Henk Robbers in conversation with st-computer (04.07.2001 - 04:10 Uhr)

Henk Robbers is the driving force behind the freely available AES system XaAES for MiNT. Thomas Raukamp had the pleasure to have an interesting conversation with the computer veteran about his AES, the open source movement and the future and past of computing. You can find the really valuable conversation in the summer issue 07/08-2001 of st-computer. Here are already a few excerpts:

"We must not forget that Linux is really just a kernel. But it has the potential to become the 'mother of all kernels', if it is not already. Memory protection and virtual memory, however, are not inventions of the Unix people. These technologies have been around since the early 1950s. But a freely available kernel makes it possible for ancient technologies to survive without having to keep reinventing them."
"XaAES doesn't actually need to know whether a particular program is a desktop or not. Any GEM program can call shell_write and therefore perform desktop functions."
"The difference between N.AES and XaAES is simply that XaAES has a lot of time. The result of that is that exactly as much work is put into it as is needed and all the parts can be developed as compactly and transparently as humanly possible."
"I would like to see a system that works ten times as fast as my Atari TT and still starts up just as fast. I don't really care how this is achieved."
"The IBM PC threw the state of computer development back 35 years in 1985. They just shrunk a computer from the 1950s - and the worst one at that..."

Don't miss the upcoming st-computer if you want to read more of this interesting exchange of ideas! (tr)

http://members.ams.chello.nl/h.robbers/Home.html