4 ms·

Emacs standing alone on a Linux Kernel

60 points by mlLK 17y ago

ramchip 17y ago
Who would have known... it really is an OS.
- stcredzero 17y ago
  Lots of Lispers and Smalltalkers would roll their eyes at this. (Some CS research history: Both those languages were OS.)
viraptor 17y ago
Isn't it possible to do that with any program with no external dependencies?
- vidarh 17y ago
  Yes, it is. I've had embedded systems boot straight into busybox like shells for example. Even more fun, the system didn't have a BIOS at all (it was hard wired to just jump into a location in flash, were we placed the Linux second stage boot loader to uncompress the kernel image to RAM, which then executed the shell immediately. Even the shell was really mostly there to aid debugging - in production use it'd immediately spawn the main app for the system. As long as the kernel has whatever drivers you need compiled in instead of as modules, and as long as your app either doesn't directly or indirectly spawn lots of child processes or if it does it takes care of wait()'ing for them, and as long as you don't need any getty's (without spawning them yourself) there's no problems tearing out everything and replacing it with a self contained static app.
- rbanffy 17y ago
  I saw it done with Squeak. IIRC. With a rotated monitor, it would pretty much pass for an Alto 2002 ;-)
capablanca 17y ago
Single threaded OS?
- mahmud 17y ago
  M-x shell or M-!
andybak 17y ago
"Emace: A pretty good operating system, but it could use a better text editor." I can't trace the source of this quip but I'm glad someone has set out to prove the first part of it...
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- philjackson 17y ago
  You can't trace it because everyone on the internet has said it at least once.
spudlyo 17y ago
You could use vim as init as well, it just wouldn't be as much fun, since you couldn't do any programming.
- gnosis 17y ago
  Actually, vim has a programming language built in to it: vimscript. So you could certainly program from it. And that's not to mention the various other programming language interfaces vim has. If you've compiled vim with the right options, you could use Perl, Python, Ruby, or Lua from within vim.
lallysingh 17y ago
Sounds about perfect for netbookin'.
- krakensden 17y ago
  except you'd have a devil of a time dealing with wireless networks
dryicerx 17y ago
There is actually a easier way to do this. Pass this parameter while in your boot loader init=/usr/bin/emacs-nox This will fire up emacs instead of init once the kernel is done booting up. You also need mount, but you can run that within emacs.

60 points by mlLK 17y ago

ramchip 17y ago

Who would have known... it really is an OS.

stcredzero 17y ago
Lots of Lispers and Smalltalkers would roll their eyes at this. (Some CS research history: Both those languages were OS.)

viraptor 17y ago

Isn't it possible to do that with any program with no external dependencies?

vidarh 17y ago
Yes, it is. I've had embedded systems boot straight into busybox like shells for example. Even more fun, the system didn't have a BIOS at all (it was hard wired to just jump into a location in flash, were we placed the Linux second stage boot loader to uncompress the kernel image to RAM, which then executed the shell immediately. Even the shell was really mostly there to aid debugging - in production use it'd immediately spawn the main app for the system. As long as the kernel has whatever drivers you need compiled in instead of as modules, and as long as your app either doesn't directly or indirectly spawn lots of child processes or if it does it takes care of wait()'ing for them, and as long as you don't need any getty's (without spawning them yourself) there's no problems tearing out everything and replacing it with a self contained static app.
rbanffy 17y ago
I saw it done with Squeak. IIRC. With a rotated monitor, it would pretty much pass for an Alto 2002 ;-)

capablanca 17y ago

Single threaded OS?

mahmud 17y ago
M-x shell or M-!

andybak 17y ago

"Emace: A pretty good operating system, but it could use a better text editor." I can't trace the source of this quip but I'm glad someone has set out to prove the first part of it...

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
philjackson 17y ago
You can't trace it because everyone on the internet has said it at least once.

spudlyo 17y ago

You could use vim as init as well, it just wouldn't be as much fun, since you couldn't do any programming.

gnosis 17y ago
Actually, vim has a programming language built in to it: vimscript. So you could certainly program from it. And that's not to mention the various other programming language interfaces vim has. If you've compiled vim with the right options, you could use Perl, Python, Ruby, or Lua from within vim.

lallysingh 17y ago

Sounds about perfect for netbookin'.

krakensden 17y ago
except you'd have a devil of a time dealing with wireless networks

dryicerx 17y ago

There is actually a easier way to do this. Pass this parameter while in your boot loader init=/usr/bin/emacs-nox This will fire up emacs instead of init once the kernel is done booting up. You also need mount, but you can run that within emacs.