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Operating System Development Series (2008)

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Re: Operating System Development Series (2008)

#21

Post by steveklabnik »

vertex-four wrote: post #13

It seems that open-source operating system projects either never quite get past the point of having a kernel that can print stuff, read/write FAT32, and run a couple of userland processes, or they attempt to implement POSIX. There's a couple of attempts to build something different - Haiku, based on the design of BeOS; and Redox, written in Rust and implementing access to the filesystem as URLs - but where's all the…

one issue is that it can take a long time to get to just that point, and so doing further, more interesting research comes after you've already done a ton of hacking.

Re: Operating System Development Series (2008)

#22

Post by vertex-four »

pjmlp wrote: post #19
vertex-four wrote: post #13

It seems that open-source operating system projects either never quite get past the point of having a kernel that can print stuff, read/write FAT32, and run a couple of userland processes, or they attempt to implement POSIX. There's a couple of attempts to build something different - Haiku, based on the design of BeOS; and Redox, written in Rust and implementing access to the filesystem as URLs - but where's all the…

If you want something different, research SPIN OS with Modula-3, Oberon with Oberon [1]. The work done by Xerox with Interlisp-D, Smalltalk and Mesa/Cedar [2] Or before Multics and UNIX were even born, the work done in Burroughs B5000. [3] There are plenty more examples, one just needs to dive into the history of computing. [0] - http://www-spin.cs.washington.edu/ [1] - http://www.projectoberon.com/ [2] - https://arc…

Absolutely, there's been various approaches researched in the past - and I've used Oberon before, really enjoyed it - I'm just curious as to why it doesn't seem to happen any more.

Re: Operating System Development Series (2008)

#23

Post by nickpsecurity »

steveklabnik wrote: post #20

Fun to see this popping up on the day I'm hacking on my own litte OS, intermezzOS. There's lots of great stuff in this series, but it also exemplifies an issue with the hobby OSdev scene: it's almost all for protected mode, with some real mode stuff, and very little long mode stuff. This one does have great real mode stuff, though. Protected mode is a bit simpler, which is nice. Hopefully over the next few years, the…

I saw it before but didn't know it was yours. Congratulations on joining the club of people doing software all the way to the metal "for real." :)

Re: Operating System Development Series (2008)

#24

Post by nickpsecurity »

vertex-four wrote: post #22
pjmlp wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want something different, research SPIN OS with Modula-3, Oberon with Oberon [1]. The work done by Xerox with Interlisp-D, Smalltalk and Mesa/Cedar [2] Or before Multics and UNIX were even born, the work done in Burroughs B5000. [3] There are plenty more examples, one just needs to dive into the history of computing. [0] - http://www-spin.cs.washington.edu/ [1] - http://www.projectoberon.com/ [2] - https://arc…

Absolutely, there's been various approaches researched in the past - and I've used Oberon before, really enjoyed it - I'm just curious as to why it doesn't seem to happen any more.

Takes academics being paid to create it basically. Most academics just focus on getting papers published and citations. The number that will try to do useful stuff, esp OS's, are usually a rarity. Btw, here's a few:

Active development with strong features:

https://www.genode.org

http://www.minix3.org/

http://redox-os.org/

http://www4.cs.fau.de/Projects/JX/index.html

Older, less active, or inactive but still interesting

http://www.xtreemos.eu/about/about-xtreemos/

https://sourceforge.net/projects/a2oberon/files/

http://www.eros-os.org/

https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/research/security/ctsrd/cheri/cheri...

http://fsd-amoeba.sourceforge.net/

So, there you go. THey don't all do what you describe. Some cool stuff worth emulating or building on in the pages above. Especially EROS or A2 Bluebottle for security and ease-of-picking-up respectively.

Re: Operating System Development Series (2008)

#25

Post by [deleted] »

kentonv wrote: post #15
adrianratnapala wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect it is because people who want to provide something like your service-oriented OS will do it as an application layer over existing operating systems. This also gives them the flexibility to factor the problem into smaller bits. Cap'n Proto is a service-oriented something-or-other, built on capabilities and even typed objects. But it does not give a flying -ck about storage.

To be fair, Cap'n Proto is a sub-project of Sandstorm.io which is basically an operating system and cares deeply about storage. But Cap'n Proto can be used independently...

[deleted]

Re: Operating System Development Series (2008)

#26

Post by nickpsecurity »

mentos wrote: post #5

Would it be possible to move more parts of the operating system into hardware to realize an improvement in speed? So for example say Microsoft announced Windows 10 was the perfect operating system and needed no new features/bug fixes would it make sense and would it be possible to realize the OS software in hardware?

Your wish is Intel's command:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_iAPX_432

Main reason against doing this sort of stuff is it impacts chip performance and esp reduces flexibility. People are always inventing new ways to speed up OS's. So, we implement them in SW that maps to HW with decades of improvements built-in. Works best overall. Everyone doing high-level hardware takes a loss outside some Java and Forth processors.

See http://www.jopdesign.com for another example.

Re: Operating System Development Series (2008)

#27

Post by steveklabnik »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #23
steveklabnik wrote: post #20

Fun to see this popping up on the day I'm hacking on my own litte OS, intermezzOS. There's lots of great stuff in this series, but it also exemplifies an issue with the hobby OSdev scene: it's almost all for protected mode, with some real mode stuff, and very little long mode stuff. This one does have great real mode stuff, though. Protected mode is a bit simpler, which is nice. Hopefully over the next few years, the…

I saw it before but didn't know it was yours. Congratulations on joining the club of people doing software all the way to the metal "for real." :)

Thanks. I was in it in college, but back again. :)

Re: Operating System Development Series (2008)

#29

Post by Sanddancer »

mentos wrote: post #5

Would it be possible to move more parts of the operating system into hardware to realize an improvement in speed? So for example say Microsoft announced Windows 10 was the perfect operating system and needed no new features/bug fixes would it make sense and would it be possible to realize the OS software in hardware?

Yes. It's where we've been going already since time immemorial. It's why graphics cards picked up 2d, then 3d acceleration, it's why network cards have varying amounts of power to analyze and manipulate incoming and outgoing packets, etc. A lot of these things tend to be put into hardware after they've been proven useful, usually trickling down from the server world.

Re: Operating System Development Series (2008)

#30

Post by ejanus »

steveklabnik wrote: post #20

Fun to see this popping up on the day I'm hacking on my own litte OS, intermezzOS. There's lots of great stuff in this series, but it also exemplifies an issue with the hobby OSdev scene: it's almost all for protected mode, with some real mode stuff, and very little long mode stuff. This one does have great real mode stuff, though. Protected mode is a bit simpler, which is nice. Hopefully over the next few years, the…

Awesome
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