Re: What would a modern LispOS look like?

bradb wrote:
This is really just a thought experiment, what would a modern,
semi-mainstream Lisp based OS look like today? Let's assume that the
hardware is mainstream x86 and our hypothetical LispOS occupies a
position similar to that of Linux.
- What would the software ecosystem look like? Today applications
have little reuse of parts and are written in C.
- Would software be easy to distribute in binary form?
- How would seperation of privileges work? Multiple users/super user?
- What will the filesystem look like?
- Would the system be Lisp all the way down?
- How would support for other languages be?

I was born the same year as the Lisp Machines, so I haven't seen this
kind of environment before and I'm interested in it.

My thoughts:
The software ecosystem would be much the same as OSS is today, you can
get source to lots of apps. I think the apps would generally be
smaller in code and binary size because of the libraries that are
already available from the OS. I would hope reuse would be higher
among OSS, because of the nature of all Lisp code running in the same
image.

Support for other languages would probably be pretty good, after all
you just need to compile to Lisp s-expressions and the LispOS can do
the rest - though I bet there would be native compiling languages too.

I'm interested in what people think about this, so please reply.

Okay, now this may be pretty silly, but I'll just come out with it anyway.

I think a lisp OS could actually be really fun for people who like hacking on operating systems. After all, if the entire operating system is running in a lisp image then shouldn't you be able to let root access modify the image during runtime? You can do this in general with lisp programs so I can't see why an operating system should be different.
Now do you really *want* to be able to hack on the operating system and change it on the fly? I'm not sure, but with some safeguards built in I think it could be a fun experiment.
.

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