4 ms·
As much as I have enjoyed 25 years of doing everything on an OS whose conceptual model is a 70s university department minicomputer, this era is coming to a clos
by nicklaf 11y ago
As much as I have enjoyed 25 years of doing everything on an OS whose conceptual model is a 70s university department minicomputer, this era is coming to a close. We already know it's a poor match for existing hardware and use cases because we now mostly run it in virtual servers. But "virtual server" is the new "horseless carriage". It's a phrase that tells us we are living in a future we don't yet fully understand.
https://mirage.io/ https://mirage.io/
You'll need to learn OCaml (though in my mind, that's actually a major plus).
Caveat emptor: AFAIK, MirageOS is still undergoing heavy development. That said, I believe it is essentially functional at this point (pun not intended).
- nulltype 11y agoOSv seems like the much more practical alternative. That being said I suspect we will just be using more and more stripped down linuxes and containers for quite some time.
- nicklaf 11y agoInteresting; I had not heard of OSv, thanks. I am still hoping that something as radical as MirageOS will eventually take off, since we really seem to need it--at the very least, from a security perspective, if not a complexity one. Just by dumping C and Unix, and using a memory-safe language (such as OCaml) instead, we eliminate an entire class of exploits. I will readily admit, though, that trying to force the entire world to use OCaml will surely be the fastest way to fail at this goal. Perhaps aggressively sandboxing is an adequate alternative, which would allow people to write code in environments sitting on stacks containing code from unsafe languages, without single exploits leading to entire system compromise.
- pjmlp 11y agoYup, yet another band aid to cover for a wrong turn in the late 70's.
- techdragon 11y agoI honestly think the "gnu/linux operating system" model is in its final phase of life. Kernel ABI stability has brought forth options like running docker containers on FreeBSD and Solaris/Illumos/SmartOS Standardised workflows around "containers" are breaking down the need to care what your container is on the inside. Imagine running statically compiled Go binaries that have been compiled against s CloudABI tool chain deployed to CloudABI native hosting with maximum flexibility. I've got a notebook full of details about "Linux compatible" system designs. Throwing away the Linux kernel for fun and profit! It's closer than you think.