Let's begin SchemeOS

[P. T. Withington]

On 3/27/98 17:16, Kragen wrote:

>On Fri, 27 Mar 1998, P. T. Withington wrote:
>> On 3/25/98 20:59, Kragen wrote:
>> >I doubt it.
>> 
>> Actually, there hasn't been anything new invented in operating systems 
>> since Multics.
>
>Nonsense.  Many new things have been invented in OSes since then.  But
>very few of them have made it into popular OSes.

Not complete nonesense, since as you say there is little in commercial 
O/S's that was not in Multics.  I have a hard time thinking of an 
example.  But perhaps I should have inserted a sarcasm mark.

>I suggest that a Lisp-based OS -- either a la the old LispMs, or a la
>the super-fancy-new single-level-store global-garbage-collected ideas
>that are being thrown around -- will be light-years ahead of any other
>commonly available OS.  Except possibly EROS.

I'm not familiar with EROS.  Reference?

I think the biggest thing that could distinguish a LispOS would be 
support for garbage collection in the VM system.  Despite the success of 
some garbage collectors running over stock O/S's there is much more that 
could be done if the GC and VM were more tightly bound (as they were in 
the LispM).