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John Carmack's arguments against building a custom XR OS at Meta

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520 points OlympicMarmoto | 2 comments | 29 Aug 25 16:45 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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armchairhacker ◴[29 Aug 25 17:37 UTC] No.45067092[source]▶
What would be the real advantage of a custom OS over a Linux distribution?

The OS does process scheduling, program management, etc. Ok, you don’t want a VR headset to run certain things slowly or crash. But some Linux distributions are battle-tested and stable, and fast, so can’t you write ordinary programs that are fast and reliable (e.g. the camera movement and passthrough use RTLinux and have a failsafe that has been formally verified or extensively tested) and that’s enough?

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1. jamboca ◴[29 Aug 25 17:43 UTC] No.45067184[source]▶
Think you answered your own question. No real differences except more articles, $, and hype
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2. const_cast ◴[29 Aug 25 22:14 UTC] No.45070030[source]▶
And, let's be real here: engineering prestige.

Everyone wants to make an OS because that's super cool and technical and hard. I mean, that's just resume gold.

Using Linux is boring and easy. Yawwwwn. But nobody makes an OS from scratch, only crazy greybeard developers do that!

The problem is, you're not crazy greybeard developers working out of your basement for the advancement of humanity. No. Youre paid employees of a mega corporation. You have no principles, no vision. You're not Linus Trovalds.