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a series of smol VMs/userspace programs that are each single purpose, independent of one another, and serve as opt-in and drop-in replacements for the features of any other shell operating system. a parasitic set of programs forming what vaguely represents an OS that leverages the host to communicate with arbitrary metal and simplify the process of customization and maintenance. 7 comments
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all of the aforementioned are far from rigorous explorations of solutions. treat the above with a grain of salt.
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the idea I'm getting at has less to do with any specific implementation and more about the lens through which implementation of software with a target host OS is perceived. imagining your implementation not as a single piece of software but as a set of constraints and implementation details... as an agnostic set of instructions that can be easily replicated under arbitrary conditions. the blueprints to a shovel and not a shovel the rules to a game that the world can play, not a game
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a document which provides implementation details or a self-documenting implementation is more valuable than an implementation 
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@neauoire I think you've displayed the most convincing potential solution to the problem in your recent experiments. Your work so far hasn't addressed another problem of interest--hardware that is reasonable enough to be understood and maintained--but... it does sort of lay the groundwork for that line of thinking as well. You've certainly had me in the think tank and now I think it's about time to get to designing.
Devine Lu Linvega
@deianeira I don't know anything about hardware but I'd love to learn. I can't wait to see where your experiments lead. |
Gregory's Server
rather than a one-size-fits-all VM capable of anything, a number of VMs with various hardware limitations and capabilities that target a specific problem space.
(hypothetically, needs further consideration:) an 8-bit VM for processing text, a 32-bit VM for processing images, and a 64-bit VM for scientific audio analysis. The computer the user assembles from these is only as complicated as their problem space.