Loose ideas for operating systems

This post has been copy-edited by doppler. Thanks!

Most research nerds either start writing Unix hagiographies or start stapling a 99-point thesis at the doors of Murray Hill. This is the latter kind of post; I’ll try to cover ideas for systems that could be meaningfully different from current systems. I’ve done a lot of research on existing concepts and existing systems, particularly those that could have been the future. Existing systems can be extrapolated into something new.

A lot of the ideas have been percolating in my head for a while now and are rough ideas for what could be. Perhaps I’ll iterate on them further, or realize there’s a reason no one was doing these before. The main idea is a place to start off, and it iterates from there. Treat it like a buffet of ideas; caveat emptor for people who don’t like musing.

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The Machine Kingdom

Everything is fuzzy. The world refuses to focus properly, what little we glean from what we see at first is nothing like the room we fell asleep in. It is white, and fairly bright. It wasn’t even a little bit off white like the room we had slept in.

We force ourselves to blink. Slowly it resolves. We are lying down in a large white room lit by recessed bulbs every ten feet or so(about 3 meters). We get up shakily and look around. There is a single door, well, at least a rectangle, our glasses don’t seem to be anywhere nearby.

We go closer to it and find a plaque, which we squint to read.

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