4 ms·

There are only 4 successful general purpose production OSes (GNU/Linux, Android/Linux, Windows, OS X/iOS) and only one of those made by the open source communit

by lifis 7mo ago

There are only 4 successful general purpose production OSes (GNU/Linux, Android/Linux, Windows, OS X/iOS) and only one of those made by the open source community (GNU/Linux). And a new OS needs to be significantly better than those to overcome the switching costs.

usrbinbash 7mo ago
None of this counters the argument I made above :-)
- lifis 7mo ago
  Just because they have been made before LLMs doesn't mean it can be done again, since there was just one success (GNU/Linux) and that success makes it much harder for new OSes since they need to better then it
  - eqvinox 7mo ago
    Well, by this logic there have been 0 successful OSes made with LLMs so far...
  - usrbinbash 7mo ago
    > Just because they have been made before LLMs doesn't mean it can be done again Erm...no? That's exactly what that means. Earth-Ovens haven't been in widespread use for hundreds of years. People can still use them to bake bread however: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAJqGVxuJPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAJqGVxuJPo
swiftcoder 7mo ago
> There are only 4 successful general purpose production OSes Feel like you are using a very narrow definition of "success" here. Is BSD not successful? It is deployed on 10s of millions of routers/firewalls/etc in addition to being the ancestor of both modern MacOS and PlaystationOS...
- eschaton 7mo ago
  What about IBM i and z/OS, and Stratus VOS, and Burroughs MCP, and Tandem GUARDIAN, and VxWorks and OS-9 and… These all not only still exist but run huge transaction volume (for the mainframe and minicomputer systems) and run a huge amount of embedded systems (for the embedded OSes).
bigstrat2003 7mo ago
> And a new OS needs to be significantly better than those to overcome the switching costs. Who cares if nobody switches to it as their daily driver? The goal you proposed was "viable", not "widely used". The former is perfectly possible without LLMs (as history has proved), and the latter is unrelated to how you choose to make the OS.

by lifis 7mo ago

usrbinbash 7mo ago

None of this counters the argument I made above :-)

lifis 7mo ago
Just because they have been made before LLMs doesn't mean it can be done again, since there was just one success (GNU/Linux) and that success makes it much harder for new OSes since they need to better then it
- eqvinox 7mo ago
  Well, by this logic there have been 0 successful OSes made with LLMs so far...
- usrbinbash 7mo ago
  > Just because they have been made before LLMs doesn't mean it can be done again Erm...no? That's exactly what that means. Earth-Ovens haven't been in widespread use for hundreds of years. People can still use them to bake bread however: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAJqGVxuJPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAJqGVxuJPo

swiftcoder 7mo ago

> There are only 4 successful general purpose production OSes Feel like you are using a very narrow definition of "success" here. Is BSD not successful? It is deployed on 10s of millions of routers/firewalls/etc in addition to being the ancestor of both modern MacOS and PlaystationOS...

eschaton 7mo ago
What about IBM i and z/OS, and Stratus VOS, and Burroughs MCP, and Tandem GUARDIAN, and VxWorks and OS-9 and… These all not only still exist but run huge transaction volume (for the mainframe and minicomputer systems) and run a huge amount of embedded systems (for the embedded OSes).

bigstrat2003 7mo ago

> And a new OS needs to be significantly better than those to overcome the switching costs. Who cares if nobody switches to it as their daily driver? The goal you proposed was "viable", not "widely used". The former is perfectly possible without LLMs (as history has proved), and the latter is unrelated to how you choose to make the OS.