On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 03:20:04PM -0800, Jimmy Johnson wrote: > Johannes Wiedersich wrote: >> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >> Hash: SHA1 >> >> Jimmy Johnson wrote: >>> I imagine the arguments where similar when operating systems moved from >>> 16 bit to 32 bit. ;) >> >> I have never heard of 16 bit userland and a 32 bit kernel, though. In >> the present case in a sense you can have the best of both worlds on one >> system. 8-) >> >> Has there ever been an official 16 bit linux kernel?
Not official. An attempted port: http://elks.sourceforge.net/ But nobody uses it noawaday. See also http://mikeos.berlios.de/ . Loyal to the BSD tradition it already has a fork. > > I could be wrong but I think the closest would be Minix '87 running on > 8086, Linus was not doing his thing until '91 or maybe later, he may > have started on a 8086, not sure. Linux is not based on Minix. Linus got a shiny new 386 computer and wanted a decent OS on it. One that could use the 32 bit and memory protection capabilities of that CPU, something Minix never bothered. So he just wrote his own kernel. -- Tzafrir Cohen | tzaf...@jabber.org | VIM is http://tzafrir.org.il | | a Mutt's tzaf...@cohens.org.il | | best ICQ# 16849754 | | friend -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org