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Whenever these discussions come up people tend to blur kernel and userspace. It's happening here, and it's not unforgivable since most operating systems package

Whenever these discussions come up people tend to blur kernel and userspace. It's happening here, and it's not unforgivable since most operating systems package both together. That's actually half the reason Richard Stallman wants you to say GNU/Linux, the technical correctness of the name (the other half is what makes that annoying). What adventures like Debian on FreeBSD (kFreeBSD) and even Android teach us, though, is that you can take a great kernel with its sweeping hardware support and build something better on top of it. The hardware work has been done for you. Apple could have easily built OS X and Darwin on top of Linux-the-kernel instead of Mach (what an interesting world that would be), but they had a limited range of hardware to target and the resources at their disposal to tailor Mach to their known hardware targets. The kernel for the Intel architecture is, I think, at this point mostly figured out. Microkernel had its shot and on Intel we have seen that it's too slow (even though it makes more sense on paper). Linux is pretty darned good, and I think any attempt to be better will, after a few years, end up looking like Linux from several years ago. The Intel architecture has been stable for a long time, and a lot of clever minds have come up with ways to squeeze every drop out of the machine in Linux. When people say "I want a new operating system!" I'm not hearing them desire a complete kernel rewrite; that's doomed to fail for a plethora of reasons including hardware drivers. I'm hearing them desire a new userspace and GUI. Make something like OS X based on Linux and I'd spend $500+ to buy it and fund its development.

air 14y ago
"The kernel for the Intel architecture is, I think, at this point mostly figured out. Microkernel had its shot and on Intel we have seen that it's too slow" Does that judgment include QNX? I'm under the impression that it has quite a good performance for a microkernel.
- socceroos 14y ago
  It has great performance. And on top of that, it is as stable as a rock. Disclaimer: I love microkernels.
- chelmuth 14y ago
  It is not only QNX, but also research of the last two decades shows that microkernels are not doomed to be slow. Examples are L4 and Nova (http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/papers_ps/steinberg_eurosys2010.pdf http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/papers_ps/steinberg_eurosys2010....).
pm90 14y ago
>Make something like OS X based on Linux and I'd spend $500+ to buy it and fund its development. This is such a common wish that I wonder why noone has taken up the challenge. Sure, we have Canonical, but Ubuntu is still not at a place where I would say the experience is better than OSX (disclaimer: I use Debian on my primary machine, not an Apple fanboy by any measure) <rant>Dell had the resources to do just this. They could have put together a team to get a Dell-Specific Linux-based OS and ship it out when they were the top dog. Now they're finding themselves to be increasingly irrelevant</rant>
- jspthrowaway2 14y ago
  You need world-class UI/UX and graphics designers to have a shot, and the FOSS community is criminally short on those. With all the programmers on Hacker News it could probably be written in hours but it would look like shit because code can only go so far.
martinced 14y ago
"Make something like OS X based on Linux and I'd spend $500+ to buy it" OK but please keep the good part of X Window System. How do you display an app launched by one user in another user's session on OS X? You don't... How do you remotely log in to one user account on an OS X system while another user is logged in at the physical machine? You don't... These (and many others) are trivial (and, very, very convenient) things you can do on a stock (free) Linux (or any other X-based Un*x UI). I'm not disagreeing with you but simply pointing out that it's not as if Apple got everything correctly with their OS X UI...
- jspthrowaway2 14y ago
  Since probably more than 99% of Macs are single-user workstations in practice, I'd wager that they got it right, just not for your needs. I like that aspect of X too but I find myself getting by without it. I can also SSH in to my Mac as any user regardless of who's logged on physically, which leaves only GUI programs, which I never need remotely.
- mercutio2 14y ago
  How do you remotely log in to one user account on an OS X system while another user is logged in at the physical machine? You don't... This ceased to be true in the past year or two, FYI.
IvarTJ 14y ago
Having recently studied operating systems in school, I am not so sure the Linux kernel can be used for such a great variety of systems. It is built to support a set of system calls that are tightly coupled with Unix heritage, including its filesystems. You may create a user-level system on top of this, and I do find Inferno interesting for that approach, but you (the parent poster) also dismiss microkernels for their lack of performance.
- jspthrowaway2 14y ago
  Don't forget that Android is built upon Linux. Just because at the core you're speaking largely Unix doesn't mean that you have to show a Unix-like system to the user. Really, you can do whatever you want in userspace.

air 14y ago

"The kernel for the Intel architecture is, I think, at this point mostly figured out. Microkernel had its shot and on Intel we have seen that it's too slow" Does that judgment include QNX? I'm under the impression that it has quite a good performance for a microkernel.

socceroos 14y ago
It has great performance. And on top of that, it is as stable as a rock. Disclaimer: I love microkernels.
chelmuth 14y ago
It is not only QNX, but also research of the last two decades shows that microkernels are not doomed to be slow. Examples are L4 and Nova (http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/papers_ps/steinberg_eurosys2010.pdf http://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/papers_ps/steinberg_eurosys2010....).

pm90 14y ago

>Make something like OS X based on Linux and I'd spend $500+ to buy it and fund its development. This is such a common wish that I wonder why noone has taken up the challenge. Sure, we have Canonical, but Ubuntu is still not at a place where I would say the experience is better than OSX (disclaimer: I use Debian on my primary machine, not an Apple fanboy by any measure) <rant>Dell had the resources to do just this. They could have put together a team to get a Dell-Specific Linux-based OS and ship it out when they were the top dog. Now they're finding themselves to be increasingly irrelevant</rant>

jspthrowaway2 14y ago
You need world-class UI/UX and graphics designers to have a shot, and the FOSS community is criminally short on those. With all the programmers on Hacker News it could probably be written in hours but it would look like shit because code can only go so far.

martinced 14y ago

"Make something like OS X based on Linux and I'd spend $500+ to buy it" OK but please keep the good part of X Window System. How do you display an app launched by one user in another user's session on OS X? You don't... How do you remotely log in to one user account on an OS X system while another user is logged in at the physical machine? You don't... These (and many others) are trivial (and, very, very convenient) things you can do on a stock (free) Linux (or any other X-based Un*x UI). I'm not disagreeing with you but simply pointing out that it's not as if Apple got everything correctly with their OS X UI...

jspthrowaway2 14y ago
Since probably more than 99% of Macs are single-user workstations in practice, I'd wager that they got it right, just not for your needs. I like that aspect of X too but I find myself getting by without it. I can also SSH in to my Mac as any user regardless of who's logged on physically, which leaves only GUI programs, which I never need remotely.
mercutio2 14y ago
How do you remotely log in to one user account on an OS X system while another user is logged in at the physical machine? You don't... This ceased to be true in the past year or two, FYI.

IvarTJ 14y ago

Having recently studied operating systems in school, I am not so sure the Linux kernel can be used for such a great variety of systems. It is built to support a set of system calls that are tightly coupled with Unix heritage, including its filesystems. You may create a user-level system on top of this, and I do find Inferno interesting for that approach, but you (the parent poster) also dismiss microkernels for their lack of performance.

jspthrowaway2 14y ago
Don't forget that Android is built upon Linux. Just because at the core you're speaking largely Unix doesn't mean that you have to show a Unix-like system to the user. Really, you can do whatever you want in userspace.