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Several experimental systems have proposed replacing the traditional file system with what they call a "single level store": you have data structures in memory,

Several experimental systems have proposed replacing the traditional file system with what they call a "single level store": you have data structures in memory, then the OS saves them and restores them as needed from disk storage - but there are no traditional files on the disk, and the users don't interact with the disk storage at all - they just interact with the data while it is in memory. In this scheme, the disk storage is something like the pagefile in a conventional OS, but that's all there is - there are no conventional files. An interesting single-level store was discussed by Robert Strandh in his 2004 proposal for a Lisp operating system, Gracle. I can't find the original paper on the web anymore but some pertinent excerpts are in https://github.com/jon-jacky/Piety/blob/master/doc/gracle_excerpts.txt https://github.com/jon-jacky/Piety/blob/master/doc/gracle_ex.... Strandh referenced another experimental OS with a single-level store called EROS. I see he has a more recent LispOS at https://github.com/robert-strandh/LispOS https://github.com/robert-strandh/LispOS.

DigitalJack 12y ago
the problem I have with flat systems that uses tagging or meta data is that one day when adding pictures I might tag them as "pictures," another day I add some pictures and forget that i called them pictures before and this time call them "photos." A week later I might tag them as "images." Makes searching and organizing a pain in the ass.
- jonjacky 12y ago
  But also, "where in the (tree-structured) file system did I put those notes I made last year?". Strandh observes that a collection of tags is not so different from the names along a file path.
- otakucode 12y ago
  I see no reason why an intelligent system couldn't learn common synonyms. It would be a pain to do on an exclusively local system, but on a networked system it could trade tags with others and learn these synonyms. You might call yours 'photos' while I call mine 'images'. When I transfer a file from you to me, it would be able to translate the tags into my own personal folksonomy. Which would be more convenient than the current situation where I have to rename and integrate into my filesystem every file I download from you.
otakucode 12y ago
I think this will be the way storage goes in the future. With the introduction of memristor-based storage which is both non-volatile and as fast as DRAM and cheaper to produce than mechanical drives, the need to distinguish between 'in memory' and 'on disk' becomes a great deal less important. The distinction which becomes important then is 'what is the user likely to need next'.

DigitalJack 12y ago

the problem I have with flat systems that uses tagging or meta data is that one day when adding pictures I might tag them as "pictures," another day I add some pictures and forget that i called them pictures before and this time call them "photos." A week later I might tag them as "images." Makes searching and organizing a pain in the ass.

jonjacky 12y ago
But also, "where in the (tree-structured) file system did I put those notes I made last year?". Strandh observes that a collection of tags is not so different from the names along a file path.
otakucode 12y ago
I see no reason why an intelligent system couldn't learn common synonyms. It would be a pain to do on an exclusively local system, but on a networked system it could trade tags with others and learn these synonyms. You might call yours 'photos' while I call mine 'images'. When I transfer a file from you to me, it would be able to translate the tags into my own personal folksonomy. Which would be more convenient than the current situation where I have to rename and integrate into my filesystem every file I download from you.

otakucode 12y ago

I think this will be the way storage goes in the future. With the introduction of memristor-based storage which is both non-volatile and as fast as DRAM and cheaper to produce than mechanical drives, the need to distinguish between 'in memory' and 'on disk' becomes a great deal less important. The distinction which becomes important then is 'what is the user likely to need next'.