[SqNOS] New release: SqueakNOS-08-Aug-2006.iso

[luciano]

Hi Barget,

For me, the point of SqueakNOS is to proove that we can get rid of the
operating system. We were inspired by the definition of operating
system given by Dan Ingalls in the article "Design Principles Behind
Smalltalk" that appeared in the BYTE in August of 1981
(http://www.ipa.net/~dwighth/smalltalk/byte_aug81/design_principles_behind_smalltalk.html):

    "Operating System: An operating system is a collection of things
that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one."

In SqueakNOS we've brought the hardware to the semantic realm of the
Smalltalk image. Hardware parts are now Smalltalk objects that we can
talk to with messages, and everything is surprisingly simple and
elegant. Even hardware interrupts are handled in Smalltalk code. We
didn't really need an operating system after all, and Dan Ingalls was
(of course) right.

Linux has drivers for lots of hardware that SqueakNOS will probably
never support. This may be just an exercise in futility. I don't know
if this will end up being useful in a comercial project. But who
cares? We're having fun :)

Salut!
Luciano


On 8/9/06, barger <barger at barnet.sk> wrote:
> I want to clear a little bit my opinion and ask a question:
>
> Do you plan to go still the old "GCC" and "C" way ?
>
> Because in this case i dont see any real motivation of this kind of distr. and
> future improvement over standard linux Squeak distribution ...
>
> Jan Barger