Re: gnome

[Jeff Garzik <jgarzik pobox com>]

Todd Showalter wrote:
> On Tue, 8 Dec 1998, <attribution unknown> wrote:
> > Does all the unixes that have gnome support have the ability to use
> > modules?
> > Could there be a VFS virtual file system module produced for Linux,
> > Solaris, whatever, to allow virtual filesystem code to be the same? The
> > module on each os would be different reflecting the differences between
> > os's but the VFS module will talk to VFS librarys that are coded exactly
> > the same way. If somthing like this is done a program wont have to be
> > spacificly programmed to work with VFS. It just asks the os for a file.
> 
>     This seems like overcomplicating things to me; the OS handles the file
> systems.  There's no advantage to wrapping the ANSI I/O calls, and you 
> suffer huge disadvantages:
[...]
>     The kernel is the place to solve this kind of thing.
[...]


I thought overgeneralizations weren't allowed after first semester? :)

There are many advantages to wrapping I/O calls, and

Putting this kind of stuff in the kernel further bloats it, slowing
down low memory machines and keeping VFS capabilities away from
users lacking root access.

Regarding your original message, mc uses libvfs and fully supports
console mode.

	Jeff