Modern operating systems like windows and linux were created decades ago, and throughout their history, they accumulated a lot of legacy and issues related to them. The main problem is backwards compatibilty. It is impossible to make major changes to the system components which could actually improve the system, because doing so would break countless of software which rely on that specific behaviour. Also, while the design architecture of those systems was very clever decades ago, it might be unefficient by modern technologies and system design philosifies. Of course changing the system architecture at this point is obviously not possible.
So what if a new fully-featured operating system was created today from scratch, with modern software and hardware technologies in mind. How could it compare to the existing systems in terms of design architecture efficiency, performance, security, user and developer experience, etc? What would be the main differentiating features of this hypotetical system? What would be the main drawbacks of it compared to old systems, not counting lack of backwards compatibility with old hardware and software, and lack of widespread adoption amongst users and developers?
We saw the effect back in the late aughts with the release of the IPhone – a new “machine” with an entirely new operating system and no legacy to support: It was pretty interesting for a while, but eventually, it becomes just another OS.
The iPhone uses iOS, which is BSD-based. BSD is actually older than either Windows or Linux. Only the UI is new.
Linux, MacOS and Windows have been completely rewritten multiple times across their existence.
So it’s not like the original decisions are all still in play.
Windows and Mac OS were rewritten under some particular weird duresses of closed source profit driven engineering; so it has been a mix of improvements and seemingly illogical setbacks.
Linux developers still need to eat, so some of the same (corporate) influences are there.
But the average engineer who sets out to create a brand new completely modern operating system - usually decides to reuse any components of Linux that they don’t have any concerns with…
Which usually gives us yet another cool new Linux variant.
But sometimes we get…
something very different
A cool new FreeBSD variant!
or a new prophet / religion
Other than the system call interface being more modern, I don’t think much would change. Simply because everything else can be and is regularly updated and replaced or modernised where needed. Only the system call interface needs to be stable for applications to work.
I’m super hyped for redoxos
On this page:
The main problem with old computers is the amount of RAM available (they were sold in a era where RAM chips were expensive)
:')
Oh how I miss the old expensive rather than the new cheap
Redox looks like an actually real answer to what my question is. It seems interesting, i will keep an eye on it
Would having a very tiny kernel and everything running in user space impact performance, with very little in ring 0 leading to constant permission checks
There are operating systems that started to be developed not very long ago, e.g. Redox and SerenityOS. Those may have the answer to your question.
I feel like This Blog Post is extremely relevant
