Subj : Re: Computer operating system of choice?
To   : tenser
From : boraxman
Date : Wed Feb 09 2022 10:11:54

 te> Even if this were the case, which as others have pointed out it is
 te> not, with any modern system (particularly the x86 types) Linux really
 te> only gives you the illusion that you're in control of the system.
 te> 
 te> There is so much stuff that happens even before the x86 cores come
 te> out of reset, mostly using closed-source binary blobs that you have
 te> no control over whatsoever, that it's mind-boggling.  And the x86 cores
 te> themselves run many billions of instructions of firmware code that,
 te> again, most users have no control over (and has seriously dubious
 te> provenance) before the boatloader even starts.  Everything from power
 te> sequencing to DRAM training is under the control of some chunk of
 te> software that comes from somewhere.  Then once the system is running
 te> you still have the EC, maybe a BMC, plus SMM, ACPI flows, TrustZone
 te> on ARM, etc.
 te> 
 te> Not to mention all the little processor cores running on various
 te> peripherals using their own firmware.
 te> 
 te> If one were to count up the total number of CPUs in a single
 te> modern system, even treating multicore CPUs as a single unit, it
 te> would easily sum into the double or triple digits.  Linux (or,
 te> really, any OS) runs on a tiny fraction of those with absolutely
 te> no insight into what most of them are doing, or even what the cores
 te> it "runs" are fully doing.
 te> 

That is a worrying aspect of modern computing, but this is at a different level.  I concur that at this level, we don't have control, but it is the external presentation that we still can (for now) make ours.

For example, I can choose my graphical environment of choice, configure daemons as I see fit, choose to use the CLI over the GUI, or not use a GUI at all.  FVWM is still highly configurable and I can change aspects of the startup, and the kernel if need be.

We never really did have control at the CPU level. What has changed is that where we used to be able to program the CPU at a fundamental level, we are now dealing with an abstraction.  The machine may be doing things we don't realise it is doing. 

The external appearance is the same, but what is happening "under the surface" as increased. 

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