7 ms·

PilOS – A Stand-Alone Operating System

110 points by daveloyall 11y ago

ackalker 11y ago
I'm filled with joy to see that PicoLisp runs on OpenWRT. I would love to see PilOS itself running on a wireless router, if only to be able to brag: "My router runs Lisp!" :-)
- FreeFull 11y ago
  Might want to implement networking for PilOS first, before putting it on your router ;-)
giancarlostoro 11y ago
I thought about having a shell that is lisp based for Linux, as a way of forcing myself to use lisp more often, since I'm on and off with it. Though running things like apt-get and such would be interesting (sudo (apt-get (install racket chromium-browser))) or so
- S4M 11y ago
  You can use eshell in emacs. It allows you run elisp commands.
- icebraining 11y ago
  One of the (many) lisp-like shells is Scsh (http://scsh.net/ http://scsh.net/), which incidentally also has the best acknowledgments page by an open source project: http://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html http://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html Though I believe your example would just be written as (sudo apt-get install racket chromium-browser)
  - npatrick04 11y ago
    Thanks for the link to the acknowledgements.
  - reirob 11y ago
    It would be great to have Scsh as an installable package for the major Linux distributions? For example, on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS it exists but is not installable, says something about "unresolvable dependencies". Don't know about other distributions. Then, there was an effort to port Scsh to the GNU Scheme, but the work was lost or abandoned somehow if I understood it correctly. For people spending a lot of time on with Unix shell(s), a great Lisp/Scheme shell might have been the entering point. But somehow the great work that has been done at the beginning cannot be brought to masses. It's a pitty.
    - henesy 11y ago
      14.10+ checking in here, it's very much installable.
analog31 11y ago
Oddly enough I've been looking for a REPL that I can stick on a microcontroller. MicroPython is a candidate, and in fact I have one of the boards from the original Kickstarter. I looked into PicoLisp but see that it doesn't support floating point numbers. In fact I don't even know if floating point is "supposed" to be part of Lisp at all, and have read some comments to the effect that it might be frowned on by some. But my intended use would really benefit from it. I tried adding floating point support to a small Lisp or Scheme interpreter (can't remember which one), and quickly got lost, as I'm not a great programmer. This definitely looks cool, and I will play around with it. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I grew up with computers that booted into the BASIC prompt, so it brings back the fun of exploring computers for me.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Interesting. Which microcontrollers are you considering? I didn't know about MicroPython but it's kind of blowing my mind; I mean, it feels weird to dynamically allocate anything in a microcontroller.
  - analog31 11y ago
    MicroPython was originally written for an ARM chip. Since then it's been ported to a number of other systems. What I do know is that it requires a fairly "big" micro. I have a particular interest in PIC chips, but would be happy with any version where I could compile and load the program on a circuit that I'm capable of building myself. I have tried downloading and compiling large C programs in the past, and it's one of those things where if it works, great, but if the basic "make" comes back with an error for some reason, then I'm kinda lost. My experience with C programming has tended to be with programs numbering no more than a few hundred lines, that all fit in one file and didn't need any kind of "interesting" build process. Wow, talk about a weird set of customer requirements. ;-) These micro's have a fair amount of RAM, and the C compilers support memory management, e.g., basics such as malloc() and free(). I suppose somebody could even implement garbage collection.
    - minthd 11y ago
akhilcacharya 11y ago
I have yet to understand the Lisp craze, no matter how many blog articles I read about it's beauty. Although I will admit Lisp machines were pretty neat.
- giancarlostoro 11y ago
  You'd have to sit down and learn it and try it out for yourself. At least that's the case for me.
  - akhilcacharya 11y ago
    True, I have Scheme, Racket, and Clojure installed on my machine. I tried to get started, but I couldn't think of any simple projects that would accentuate the "uniqueness" of Lisp dialects. Maybe I'll pick it up again after my love affair with Go dries up.
    - giancarlostoro 11y ago
      Not sure if games interest you, but "Realm of Racket" is a fun read to get into Racket with. I mostly got into the rest of Lisp because I liked Racket.
      - joshuapants 11y ago
        I'll second that, it's a great book. Sort of a cousin to Land of Lisp, simultaneously a bit more academic and a bit more gentle to newcomers.
    - fao_ 11y ago
      Does it have to be unique? A small project that you use now and then that needs an upgrade would probably benefit from being written in lisp (in some manner).
    - agumonkey 11y ago
      maybe take the https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang MOOC at one point you write a small evaluator, then extend it through macros. Shows you how to get the linguistic trait you'd like in a few lines. One thing lisp has been used to demonstrate since its birth. (the course uses ruby and sml for other subjects)
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
nickpsecurity 11y ago
Check out OSkit [1]. It was designed for people experimenting in OS's who might not want to reimplement all the low-level crap like memory management. It's been used in high-level language OS's from LISP to ML. [1] http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/ http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/
- jeffreyrogers 11y ago
  Do you know how this deals with drivers? Those seem to be the main impediment to making any useful new OS.
  - nickpsecurity 11y ago
    I have no idea. I discovered this researching secure OS work such as Flask. It does have plenty of documentation [1]. Maybe that will help you. [1] http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/html/oskit-www.html http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/html/oskit-www.html
  - justincormack 11y ago
    You can use the NetBSD drivers for other operating systems pretty easily - see http://rumpkernel.org/ http://rumpkernel.org/ - you can get filesystems, IP stack, network card drivers, etc. Several new OSs are using them.
    - jeffreyrogers 11y ago
      Thanks, that site was really interesting! I hadn't heard of rump kernels before.
SagelyGuru 11y ago
Good work but the name is rather unfortunate; it is just too much like piles.
- foz 11y ago
  I first read the name as "Pile of %&!#". Definitely consider a rename. It looks like a fascinating project, and the use of Lisp/Prolog is really interesting.

110 points by daveloyall 11y ago

I'm filled with joy to see that PicoLisp runs on OpenWRT. I would love to see PilOS itself running on a wireless router, if only to be able to brag: "My router runs Lisp!" :-)

FreeFull 11y ago
Might want to implement networking for PilOS first, before putting it on your router ;-)

giancarlostoro 11y ago

I thought about having a shell that is lisp based for Linux, as a way of forcing myself to use lisp more often, since I'm on and off with it. Though running things like apt-get and such would be interesting (sudo (apt-get (install racket chromium-browser))) or so

S4M 11y ago
You can use eshell in emacs. It allows you run elisp commands.
icebraining 11y ago
One of the (many) lisp-like shells is Scsh (http://scsh.net/ http://scsh.net/), which incidentally also has the best acknowledgments page by an open source project: http://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html http://scsh.net/docu/html/man.html Though I believe your example would just be written as (sudo apt-get install racket chromium-browser)
- npatrick04 11y ago
  Thanks for the link to the acknowledgements.
- reirob 11y ago
  It would be great to have Scsh as an installable package for the major Linux distributions? For example, on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS it exists but is not installable, says something about "unresolvable dependencies". Don't know about other distributions. Then, there was an effort to port Scsh to the GNU Scheme, but the work was lost or abandoned somehow if I understood it correctly. For people spending a lot of time on with Unix shell(s), a great Lisp/Scheme shell might have been the entering point. But somehow the great work that has been done at the beginning cannot be brought to masses. It's a pitty.
  - henesy 11y ago
    14.10+ checking in here, it's very much installable.

analog31 11y ago

Oddly enough I've been looking for a REPL that I can stick on a microcontroller. MicroPython is a candidate, and in fact I have one of the boards from the original Kickstarter. I looked into PicoLisp but see that it doesn't support floating point numbers. In fact I don't even know if floating point is "supposed" to be part of Lisp at all, and have read some comments to the effect that it might be frowned on by some. But my intended use would really benefit from it. I tried adding floating point support to a small Lisp or Scheme interpreter (can't remember which one), and quickly got lost, as I'm not a great programmer. This definitely looks cool, and I will play around with it. Maybe it's nostalgia, but I grew up with computers that booted into the BASIC prompt, so it brings back the fun of exploring computers for me.

tptacek 11y ago
Interesting. Which microcontrollers are you considering? I didn't know about MicroPython but it's kind of blowing my mind; I mean, it feels weird to dynamically allocate anything in a microcontroller.
- analog31 11y ago
  MicroPython was originally written for an ARM chip. Since then it's been ported to a number of other systems. What I do know is that it requires a fairly "big" micro. I have a particular interest in PIC chips, but would be happy with any version where I could compile and load the program on a circuit that I'm capable of building myself. I have tried downloading and compiling large C programs in the past, and it's one of those things where if it works, great, but if the basic "make" comes back with an error for some reason, then I'm kinda lost. My experience with C programming has tended to be with programs numbering no more than a few hundred lines, that all fit in one file and didn't need any kind of "interesting" build process. Wow, talk about a weird set of customer requirements. ;-) These micro's have a fair amount of RAM, and the C compilers support memory management, e.g., basics such as malloc() and free(). I suppose somebody could even implement garbage collection.
  - minthd 11y ago

akhilcacharya 11y ago

I have yet to understand the Lisp craze, no matter how many blog articles I read about it's beauty. Although I will admit Lisp machines were pretty neat.

giancarlostoro 11y ago
You'd have to sit down and learn it and try it out for yourself. At least that's the case for me.
- akhilcacharya 11y ago
  True, I have Scheme, Racket, and Clojure installed on my machine. I tried to get started, but I couldn't think of any simple projects that would accentuate the "uniqueness" of Lisp dialects. Maybe I'll pick it up again after my love affair with Go dries up.
  - giancarlostoro 11y ago
    Not sure if games interest you, but "Realm of Racket" is a fun read to get into Racket with. I mostly got into the rest of Lisp because I liked Racket.
    - joshuapants 11y ago
      I'll second that, it's a great book. Sort of a cousin to Land of Lisp, simultaneously a bit more academic and a bit more gentle to newcomers.
  - fao_ 11y ago
    Does it have to be unique? A small project that you use now and then that needs an upgrade would probably benefit from being written in lisp (in some manner).
  - agumonkey 11y ago
    maybe take the https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang https://www.coursera.org/course/proglang MOOC at one point you write a small evaluator, then extend it through macros. Shows you how to get the linguistic trait you'd like in a few lines. One thing lisp has been used to demonstrate since its birth. (the course uses ruby and sml for other subjects)

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

nickpsecurity 11y ago

Check out OSkit [1]. It was designed for people experimenting in OS's who might not want to reimplement all the low-level crap like memory management. It's been used in high-level language OS's from LISP to ML. [1] http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/ http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/

jeffreyrogers 11y ago
Do you know how this deals with drivers? Those seem to be the main impediment to making any useful new OS.
- nickpsecurity 11y ago
  I have no idea. I discovered this researching secure OS work such as Flask. It does have plenty of documentation [1]. Maybe that will help you. [1] http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/html/oskit-www.html http://www.cs.utah.edu/flux/oskit/html/oskit-www.html
- justincormack 11y ago
  You can use the NetBSD drivers for other operating systems pretty easily - see http://rumpkernel.org/ http://rumpkernel.org/ - you can get filesystems, IP stack, network card drivers, etc. Several new OSs are using them.
  - jeffreyrogers 11y ago
    Thanks, that site was really interesting! I hadn't heard of rump kernels before.

SagelyGuru 11y ago

Good work but the name is rather unfortunate; it is just too much like piles.

foz 11y ago
I first read the name as "Pile of %&!#". Definitely consider a rename. It looks like a fascinating project, and the use of Lisp/Prolog is really interesting.