Re: Future of ELKS

[Javier Sedano <javier.sedano@agora-2000.com>]

Hello, elksers,

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

	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.

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

	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.

	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.

	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.

	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.

	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 ;-)

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


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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-- 
Javier Sedano Jarillo: javier.sedano@agora-2000.com
                        (http://www.it.uc3m.es/~jsedano)
Agora Systems, S.A.
C/Aravaca 12
E-28040 Madrid (Spain)
Tel.: +34 91 533 58 57
Fax.: +34 91 534 84 77
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