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Sounds interesting, but it also reminds me of what Linus once said when asked about fearing competition. From my memory his answer was something like: I really

Sounds interesting, but it also reminds me of what Linus once said when asked about fearing competition. From my memory his answer was something like: I really like writing device drivers. Few people like that and until someone young and hungry comes along who likes that I'm not afraid of competition.

wavemode 3y ago
You don't need very many device drivers to run in a VM. The real question is, how useful is a non-C-compatible, non-Linux-compatible, VM-only OS. Maybe a little bit, for microservices?
- gpm 3y ago
  Is this really non-C-compatible? Seems like it just needs a libc layer written in rust. Most C programs don't make syscalls directly anyways (on some OSes they aren't even able to). The rest of the question is definitely fair though.
- weinzierl 3y ago
  According to The American Heritage Dictionary an operating system is: "Software designed to control the hardware of a specific data-processing system in order to allow users and application programs to make use of it." The question is how much Operating System is a software that delegates all "control the hardware" parts to the layer below. I know there are wider definitions of OS, but my point is this is not going to replace Linux. Without question projects like MotorOS are sill useful. Besides practical applications it's a nice idea. Just recently I wrote in another thread that I would love to have a glimpse into an alternative universe, where Pascal had won over C and everything was Pascal-based. The idea to have everything Rust-based is even more exciting.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- slau 3y ago
  It's relatively trivial to have a `FROM scratch` dockerised microservice in Rust. I'm not convinced having an entire OS brings that much to the table.
  - themoonisachees 3y ago
    From the description, this aims to recreate that but forgo the entirety of the linux+docker stack needed to actually be able to do FROM scratch in the first place
- toast0 3y ago
  For work, I run a rust service on GCP. It could run on this instead of docker on Linux. I'm going to assume without looking at this project that observability and operability would be worse than it already is though, so I'm not in a hurry to move. Anyway, GCP means cost of compute is a rounding error compared to cost of bandwidth, so I have no reason to find the edge of efficiency.
jbverschoor 3y ago
So Linux will essentially just become a HAL / "bios"
- weinzierl 3y ago
  I don't think so. There is no stable interface to the drivers which makes their reuse in other projects a huge effort. With Linux you either get the whole kernel or nothing and the whole thing is more than a HAL or BIOS.
- nine_k 3y ago
  No, Linux remains where it is. AFAICT this could run on top of Xen, VMWare, or the hypervisor which runs Win 10/11.
crabbone 3y ago
I don't think drivers are what warrants Linux its popularity / indispensability. I worked in a few places where people, well, at least moderately, liked to write drivers. Also, consider that it would've been definitely possible to write an OS with a mechanism for module loading compatible with Linux drivers. My take on this question would be the ease of use for application developers. This ease of use consists of plenty of somewhat ready-to-use libraries that cover plenty of use-cases, huge community that both produces documentation and will answer questions should you have any, multiple hardware vendor support, and of course, licensing. It's possible to compete with Linux in very special, very narrow use-cases, but trying to win against Linux on every front would require an insane amount of effort by a very large group of people.
- weinzierl 3y ago
  "Also, consider that it would've been definitely possible to write an OS with a mechanism for module loading compatible with Linux drivers." Sure, you can do that and it will work exactly until the next change in the driver interface, which is not very long. So you end up in maintenance hell and will still constantly be behind the curve, because Linux gets all the updates first. You will be less secure too, because you'll get the security patches later. That being said, someone in a similar thread from a few days ago said one of the BSDs does that. Maybe it's not that bad.

wavemode 3y ago

You don't need very many device drivers to run in a VM. The real question is, how useful is a non-C-compatible, non-Linux-compatible, VM-only OS. Maybe a little bit, for microservices?

gpm 3y ago
Is this really non-C-compatible? Seems like it just needs a libc layer written in rust. Most C programs don't make syscalls directly anyways (on some OSes they aren't even able to). The rest of the question is definitely fair though.
weinzierl 3y ago
According to The American Heritage Dictionary an operating system is: "Software designed to control the hardware of a specific data-processing system in order to allow users and application programs to make use of it." The question is how much Operating System is a software that delegates all "control the hardware" parts to the layer below. I know there are wider definitions of OS, but my point is this is not going to replace Linux. Without question projects like MotorOS are sill useful. Besides practical applications it's a nice idea. Just recently I wrote in another thread that I would love to have a glimpse into an alternative universe, where Pascal had won over C and everything was Pascal-based. The idea to have everything Rust-based is even more exciting.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
slau 3y ago
It's relatively trivial to have a `FROM scratch` dockerised microservice in Rust. I'm not convinced having an entire OS brings that much to the table.
- themoonisachees 3y ago
  From the description, this aims to recreate that but forgo the entirety of the linux+docker stack needed to actually be able to do FROM scratch in the first place
toast0 3y ago
For work, I run a rust service on GCP. It could run on this instead of docker on Linux. I'm going to assume without looking at this project that observability and operability would be worse than it already is though, so I'm not in a hurry to move. Anyway, GCP means cost of compute is a rounding error compared to cost of bandwidth, so I have no reason to find the edge of efficiency.

jbverschoor 3y ago

So Linux will essentially just become a HAL / "bios"

weinzierl 3y ago
I don't think so. There is no stable interface to the drivers which makes their reuse in other projects a huge effort. With Linux you either get the whole kernel or nothing and the whole thing is more than a HAL or BIOS.
nine_k 3y ago
No, Linux remains where it is. AFAICT this could run on top of Xen, VMWare, or the hypervisor which runs Win 10/11.

crabbone 3y ago

I don't think drivers are what warrants Linux its popularity / indispensability. I worked in a few places where people, well, at least moderately, liked to write drivers. Also, consider that it would've been definitely possible to write an OS with a mechanism for module loading compatible with Linux drivers. My take on this question would be the ease of use for application developers. This ease of use consists of plenty of somewhat ready-to-use libraries that cover plenty of use-cases, huge community that both produces documentation and will answer questions should you have any, multiple hardware vendor support, and of course, licensing. It's possible to compete with Linux in very special, very narrow use-cases, but trying to win against Linux on every front would require an insane amount of effort by a very large group of people.

weinzierl 3y ago
"Also, consider that it would've been definitely possible to write an OS with a mechanism for module loading compatible with Linux drivers." Sure, you can do that and it will work exactly until the next change in the driver interface, which is not very long. So you end up in maintenance hell and will still constantly be behind the curve, because Linux gets all the updates first. You will be less secure too, because you'll get the security patches later. That being said, someone in a similar thread from a few days ago said one of the BSDs does that. Maybe it's not that bad.