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> I don't see any innovation. To me to Windows95 UI (not the OS) is peak productivity usability. All UI innovations that came later were just distractions exce

by sprash 7y ago

> I don't see any innovation. To me to Windows95 UI (not the OS) is peak productivity usability. All UI innovations that came later were just distractions except maybe tiling window managers and the "Exposé" function in Mac Os X which later was completely botched in Snow Leopard. At some point no further innovation is required. I'd rather see innovation on another level: Do away with C and introduce a new programming language which gets rid of the need for a MMU or preemptive Multitasking at compile time.

repolfx 7y ago
You don't need a new programming language for that - any type safe, memory safe language with capabilities can do it. Java or C# are good candidates. Especially with the work on Project Loom in the JVM, you could get cooperative multi-tasking controlled by the compiler rather than using processor interrupts (in theory). See Singularity for an example of what kind of interesting OS architectures are enabled by it. The elephant in the room is Spectre. It's no longer clear you can actually keep any secrets inside an address space on speculating CPUs. So if all your code runs in a single address space, even if it works in theory, it may not work in practice. But this opens up the interesting research problem of Spectre mitigations :) One idea I've wondered about is whether you can use the very new Intel features to rapidly change access permissions on page table entries, such that you could have a totally unified but segmented heap, but entering or leaving lower privileged code modules triggers a fast address space transition.
- sprash 7y ago
  It turns out the perfect OS already exists: Inferno OS [1]. It doesn't need a MMU and runs with less than 1 MB of RAM. I did not dive into Limbo yet but at first glance it looks rather sane. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system)
  - erikpukinskis 7y ago
    I think “remote resources are files” paradigm has been definitively attempted and rejected. At its heart it’s a lie: network resources are not files. They are not yet in RAM. Unifying two abstractions into one is great, IF the data behaves in a perfectly analogous way. Otherwise the “unification” actually makes the domain of interaction more complex. There’s a reason HTTP has succeeded.
nickpsecurity 7y ago
" All UI innovations that came later were just distractions" Don't forget search. Especially if it can correctly guess what the user is probably trying to get to. Search in Vista let me ditch SlickRun for quickly getting to stuff. "Do away with C and introduce a new programming language which gets rid of the need for a MMU or preemptive Multitasking at compile time." You'll still need it for hardware or compiler failures. Cosmic rays being a big source of them. On compilers, they'll sometimes optimize away security checks. Then there's side channels which require low-level view of hardware and software interactions. Probably better to keep the MMU's or some hardware protections for defense in depth.

by sprash 7y ago

repolfx 7y ago

You don't need a new programming language for that - any type safe, memory safe language with capabilities can do it. Java or C# are good candidates. Especially with the work on Project Loom in the JVM, you could get cooperative multi-tasking controlled by the compiler rather than using processor interrupts (in theory). See Singularity for an example of what kind of interesting OS architectures are enabled by it. The elephant in the room is Spectre. It's no longer clear you can actually keep any secrets inside an address space on speculating CPUs. So if all your code runs in a single address space, even if it works in theory, it may not work in practice. But this opens up the interesting research problem of Spectre mitigations :) One idea I've wondered about is whether you can use the very new Intel features to rapidly change access permissions on page table entries, such that you could have a totally unified but segmented heap, but entering or leaving lower privileged code modules triggers a fast address space transition.

sprash 7y ago
It turns out the perfect OS already exists: Inferno OS [1]. It doesn't need a MMU and runs with less than 1 MB of RAM. I did not dive into Limbo yet but at first glance it looks rather sane. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system)
- erikpukinskis 7y ago
  I think “remote resources are files” paradigm has been definitively attempted and rejected. At its heart it’s a lie: network resources are not files. They are not yet in RAM. Unifying two abstractions into one is great, IF the data behaves in a perfectly analogous way. Otherwise the “unification” actually makes the domain of interaction more complex. There’s a reason HTTP has succeeded.

nickpsecurity 7y ago

" All UI innovations that came later were just distractions" Don't forget search. Especially if it can correctly guess what the user is probably trying to get to. Search in Vista let me ditch SlickRun for quickly getting to stuff. "Do away with C and introduce a new programming language which gets rid of the need for a MMU or preemptive Multitasking at compile time." You'll still need it for hardware or compiler failures. Cosmic rays being a big source of them. On compilers, they'll sometimes optimize away security checks. Then there's side channels which require low-level view of hardware and software interactions. Probably better to keep the MMU's or some hardware protections for defense in depth.