[squeak-dev] Fwd: Shim OS [response to: partially Squeak based OS]

ken.dickey at whidbey.com ken.dickey at whidbey.com
Sun Feb 21 02:51:16 UTC 2021


I responded directly to Liam, but noted a lof of interest on this list..
FYI,
-KenD
-------- Original Message --------
..
Liam,

I noted your post on the Squeak mailing list and enjoyed the FOSDEM 
slides.

I happen to have been at Apple during the 90's and have experience 
writing in SK8Script, NewtonScript, Dylan, MacLisp,  ScriptX, and 
Smalltalk (among others).  Glad to see someone notice these things.

A couple of thoughts..

Device drivers are, for me, complex and painful.

Not considering device drivers as my value added area, my thought was to 
use a "shim" OS, so I got the vm-display-fbdev (frame-buffer display) up 
for use with Alpine Linux (MUSL + Busybox).  I am primarily a Cuis 
Smalltalk user (I like small; Note class counts in 
https://github.com/Cuis-Smalltalk/Learning-Cuis) but Squeak works here 
as well.

Ultibo.org is an interesting Free Pascal based unikernel for Raspberry 
Pi's.  Makes use of multicores.

Detecting and recovering from driver SW and HW failures is critical to 
robustness.

Minix3.org is a microkernel whose Reincarnation Server can reload failed 
drivers.

Erlang's HydrOS is meant to deal with HW failures 
(http://www.erlang-factory.com/static/upload/media/1498583896660864samwilliamshowtobuildanoswitherlang_awhistlestoptourofhydros.pdf 
)

Good on ya,
-KenD


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