[HECnet] Re: DECnet to be dropped from Linux

On Aug 2, 2022, at 10:40 AM, Brian Angus <brian.angus(a)gmail.com> wrote: Hello, I'm not a programmer, at least not a very good one, and I'm quite happy to expose my ignorance in the effort to learn something new, so I was wondering how real this dependency is on having Linux kernel support for DECnet. We are quite able to put DECnet packets out on the wire using various user mode processes such as with our favourite emulator SimH. I currently run VAX DECnet on several linux boxes without any special or unusual kernel shenanigans using a simple TAP ethernet driver. I also use other non-IP based protocols such as LAT that do not require any special kernel mode modules, drivers or privileges. Wouldn't it be awesome if we could install a "simple" DECnet daemon on Linux and tweak the few user mode commands that we still use to point to that instead of the special kernel drivers that are needed today. This is probably just wishful thinking, but a very simple non-kernel DECnet implementation might help ensure its survival for a few more decades. I could well be completely wrong, but I thought I would ask anyway.