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Note: unix also began as a skunkworks within a monopoly...

by 13ren 18y ago

bprater 18y ago
Nice to see something positive mentioned about the project. As hackers, it's our job to cheer on projects like this and not focus on the parent company. Good luck to the team playing with the concept.
- swombat 18y ago
  Not only that, I think it's the only way Microsoft can get back in the OS game long-term. The only thing that puzzles me is that they're building it all from scratch instead of at least basing it on an existing O/S OS like Mac OS X did.
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    Basing it on another OS would negate one of the key aspects of their strategy - making it difficult to migrate software from their OS. Microsoft only wins if its body of software is Windows-specific and if porting or making it less-specific is a pain.
    - swombat 18y ago
      Time to change strategy then? You can lock in users via incompatibility and an inferior product... but Apple tried that back in the 90's with not much luck.
      - shiranaihito 18y ago
        Unfortunately for us, Microsoft had way better luck with that.
  - mleonhard 18y ago
    I believe Singularity enforces application security by validating the safety of the application code. This is completely different from the security mechanisms of Windows and Unix, which are based on protecting memory and separating the kernel and applications with a carefully checked interface. I doubt that much existing OS code would be useful for the new OS. Singularity is really exciting. There are some big potential efficiency gains with this kind of OS. The biggest one is in reducing the number of context switches performed by the computer. A context switch is when the OS replaces the CPU's registers, saving the current values and reading in new ones. This takes time and can push application data out of the cache. With current OS's, every kernel call results in two expensive context switches. One to enter kernel mode and another to return to the application. In Singularity, an application's call into the OS shouldn't require a context switch.
tornadoteddy 18y ago
Yes, but I believe that was back in the 50s. Much has changed since then.
- william42 18y ago
  I think it was the 70s. And what changed was that the University of Berkeley got its hands on it.
- davidw 18y ago
  Instead of "believing", it's pretty easy to look up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix Started in 1969. Even Multics wasn't started until 1964.

Note: unix also began as a skunkworks within a monopoly...

by 13ren 18y ago

Note: unix also began as a skunkworks within a monopoly...

Nice to see something positive mentioned about the project. As hackers, it's our job to cheer on projects like this and not focus on the parent company. Good luck to the team playing with the concept.

swombat 18y ago
Not only that, I think it's the only way Microsoft can get back in the OS game long-term. The only thing that puzzles me is that they're building it all from scratch instead of at least basing it on an existing O/S OS like Mac OS X did.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  Basing it on another OS would negate one of the key aspects of their strategy - making it difficult to migrate software from their OS. Microsoft only wins if its body of software is Windows-specific and if porting or making it less-specific is a pain.
  - swombat 18y ago
    Time to change strategy then? You can lock in users via incompatibility and an inferior product... but Apple tried that back in the 90's with not much luck.
    - shiranaihito 18y ago
      Unfortunately for us, Microsoft had way better luck with that.
- mleonhard 18y ago
  I believe Singularity enforces application security by validating the safety of the application code. This is completely different from the security mechanisms of Windows and Unix, which are based on protecting memory and separating the kernel and applications with a carefully checked interface. I doubt that much existing OS code would be useful for the new OS. Singularity is really exciting. There are some big potential efficiency gains with this kind of OS. The biggest one is in reducing the number of context switches performed by the computer. A context switch is when the OS replaces the CPU's registers, saving the current values and reading in new ones. This takes time and can push application data out of the cache. With current OS's, every kernel call results in two expensive context switches. One to enter kernel mode and another to return to the application. In Singularity, an application's call into the OS shouldn't require a context switch.

tornadoteddy 18y ago

Yes, but I believe that was back in the 50s. Much has changed since then.

william42 18y ago
I think it was the 70s. And what changed was that the University of Berkeley got its hands on it.
davidw 18y ago
Instead of "believing", it's pretty easy to look up: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix Started in 1969. Even Multics wasn't started until 1964.