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Annotation of 43BSD/contrib/X/doc/Usenix/summary.t, revision 1.1.1.1

1.1       root        1: .SH
                      2: Summary
                      3: .PP
                      4: The current 
                      5: .UX
                      6: kernel implementation is quite inflexible,
                      7: closing off what might be interesting design choices.
                      8: Lightweight processes both in the kernel and in user processes could
                      9: be used to good advantage.
                     10: The kernel is not properly structured to allow easy use of different
                     11: facilities together.
                     12: Streams may be a decent first step in this direction.
                     13: .PP
                     14: Stub generators, message passing and
                     15: RPC transport protocols all
                     16: need substantial work as 
                     17: .UX
                     18: moves into the distributed world.
                     19: Using these protocols without stub generators is like a day without sunshine.
                     20: .PP
                     21: Resource location, authentication and naming are issues
                     22: .UX
                     23: has not faced in the distributed
                     24: environment.
                     25: Cascaded services present another level of issues which need to be faced
                     26: in their design.
                     27: .PP
                     28: .UX
                     29: has ascii terminals ingrained into its very nature.
                     30: It will take much more work to smooth the rough edges emerging from
                     31: the forced marriage of workstation displays with 
                     32: .UX .
                     33: .PP
                     34: If a system resource is in short supply (as file descriptors are),
                     35: the correct solution is to lift the limit entirely.
                     36: Doubling or tripling a limit on a resource only delays the day of
                     37: reckoning,
                     38: while still preventing those design strategies that found them in
                     39: short supply originally.
                     40: .PP
                     41: Shared memory should allow sharing of memory between processes,
                     42: between the kernel and a process, and between a process and hardware.
                     43: Shared libraries would open up design opportunities.
                     44: .PP
                     45: More work needs to be done on performance of some of the new kernel
                     46: facilities.
                     47: The X server uses select more heavily than any other system call,
                     48: accounting for the largest single component of CPU time used,
                     49: though select is not the limit in absolute performance.
                     50: 

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