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From: "M.C. Wai" <R15...@paccvm.corp.mot.com>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Future of Linux
Date: 25 Apr 1994 21:37:27 -0400
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As you know, PowerPC based computers are launched to the market against
IBM PC. Since the technology of P5 from Intel almost reaches CISC limit,
the future of Intel based computer become a question. However, technology
used in PowerPC is RISC. The future is far better than CISC's chip.
For this reason, I and most PowerPC users want to know that the future
of Linux will port to PowerPC computer (eg. PowerMac) or not. Although
I haven't got a set of PowerMac now, I really want to know some
information about Linux's future so that I can use the power of PowerMac
and continue to use sophisticated and low cost Unix-like software - Linux
Since my question concern about the kernal of Linux, this mail is also
post to Linus Torvalds. However, I still want more information and
comments about my concern, no matter pro and cons.
Regards,
MC Wai
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From: torva...@cs.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc
Subject: Re: Future of Linux
Date: 26 Apr 1994 01:37:57 -0400
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Reply-To: torva...@cs.Helsinki.FI (Linus Torvalds)
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"M.C. Wai": "Future of Linux" (Apr 26, 9:37):
| As you know, PowerPC based computers are launched to the market against
| IBM PC. Since the technology of P5 from Intel almost reaches CISC limit,
| the future of Intel based computer become a question. However, technology
| used in PowerPC is RISC. The future is far better than CISC's chip.
| For this reason, I and most PowerPC users want to know that the future
| of Linux will port to PowerPC computer (eg. PowerMac) or not. Although
| I haven't got a set of PowerMac now, I really want to know some
| information about Linux's future so that I can use the power of PowerMac
| and continue to use sophisticated and low cost Unix-like software - Linux
|
| Since my question concern about the kernal of Linux, this mail is also
| post to Linus Torvalds. However, I still want more information and
| comments about my concern, no matter pro and cons.
Right now, I don't know of anybody working actively on a PowerPC port,
and I'd suspect that the PowerMac's would be rather harder to port to
than the IBM PowerPC's due to the lack of documentation. I understand
IBM hasn't even released their PowerPC machine yet, though.
The IBM PowerPC may be interesting as it seems they emulate the ISA/PCI
bus so existing device drivers should probably need only minimal changes
(I don't know exactly what they do, but I think they use memory-mapped
IO to do the ix86 inb/outb instructions - it might even be enough to
just change the definitions of inb/outb).
One stumbling block may be the memory managment: the PowerPC chip
probably use reverse page tables instead of the two-level page tables
used by Linux/386 and Linux/68k (a two-level page table wouldn't be very
practical on a 64-bit machine..). That would require some rewriting.
Anyway, there has been some discussion about porting linux to the
PowerPC, and I wouldn't rule out a port especially if the IBM PowerPC's
turn out to be reasonably cheap.
Linus
|