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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!feed1.news.erols.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!rill.news.pipex.net!pipex!uknet!usenet1.news.uk.psi.net!uknet!uknet!lyra.csx.cam.ac.uk!news.ox.ac.uk!sable.ox.ac.uk!mbeattie From: mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk (Malcolm Beattie) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.misc,comp.os.linux.misc Subject: Re: Linux vs BSD Date: 8 Apr 1997 11:43:09 GMT Organization: Oxford University, England Lines: 34 Message-ID: <5idb0d$4qn@news.ox.ac.uk> References: <32DFFEAB.7704@usa.net> <slrn5fejrn.353.bet@onyx.interactive.net> <E8A0C3.27o.0.staffin.dcs.ed.ac.uk@dcs.ed.ac.uk> <df7di5.voe.ln@mega.am.cs.vu.nl> NNTP-Posting-Host: sable.ox.ac.uk Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.misc:2955 comp.os.linux.misc:168708 In article <df7di5.voe.ln@mega.am.cs.vu.nl>, Kees J Bot <kjb=730999@cs.vu.nl> wrote: >In article <E8A0C3.27o.0.staffin.dcs.ed.ac.uk@dcs.ed.ac.uk>, >Scott Telford <st@epcc.ed.ac.uk> wrote: >>In article <5gjsc9$2cm@innocence.interface-business.de>, J Wunsch >>(j@ida.interface-business.de) wrote: >> >>> This might be because Linux doesn't have the concept of a `raw device' >>> at all. I always wondered why they diminished this idea, and the >> >>I suspect it's mainly because Minix didn't have raw devices either. [...] >>The legacy of Linux's origins can still be found if you look closely... > >Linus may have missed the concept of raw devices because Minix didn't >make a point of mentioning the idea, neither in /dev/ nor in the code. No, Linus has considered and explicitly rejected the idea of adding raw devices to Linux. From time to time, when provoked, he has posted about his reasoning. I don't want to put words in his mouth but, as I recall, it's that one should optimise for the common case and make it as good as possible. In this case, that means having an excellent buffer cache, page cache and so on. Adding raw devices as a back-door because you want a small performance gain in exceptional cases is not desirable. And if the performance gain for raw devices is not small then that's a reason to improve the main I/O subsystem rather than a reason to add support for raw devices. --Malcolm -- Malcolm Beattie <mbeattie@sable.ox.ac.uk> Oxford University Computing Services "Widget. It's got a widget. A lovely widget. A widget it has got." --Jack Dee