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Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

blog.minocacorp.com

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Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#101

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

jprzybyl wrote: post #95
rogerhoward wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems to me like POSIX compatibility is actually a cheap pass that gives you access to a huge software environment. Right on the homepage they mention already having packages for Python, Ruby, Git, Lua, and Node... would that, and thousands of other packages, be feasible without a workable POSIX layer?

> would that, and thousands of other packages, be feasible without a workable POSIX layer? I think my problem is the core concept. POSIX stands for Portable Operating System Interface (and X stands for Xtreme?). In an age where we spin up entire operating systems to start a single application, why are we defining portability at the operating system level when network portability works so much better? Keep in mind, th…

> why are we defining portability at the operating system level when network portability works so much better

A lightweight POSIX-capable system has real value today. Operating systems need to be in more places than just the data center. IoT devices don't have the resources to run a VM or any other fancy containerized environment. POSIX was designed to be used on systems with comparable resources to what many embedded processors now have. It makes sense to leverage the existing codebase where possible.

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#102

Post by kybernetyk »

johnp_ wrote: post #67
no_protocol wrote: post #11

I ran `cloc` on the minoca/os repository, here are the results: github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.70 T=22.43 s (84.3 files/s, 63498.9 lines/s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 1023 296251 262652 530443 C/C++ Header 438 93833 117592 69529 Assembly 95 9588…

Shameless plug of `loc`, a rust implementation of `cloc` that is 100+ times faster: https://github.com/cgag/loc

Has it any remarkable features other than "it's written in Rust"?

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#104

Post by dreamdu5t »

The goals for this new OS are quite vague and uninteresting. It seems set to repeat most of the problems with existing OSes.

Let's take the package manager for example. Wouldn't it be great if instead of yet another package manager that is a glorified system of install scripts... we had a declarative functional system ala NixOS? That's just scratching the surface.

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#105

Post by steveklabnik »

kybernetyk wrote: post #102
johnp_ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shameless plug of `loc`, a rust implementation of `cloc` that is 100+ times faster: https://github.com/cgag/loc

Has it any remarkable features other than "it's written in Rust"?

100x faster sounds like a remarkable feature to me.

(I haven't tried this yet, though I do use tokei, which is faster but not this fast. Been meaning to try it out.)

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#106

Post by serge2k »

kybernetyk wrote: post #102
johnp_ wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shameless plug of `loc`, a rust implementation of `cloc` that is 100+ times faster: https://github.com/cgag/loc

Has it any remarkable features other than "it's written in Rust"?

> that is 100+ times faster

is that not enough?

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#107

Post by majewsky »

Since Minoca seems to be a Corp., does anyone know what their business strategy will be? I could imagine a) a paid enterprise edition, b) paid support or c) paid consultancy (as in "contract the actual maintainers to implement device drivers for your servers").

Whenever a project is corporate-backed, I like to know the business plan upfront before I consider contributing to it.

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#108

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

jwatte wrote: post #38

I would love to see architecture and comparison to other kernels described! Also, I wonder if this can be made to run on Cortex M4 with "MPU" but not "MMU" hardware? Something to run on the Teensy 3.6 would be interesting. BTW: Binary compatible function driver interfaces are great! They served us well on BeOS. The Linux "recompile everything under the sun" approach really gets in the way for many real world situatio…

> Finally, I'm sick and tired of POSIX I/O.

How do you feel about kqueue or I/O completion ports? Are those something like the "interface of the future", or just greasing the old machinery?

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#109

Post by ufo »

rogerhoward wrote: post #89
jprzybyl wrote: post #80

I'm very excited about this! Minoca is an interesting system, and I applaud any attempt to make driver-writing less inherently horrible. Minoca OS has been around for a while, but the news is that they're GPLv3. I think that's a great thing! The MIT license is good for software that wants to permeate through everything , but for building a community, the GPL is a good idea. It seems that for any operating system to b…

Seems to me like POSIX compatibility is actually a cheap pass that gives you access to a huge software environment. Right on the homepage they mention already having packages for Python, Ruby, Git, Lua, and Node... would that, and thousands of other packages, be feasible without a workable POSIX layer?

I agree with you in general but IIRC Lua only depends on the C standard library and does not need POSIX to run. There are even versions of it that can run inside the kernel!

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#110

Post by jprzybyl »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #101
jprzybyl wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> would that, and thousands of other packages, be feasible without a workable POSIX layer? I think my problem is the core concept. POSIX stands for Portable Operating System Interface (and X stands for Xtreme?). In an age where we spin up entire operating systems to start a single application, why are we defining portability at the operating system level when network portability works so much better? Keep in mind, th…

> why are we defining portability at the operating system level when network portability works so much better A lightweight POSIX-capable system has real value today. Operating systems need to be in more places than just the data center. IoT devices don't have the resources to run a VM or any other fancy containerized environment. POSIX was designed to be used on systems with comparable resources to what many embedde…

> POSIX was designed to be used on systems with comparable resources to what many embedded processors now have.

But not comparable environments. Most IOT environments are very small parts of very big systems, and POSIX defines a system with a teletype and a line editor.

I seriously doubt the value of the existing codebase. Saying code made for a server (like most existing unix code!) is fine for IOT feels wrong, and not just because IOT devices have kilobytes of memory and servers can have gigabytes/terabytes.

I don't think that a universal OS can work well when we know that universal programming languages, data transfer protocols, and everything else didn't. Imagine if we were still doing everything in PL/I. We recognize now that different programming tasks need different programming environments, but we still don't think that different programs need different program environments. It's just strange to me.

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