Many problems exist in operating systems today. Although they do the job for the most part, their oldness and brittleness are starting to show from the bugs, security problems and stuff that plague new OS releases.
We are building new OSes directly on top of old ideas, APIs and standards. Then we duct tape everything together and pray it doesnt fall apart. Look at linux's network stack for example. Or Windows' UI differences across different windows versions that are still being used.
What about all the concept of a monolithic kernel having as much as it wants. Drivers make up more than 50% of the code of the linux kernel. We want to support as many things as possible so we put everything into the kernel rather than let the apps and hardware optimise and fix themselves.
So maybe a way to fix up all the weird and random glitches I get when I use linux, or the random freezes, crashes and resets on windows, or the lack of software and driver support on Freebsd, is to provide a simpler framework for kernel building. We instead focus less on what to put into the kernel, and more on what should not be in the kernel.
We provide a minimal layer for apps to optimise themselves. For apps to access hardware without all the context switching and driver abstraction nonsense and instead have IOMMU and SR IOV. We focus more on hardware security rather than a bunch of bandaid software solutions esp the bloat preinstalled software that comes with an OS. Or the complex of security layers and stuff within the kernel.
Top comments (0)