[luau] ics412: operating systems

[Jimen Ching]

On Sun, 29 Sep 2002, Warren Togami wrote:
>IMHO, it isn't that Linux is too hard... they just put almost zero effort
>into giving resources to the students in getting them acclimated.

Have you looked at the Linux kernel sources?  I have.  There are a few
projects out there that are very hard to contribute to.  These projects
include the Linux kernel, GCC, Samba, X11 and a few others.  The reason is
that they are very COMPLEX systems and it is hard to wrap your head around
them in a short amount of time.  Students have about four months of study
time.  Not nearly enough time to learn about the Linux kernel internals
enough to make modifications to it.

Sure you can write a simple kernel module.  But I would imagine an OS
course would cover things like filesystems, scheduling, memory management,
and perhaps, networking.  These are not simple sub-systems of the Linux
kernel.  This is why, as Charles mentioned, Minix was used.  Minix is a
lot smaller, thus easier for a student to read the entire source tree and
remember it for class.  There is no way to do that with Linux.  There are
lots of features in Linux that will simply be overkill for an OS course.
Using a kernel with such features will only confuse the students.

>Almost zero of those students have signed up on LUAU or asked me for any
>advice.

We seem to be high on ourselves lately.

>operating system.  I haven't seen it myself, but they themselves have
>described the OS simulator of previous semesters to be not a real
>experience.

A simulator is easier to understand.  But it depends on how realistic it
is.  If the simulator doesn't behave like a real OS, then it doesn't
demonstrate the necessary details for learning OS theory.  There are many
OS's out there with source code.  So it should be possible to find
something useful.

>p.s. I have great concerns about the overall direction of the UH ICS
>department.  I've been meaning to speak to the department head about this
>but I have too many things going on.  Any other UH ICS people here?  One of
>these days lets put together our heads and draft a document of our position
>to tell the department.  I already have several of the professors and staff
>convinced, so they will support us.

I'm not sure who you are refering to when you say 'our heads'.  I think
you should bring this up with your fellow classmates.  I doubt there are
that many LUAU members that are directly affected by UH's ICS department
policies.

--jc
-- 
Jimen Ching (WH6BRR)      jching at flex.com     wh6brr at uhm.ampr.org