On Sun, Nov 04, 2007 at 12:48:11PM +0100, Maarten Maathuis wrote: > One of the problems i would see with making a completely new operating > system is all the device drivers that have to be made or ported, that > alone makes it a daunting challenge. 20 years ago the amount of > devices that existed (relevant for a general purpose OS) were limited, > there is also the question of how much will be gained from such a new > operation system?
Hmm, I think it is all about interfaces. If the interface is simple and general purpose, it might be trivial to adapt device drivers. For instance, I believe that a simple interface will enable us to reuse existing drivers for Windows Vista or Linux, what might be necessary is an interface stub implementation for Windows, for Linux etc. to reuse those drivers. > Writing a new userland is out of the question, so you'd be strictly > looking at a new kernel to replace either the linux or bsd kernel. Nah, I think if you stuck to the Unix/Linux/Plan9 userland, than the whole idea of writing a new OS gets irrelevant. I believe the challenge is to find a completely new and different OS design, esp. from a userland perspective. Otherwise all design decisions will be similiar to what Unix did decades ago. > I have few issues with the linux, i do not know bsd or any other unix > like operating system. But what could be gained from the massive work > to make a new kernel? Nothing, I understand Pikes paper as request for something new, that is neither Unix nor Plan 9/Inferno (though the latter ones come with really great general purpose concepts). I won't think about a new OS to replace anything existing, I think about an OS which is so different (hence new) as a demo only, that it might show up as a promise for something in the future. It would be enough if such an demo OS would make a specific but rather limited thing easy to use, like a digital camera, a mobile phone, or something else. I believe for a small community and project, there are not enough resources to attempt replacing an existing full-featured Windows or Unix OS. Regards, -- Anselm R. Garbe >< http://www.suckless.org/ >< GPG key: 0D73F361
