2022-07-15 14:41:13 I can hear my neighbours shouting "ALEXA, OFF" repeatedly 2022-07-15 14:42:22 "Have you tried turning it off and on again?" 2022-07-15 15:43:05 shout "ALEXA, PLAY NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP" 2022-07-15 15:44:19 pretty sure that's how the Hatfield/McCoy thing got started 2022-07-15 22:18:34 So, I installed qemu tonight. That was... awfully easy. 2022-07-15 22:18:44 Just works. 2022-07-15 22:24:00 qemu is mindblowing 2022-07-15 22:25:06 i tried running something i compiled for mips on x86 ubuntu and it silently started qemu and ran as if it were native 2022-07-15 22:25:18 you would never know the difference 2022-07-15 22:36:23 Yeah, I did a quick test with a little test program I downloaded from stack exchange. 2022-07-15 22:36:28 "Just worked." 2022-07-15 22:36:47 Now I want to port my system to bare metal. 2022-07-15 22:37:44 Do you know if it's easy do think like increase the font size? 2022-07-15 22:37:56 The screen image it put up was kind of small and in the middle of my screen. 2022-07-15 22:38:04 Intended for lower resolution, I guess. 2022-07-15 22:38:12 That's likely just a bare metal limitation isn't it? 2022-07-15 22:38:40 I remember virtual box has some kind of "extensions" package you could add to get higher resolution. 2022-07-15 23:17:55 Oh, I figured out how to zoom it. 2022-07-15 23:18:17 Doesn't improve the resolution, but I think that's just all that layer of stuff is capable of. 2022-07-15 23:18:27 At least it's big enough to read easily. 2022-07-15 23:27:37 Oh, hmmm. Segment descriptors in later x86 processors have a "hidden part" - it'c basically a cache of stuff from the descriptor table. 2022-07-15 23:27:49 So the descriptor table doesn't have to be accessed every operation. 2022-07-15 23:28:22 That makes it somewhat like a capability. Not completely, but similar kind of thing - a part of an "address" that can't be set/controlled by the user. 2022-07-15 23:29:05 Some good info here: 2022-07-15 23:29:07 https://alessandropellegrini.it/didattica/2017/aosv/1.Initial-Boot-Sequence.pdf 2022-07-15 23:44:14 Wow - thumbing through that - the history of it. One trend has just been this relentless push toward more and more address space. 2022-07-15 23:44:31 I honestly just don't understand how they can possibly use that much addressing. 2022-07-15 23:45:06 I mean, what actually USES hundreds of GB of RAM? I mean, I know something thta does, but it doesn't use it because it HAS to - it uses it because it's THERE. 2022-07-15 23:45:19 Chrome 2022-07-15 23:45:27 But that particular thing could easily have been done streaming data off to disk along the way. 2022-07-15 23:45:51 You mean like if someone opens... 500 tabs or something? 2022-07-15 23:46:29 or gnome-shell, but I put in a cron job to kill any that used too much memory 2022-07-15 23:48:02 That sounds like a good idea. 2022-07-15 23:48:19 And that almost underscores the problem. 2022-07-15 23:48:28 It's a SHELL. A support program. 2022-07-15 23:48:35 It shouldn't be the thing using all the resources. 2022-07-15 23:48:44 pretty sure it was the javacript thingy that was leaking memory 2022-07-15 23:49:30 OS should be THIN. It has always bugged me that I can't tell the OS "this application that I'm about to run needs EVERYTHING." Ok, maybe not everything, but, say, 98% of everything. 2022-07-15 23:49:39 Get the hell out of its way and give it ALL to me. 2022-07-15 23:50:14 ESPECIALLY on multi-core machines. I certainly should be able to devote a core completely to one thread if I wanted to. 2022-07-15 23:50:18 someone eventually reported this gem to the nodejs folks: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/thrig/dotfiles/master/imgs/my-seventh-node-script.png 2022-07-15 23:51:37 Um, that's just an infinite loop isn't it? 2022-07-15 23:51:37 OTOH realtime is a great way to lock yourself out of the OS if your 98% program goes derp 2022-07-15 23:51:57 Yes, with power comes responsibility. 2022-07-15 23:52:02 That's what the power switch is for. 2022-07-15 23:52:29 it would be an infinite loop if not for the memory leak 2022-07-15 23:52:52 My main point though is that the OS's are too heavy. Way, WAY to heavy. 2022-07-15 23:53:55 And as fast as processors are even 2% should be plenty to run some monitoring and intervention ability. 2022-07-15 23:54:14 That 2% is faster than whole computers used to be. 2022-07-15 23:55:18 Wirth made that point a while ago. Almost nobody listened 2022-07-15 23:55:39 Yeah - folks like their window animations and all the other worthless bells and whistles. 2022-07-15 23:55:50 Slurp... 2022-07-15 23:57:44 I guess I'm just weird. I don't like reality TV either... :-)