Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Adopt a Lost Technology Today For R.O.S.

Posted by timothy on from the are-oh-what dept.

submitted by Simon Strandgaard writes "When new operating systems gets designed today, great systems such as Amiga, Atari and VMS, seems to get overlooked in regard to their original features not found on other OSes. It might be time to collect and categorize those special unique features under the great/lost ideas wiki, so new OSes don't have to re-invent the wheel and re-innovate." This is all for R.O.S., a "ruby-centric operating system."

4 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Couldn't they add a U to that? by TMLink · · Score: 2, Funny

    Maybe they should call it the "Ruby-centric Operating Uniformly System"...that way they'd already have a mascot.

    --
    Every time a guy gets a threesome, somewhere in heaven an angel gets his wings. --Cary Tennis
  2. Features? Just so long as it has drivers... by AJWM · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... for my card reader.

    --
    -- Alastair
  3. Re: kernel/userspace separation by some+guy+I+know · · Score: 3, Funny
    I'd like to see the end of the kernel/userspace separation. Just put everything in one address space.
    You mean like MS-Windows?
    With safe languages, there is no need for it.
    The problem with "safe" languages is that the underlying system can be used for such odious purposes as D"R"M, and there is no way to get around it.
    And you would have to have a "safe"-language-only policy on such a system, or you would have a security nightmare similar to that of MS-Windows.
    (I certainly wouldn't want to use such a system; I like C, even though I usually use Python (a "safe" language).)

    Performance could be enhanced by doing more things in libraries (e.g., a ramdisk used exclusively by one application (or a limited set of mutually-trusted/ing applications) could be supported entirely in userspace, with no context-switching necessary).
    Or several mutually-trusting/ed intercommunicating apps could share the same address space, so no VM remapping would be necessary when switching from one to another, nor would a system call be necessary.
    (This would be kind of like a lightweight thread mechanism, but different threads could be loaded from different binaries.)

    I don't know if any of this would actually be feasible, though, since I haven't really worked on the guts of an OS for about 20 years.
    --
    Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
  4. Shouldn't this be on Sourceforge? by ameoba · · Score: 2, Funny

    I looked at the webpage and well... I saw nothing.

    "Wouldn't it be cool if we could write an OS that's better than everything else out there. I want it to be radically different. Please join me & be brilliant & provide all the inspiration and drive to make me famous for heading this project".

    --
    my sig's at the bottom of the page.