From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: Mario Urban Subject: Re: Regarding the Future of ELKS Date: Mon, 07 May 2007 14:19:54 +0200 Message-ID: <463F196A.9080208@ranet.de> References: <463CD3EB.6020506@nc.rr.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Return-path: In-Reply-To: <463CD3EB.6020506@nc.rr.com> Sender: linux-8086-owner@vger.kernel.org List-Id: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format="flowed" To: Jody Cc: ELKS > Hello everyone. This is Jody, the current maintainer of the ELKS > project. I wanted to ask for everyone's opinion on what the future of > ELKS should be. > > I can see many compelling reasons to drop ELKS entirely or shift it > away from the 80(2)86-oriented platform, including the following: > > * No one works on ELKS. Really. I'm no C programmer, and apparently > all the ones that COULD work on it have moved on to "bigger better > things" in their lives. > There is no good documentation available. A WORKING documentation-project for ELKS is needed.. > * 8086/80286 cores are being dropped in favor of other platforms, > including ARM, 386EX, Coldfire, etc. While embedded Linux covers a > lot of that territory, there is certainly some room for discussion of > changing ELKS to be more portable and pushing it to those platforms. > The minimalist approach to the ELKS kernel would make it far smaller > than Linux and it could potentially compete with the likes of other > smaller operating systems used in embedded applications, such as VxWorks. > Does that make Sense? Minix, Linux are available for 32bit systems. Do we need another one? I dont think so. But there is no "up-to-date" system which you can use on a 8086-80286. > * ELKS has not developed to a very "usable" stage yet. There are a > hundred different ways the project could go, but the original stated > goals are quickly showing that they are not it. Lack of interest in > the project and limited ability to reuse the code are clear signs that > something must change. > First step should be to look for a good sponsor. The entire project should be hosted and maintained by a greet Linux-Player. Ubuntu comes to my mind... Someone should ask them... The project is little, it needs not many ressources compared to a Linux-Distro. I too remember that the Elks-Website was not updated for years.. No good sign for a project looking for developers... > To those of you who are still subscribed to this list: what do you > think should be done? I look forward to hearing your answers! > > ~Jody > - > To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-8086" in > the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org > More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html > >