[arch-general] A universal Operating System API - why don't we have it?

[Frédéric Perrin]

Le vendredi 18 à 10:24, RedShift a écrit :
>                             Things like enumerating all hardware
> devices, configuring a network interface, drawing a window, ejecting
> the CD-ROM drive, getting notified about new hardware plugged in,
> etc... It's different on every operating system. 

Isn't it one of the goals of hal ? It does exist outside of Linux (in
FreeBSD for instance: <http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/halfaq.html>).

>                                                  You cannot write a
> driver for Linux and expect it to work on FreeBSD. You cannot write an
> application for windows and expect it to work on Linux. When you buy a
> piece of hardware you usually hope for the best that it'll work
> out-of-the-box including all "extra" features.

If OS internals are to be so similar that they expose the same API to
hardware drivers, where is there room for differentiation between two
OSes? FreeBSD, to continue with "the unkwown giant", prides itself with
writing a very well designed OS, whereas Linux (kernel & userland) does
not have the same quality standards. As a result, things evolve less
quickly in FreeBSD, but are usually more stable. I'm talking about the
architecture of the code; when was the last time a major subsystem of
FreeBSD was rewritten? (I mean, except the USB stack in 8).

-- 
Fred