[Cuis-dev] Off topic: Why am I interested in microkernels?

[ken.dickey at whidbey.com]

On 2023-09-07 07:41, kirtai--- via Cuis-dev wrote:
> On 07/09/2023 00:31, Joseph Turco via Cuis-dev wrote:
>> I still wish Smalltalk was a full operating system. It would make the 
>> user more immersed in using the environment. Something like dual 
>> booting so you don’t wipe your main operating system. I remember there 
>> being something that allowed this to work on raspberry pi’s
> 
> I too would love something like this.

Our Cuis community is quite small at present.  We can be fast on our 
feet, but huge planned workloads are not an area we have the resource to 
take on.

Today's SoCs are quite complex.  I am deeply into the Riscv64 5 stage 
booting process and OS initialization and it is much too complex.  Many 
micro-tools, each with their own command language / option settings.  
Individually flexible, but layered into exponential incomprehensibility.

This is why I keep coming back to the idea of a "shim" OS.  Somewhere 
for Cuis to live, with virtual memory, networking, USB drivers, and a 
framebuffer.  Leverage communities who are doing small OS development.  
Hint, if you are part of a community, you don't have to do everything 
yourself. :)

Cuis on a framebuffer (opensmalltalk/vm) with mouse+keyboard (libevdev) 
works under linux on arm64 and riscv64, BTW.

One challenge is to do the work Juan did with Unicode -- come up with 
good, clear, usable abstractions that allow the hardware to present 
itself in useful ways using a common language (Smalltalk).

Lately I am working with
   Alpine Linux [musl, busybox, monolithic kernel] -- looks quite good
   NuttX RTOS [POSIX, monolithic kernel] -- IoT, probably too small, but 
possible
   Phoenix-RTOS [microkernel] -- IoT, looks like a good platform

I have a long history which includes small real-time systems, IDE, 
dynamic language implementation (Scheme, Dylan) and various other sins, 
so I feel I have a _chance_ to do something in this space.  I recommend, 
however, that most of us spend time refining Cuis, which is our main 
value-added area.  ..And quit a lot of interesting fun!  :)

HTH,
-KenD

Quick refs
   https://wiki.osdev.org/RISC-V_Bare_Bones
   https://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2018/xv6/book-rev11.pdf -- mini-unix 
(toy, but good for learning)