Tim Rowledge tim@sumeru.stanford.edu wrote:
I am kinda inunndated by trafik on this list, There should be a focused list for hacking the VM into a full modern OS, and for creating the objects and modules for OS services...
Been there, done that, got the layoff letter. Not worth the time; plenty of other people are playing with OS's (although it does seem they are mostly just repeating stuff from thirty years ago, badly) so just make use of any good results. There are better uses of ones time.
There are two senses of OS floating around. On the part about talking to device drivers, I agree with Tim: it's cool, but it won't be better than what's already there. However, there's another sense of OS: the fundamental organization of the software on a computer. That is, the OS as viewed from above by a user, instead of as viewed from below by a device.
On that angle, there is *plenty* of room to improve, and I can hardly imagine a better way to spend one's time. I don't care if XWindows is sitting underneath Squeak to handle the device drivers, but I really care that the fundamamental organization approach on my system is still files instead of objects.
-Lex