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There was a quote on slashdot long ago that has stuck with me: > When I was walking into NEC a couple months ago with my good friend at Red Hat, I asked him wh

There was a quote on slashdot long ago that has stuck with me: > When I was walking into NEC a couple months ago with my good friend at Red Hat, I asked him why he worked at a Linux company. He told me, "Because it will be the last OS". It took me a while for that to really sink in -- but I think it has a strong chance at becoming true. Any major advances in security, compartmentability, portability, etc. will wind up in Linux. Even if they are developed in some subbranch or separate OS (QNX, Embedded, BSD), the features and code concepts could (and most likely will) find their way into Linux. I think it's mostly true, and for me at least, Debian is the last distribution, because it's so well put together, IME. Same goes for Emacs, 'the 100 year editor'[0] and I've recently been getting into Common Lisp, 'the 100 year language'[1]. The Linux kernel has changed enough that you can't really say it's the same thing. Heck, even userland has changed substantially - who here remembers having to run MAKEDEV for userspace access to devices? But you can probably still find static binaries compiled in the late 1990's that will run on modern Linux. ABI wise, the Linux kernel is functionally backwards compatible, and that's nothing to idly dismiss. I think operating systems will keep morphing until someone makes a radical leap of progress that they can't adapt to. That's not to say that there are no advances still to be made. But as many observed in the discussion on DevOps[2], much of the activity in the sphere of information technology looks like busy work and not progress. [0] - https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/tour-de-babel [1] - http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25160461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25160461

superkuh 6y ago
>But you can probably still find static binaries compiled in the late 1990's that will run on modern Linux. On the otherhand it's random chance if a glibc-dep binary from a modern program compiled today will run on a linux install thats only 5 years old. And given the rapid addition of new compiler features it's getting to the point where GCC on a 5 year old install can't even compile a quarter of the programs written new today. Containers outside of their useful server-side context, containers for desktop applications, are the fever of this future shock.
thotsBgone 6y ago
I agree about Linux, but I disagree about Debian. It's too easy to create a new distro which is mostly compatible with everything. But to create a new OS, you are expecting everyone to rewrite all their software for the now OS. As for common lisp, it's not even popular now, so I wouldn't expect it to suddenly become popular in 100 years.
BuildTheRobots 6y ago
> But you can probably still find static binaries compiled in the late 1990's that will run on modern Linux. ABI wise, the Linux kernel is functionally backwards compatible, and that's nothing to idly dismiss. This would be one of my big objections to systemd - I seem to have gone from a very decoupled kernel userland (eg I can boot almost any media and then chroot into my system) to one where the kernel version and systemd are pretty tied together making things more difficult.
oezi 6y ago
I think you are underestimating what AI will do to computer science once AI can reason about source code in a software system better. GPT-3 writing code from prose amplified by 1000x doesn't seem so far off. This will likely trigger sort of an Cambrian explosion of software systems.

superkuh 6y ago

>But you can probably still find static binaries compiled in the late 1990's that will run on modern Linux. On the otherhand it's random chance if a glibc-dep binary from a modern program compiled today will run on a linux install thats only 5 years old. And given the rapid addition of new compiler features it's getting to the point where GCC on a 5 year old install can't even compile a quarter of the programs written new today. Containers outside of their useful server-side context, containers for desktop applications, are the fever of this future shock.

thotsBgone 6y ago

I agree about Linux, but I disagree about Debian. It's too easy to create a new distro which is mostly compatible with everything. But to create a new OS, you are expecting everyone to rewrite all their software for the now OS. As for common lisp, it's not even popular now, so I wouldn't expect it to suddenly become popular in 100 years.

BuildTheRobots 6y ago

> But you can probably still find static binaries compiled in the late 1990's that will run on modern Linux. ABI wise, the Linux kernel is functionally backwards compatible, and that's nothing to idly dismiss. This would be one of my big objections to systemd - I seem to have gone from a very decoupled kernel userland (eg I can boot almost any media and then chroot into my system) to one where the kernel version and systemd are pretty tied together making things more difficult.

oezi 6y ago

I think you are underestimating what AI will do to computer science once AI can reason about source code in a software system better. GPT-3 writing code from prose amplified by 1000x doesn't seem so far off. This will likely trigger sort of an Cambrian explosion of software systems.