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Sometimes I wonder, what if we just fundamentally took a new approach the OS. Today at the root of your operating system is the file system. It would be inter
by swalsh 7y ago
Sometimes I wonder, what if we just fundamentally took a new approach the OS.
Today at the root of your operating system is the file system. It would be interesting if the file system was changed to essentially the concept of a simple object store. In much the same way we have "standard file formats" today, we could move to something like a "standard class". Objects would be a first class citizen in the OS. I think this becomes more interesting too if you start to ignore where the object lives. It doesn't matter if an object you care about is local, or on a server in your enterprises network, or if it's a thousand miles away.
The second big change, is I would do away with "applications". opting instead for a smaller unit of executable. Probably integrated with the object system. The idea here is you don't buy an entire system from a single vendor. You buy features from multiple vendors... and the design of the OS makes it really easy to integrate together. I guess this is kind of the unix philosophy... but maybe taken to the next level.
Thirdly, I think it would make sense if the system was natively "reactive", I think that would help with making aspect-oriented programming more normalized.
- journalctl 7y agoFilesystems that abstract away things like directories aren’t new, they just haven’t been commercially successful (I believe Vista was going to include WinFS, which was a database-like filesystem, but it was scrapped). It’s not that systems research has suddenly stopped, it’s that it’s really really hard to not only introduce radical ideas to the public, it’s also hard to make sure you don’t break existing billion-dollar systems at the same time. And as anyone who’s had the misfortune of using a network share over a flaky connection can tell you, abstracting files away over networks is tricky business, and when your connection fails (which it will), that abstraction breaks.
- joncp 7y ago> do away with "applications". opting instead for a smaller unit of executable This sounds a lot like Android's "activities" concept which doesn't get enough love, in my opinion.
- pjc50 7y agoEffectively "Enterprise" systems have this already, but the "OS" is called Oracle. Or SAP.
- neuromantik8086 7y agoAs others have pointed out, what you're describing isn't a fundamentally new idea or even that revolutionary. You're basically describing a database filesystem. Onne Gortner attempted an implementation of this concept in 2004 as part of his/her master's thesis (see http://dbfs.sourceforge.net/ http://dbfs.sourceforge.net/). Systems like Spotlight are effectively a partial implementation of this concept- OS X essentially has a hybrid setup where there's both a database and conventional filesystem running in parallel. Going back further, locate (first implemented in 1982) could almost be viewed as a proto-Spotlight. Gmail's labels/tags are another example of a mainstream implementation of this.
- convolvatron 7y agothe larger point is more interesting here. enterprise software sucks because it generally has to fit within the well-accepted boxes in order to meaningfully interface with all the other stuff. that implementation might be a little better than the last one... but what if the overall model/structure is really what sucks?
- rightbyte 7y agoBig blue made OS/2 for you.
- Aloha 7y agoThis sounds vaguely like OS/400/system i