Re: [dwm] Tell that your students...

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