge run on elks? Roge would be the killer app for 
> elks ;-) Such applications may be dificult to be run on 8086/640k, 
> but... you know: say "it is impossible", and someone will do it just to 
> laugh at you.
> 

Well basicaly, we need to make a clear point. ELKS is an Embeddable
linux kernel subset.. not a distro.. BUT... i guess that in the mean
time we will find a way to put all this stuff together to make elks
actually worth the try.


> 	6) An ELKS distribution, such as EDE. The distribution should be able 
> to install to a hard disk from floppy disks, configure the basic 
> behaviour, and manage packages (at least, keep track of the installed 
> packages, files owned by a given package,...). The main work here is to 
> keep track of the ongoing elks developments.
> 

Agree.

> 	7) A graphical environment, with a window manager and applications (at 
> least, terminal). Again, it may be dificult to be done with 640k. 
> Compliance with X would be great, but may be impossible ;-)
> 

There was a little talk about this topic on irc some days ago.. but i
guess i need to make some research on this before giving a valid
opinion.

> 	As you notice, many of the features are actually outside the elks 
> kernel itself, but are perceived by user like a whole.
> 

Well your comments are VERY welcome, and we sure appreciate the fact of
taking some time to provide this feedback.. this is will be of great use
for the team... hopefully we will keep getting feedback from you, and
meet on irc :)
best wishes

Mike

> 
> Miguel Bolanos wrote:
> > Good day to all,
> > 
> > The project seems to be finally awaking from a very long period of
> > inactivity, this can be reflected not only by the traffic on the mailing
> > list, but on the amount of people hanging around at the irc channel and
> > the quality of the discussions over there.
> > 
> > Based on this facts, I believe that it is important that all the people
> > involved and interested in ELKS, provide their own opinions on what the
> > future of ELKS should be... I know of many wanting to have specific
> > features that are not currently in the kernel.. and others that as well
> > have interesting ideas for code reduction and improvements. So if you
> > are one them, please feel free yourself, as all this feedback is
> > important for us upgrade the TODO and roadmap of the project.
> > 
> > The current things that are been done are:
> > 
> > - Creation of an additional kernel that will use linux 2.6 coding style,
> > this is been done because we are looking forward to enable the
> > possibility of including support for 8086 and similar on the official
> > linux kernel as an option... of course this is will take a long time,
> > and doesn't mean that work on the current "production kernel" will be
> > depricated or anything like that, we which to encorage you to keep
> > contributing on the "production" kernel.. and the "new" kernel project
> > will be a work in parallel that at some point will have all this
> > improvements on the production kernel merged.
> > 
> > - A possibility of using gcc to create 8086 binaries might be a
> > possibility with a patch created by our irc friend boto. If the tests of
> > this are successful we will enable elkscmd to let the users decide if
> > they which to use gcc-8086 or our current bcc :)
> > 
> > Anyways thats all for now. Hope to hear back from all.
> > best wishes
> > 
> > Mike
> > 
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