🚀 go-pugleaf

My dream OS is pretty the MacOS with a few modifications.

1. Robust microkernel architecture, so that even bad device drivers
can't damage anything but themselves. The microkernel should also
support SMP as well.
2. Each program runs in its own address space. One bad program can't
lock up the CPU or hit any memory that it wasn't already given.
3. Multiuser security. Each process and file has ownership with
lists of what can affect each process and how.
4. Multiple instances of an application running at once. Now and then
I'd like to be able to launch an application more than once.
5. Tight integration with such things as Opendoc, DSOM and related
technologies.

Of course, to go with this dream OS I need dream applications as well.
For the most part, they'd be heavy on Opendoc support, OSA, and other
API's buried in the MacOS. That's the big problem right now, there's
so much neat stuff out there and the developers keep falling behind in
supporting all of Apple's technology.

Gershwin partly addresses some of these items. I know that its going
for items 2 and 5, but we'll see if its microkernel lives up to item
1's demands for robustness. I haven't heard of any plans to handle
item 3, though Copland is moving towards the concept of multiple
users, and the advanced disk volume support hints at being able to
support new file systems with file ownership. No idea if item 4 will
ever take place, but if everything goes reentrant, I can't see why
it would be so hard to add.

-- 
    Martin Terman, Therapy and Behavioral Counseling for Troubled Computers. 
 Disclaimer: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but flames are just ignored
email: mfterman@access.digex.com  home page: http://access.digex.net/~mfterman/
"Sig quotes are like bumper stickers, only without the same sense of relevance"