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520 points OlympicMarmoto | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0s | source
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klik99 ◴[] No.45066978[source]
You could write a book on why it's practically impossible to create a new OS these days. Love Carmack for stating it so clearly. I also love that called out TempleOS, I also have a weird respect for it. Plan 9 is the probably the best example of a totally new OS and I hope someday it becomes viable because it's really a joy to use.

But ultimately it just makes sense to adapt existing kernels / OS (say, arch) and adapt it to your needs. It can be hair wrenchingly frustrating, and requires the company to be willing to upstream changes and it still takes years, but the alternative is decades, because what sounds good and well designed on paper just melts when it hits the real world, and linux has already gone through those decades of pain.

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EGreg ◴[] No.45067498[source]
OS isnt the hard part.

The driver ecosystem is the moat. Linux finally overcame it decades later

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1. bri3d ◴[] No.45069281[source]
Android built a new, giant moat for Linux (or "Linux" depending on your opinions about Android) in the embedded application processor space - now the "standard" board support package target for new embedded AP hardware is almost always some random point-in-time snapshot of Android. Running "mainline" Linux is hard (because the GPU and media peripheral drivers are usually half-userspace Android flavored stuff and rely on ION and other Androidisms) and bare-metal is even worse (where previously, you'd get register-level documentation, now, you get some Android libXYZ.so library).
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2. izacus ◴[] No.45072744[source]
I don't remember there being any time in history where you got "register-level documentation".

Those boards were always accompanied by horrific binary blobs glued to a kernel form a stone age. Or Windows.