I had a chance to skim over the paper, and I'm very inspired; I'm looking forward to reading it in depth and considering its lessons while working on my side project. For about a decade, I've been dreaming about building a modern operating system that is highly malleable and encourages component-based software design, and I've collected many thoughts and done a lot of reading. I've been inspired by many projects, including the Smalltalk-80 environment, Lisp machine environments (especially Symbolics Genera), various 1990s Apple projects (Dylan, the Bauhaus operating system designed for the Newton and written in Lisp, OpenDoc), Plan 9, Alan Kay's Viewpoints Research Institute's work on STEPS (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11686325), and Stephen Kell's work on exploring the connections between Unix, Plan 9, and Smalltalk.
Unfortunately I haven't made any progress beyond design notes written in paper notebooks; I've got swamped with work (though now I have more free time since becoming a community college professor last year; I have summers off now!). I've also changed my design plans from basing off of Plan 9 to building a new exokernel in a language like Rust, adapting NetBSD's rump kernel for driver support, and using a single-address space design similar to Opal (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/195792.195795), though this isn't reflected in the MallowOS webpage yet.
Another thought has come to mind: not too long ago there was a discussion here about Etoile (http://etoileos.com/), a project from the late 2000s-early 2010s that attempted to build a GNUstep-based desktop environment. What made Etoile unique is its embrace of the Smalltalk inspirations of Objective-C. Imagine a new project that took Smalltalk inspiration one step further by adapting the ideas of this paper, fully integrating Smalltalk with the Unix framework.
Sounds interesting; I would like to see more OSes built out of passion. Just curious about design choices (I don't mean to come off as aggressive below):
> from basing off of Plan 9 to building a new exokernel in a language like Rust
This seems like a big change. Won't the driver support and infrastructure be even more of a hassle? And why an exokernel in particular?
> using a single-address space design similar to Opal
Why?
I like the emphasis on composability and user control. I think, more and more, people are realizing the necessity to seek out OS designs different than the mainstream offerings'. Can't let Linux be the final stage of OS evolution!
During the COVID-19 pandemic I collected my thoughts on my blog (https://mmcthrow-musings.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-proposal-for...) and on a site that I decided to dub MallowOS (https://mallowos.com/), paying homage to Apple's Pink/Taligent project and Google's Fuchsia project.
Unfortunately I haven't made any progress beyond design notes written in paper notebooks; I've got swamped with work (though now I have more free time since becoming a community college professor last year; I have summers off now!). I've also changed my design plans from basing off of Plan 9 to building a new exokernel in a language like Rust, adapting NetBSD's rump kernel for driver support, and using a single-address space design similar to Opal (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/195792.195795), though this isn't reflected in the MallowOS webpage yet.
Another thought has come to mind: not too long ago there was a discussion here about Etoile (http://etoileos.com/), a project from the late 2000s-early 2010s that attempted to build a GNUstep-based desktop environment. What made Etoile unique is its embrace of the Smalltalk inspirations of Objective-C. Imagine a new project that took Smalltalk inspiration one step further by adapting the ideas of this paper, fully integrating Smalltalk with the Unix framework.