Re: "The future of NetBSD" by Charles M. Hannum

["Justin C. Sherrill" <justin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, August 31, 2006 3:42 pm, Jonathon McKitrick wrote:

> Big question: after all the work that will go into the clustering, other
> than scientific research, what will the average user be able to use such
> advanced capability for?

Lots.  To get to a single system image, the operating system has to be
made less obfusticated.  A cleaner system means less pain for the
developers and less bugs due to obscurity.

Making the system multiprocessor safe generally improves uniprocessor
speed.  Even so, we are quickly reaching the point where all processors
are dual-core.

New ideas, like Kip Macy's checkpointing work, can be tried out without
judgement on anything but its technical merits.  While Matt concentrates
on his work, other people are free to add.  For instance, we haven't
removed any commit bits because of disagreements in project direction.  :)

Keep in mind that as Matt pointed out, a lot of what makes DragonFly
interesting is the other work being done.  Clustering is one part of many.