::scr Cesium

[simon wistow]

Cesium is/was a super sekrit OS from MIT that's going to be Open Sourced soon
..


	http://www.slant-six.org/display.asp?type=a&id=1

looks shiny.

Compare and contrasts with some of the stuff on ... 

	http://www.twoshortplanks.com/simon/osstuff.html

It may be a spoof but some of the ideas are very nice (not sure about the
Program layer though, would have to see that in action)

In a Nut Shell [tm] things I want from an OS (i.e Kernel, API and GUI combo - 
I'm ignoring certain hardware/laws of physics limitations) :

o Network transparent 
For *everything*. I should be able play a game on a monitor and the mouse is
connected to another machine, the keyboard on yet another machine and the
processing done by 1 or more machines somewhere. Automagically

o Devices should be hot swappable
I should be able to rip out the graphics card if I want to, put out a new one
and the OS should keep on running an autoadjust to new settings if necessary

o I shouldn't ever need to reboot
*Ever* not even when upgrading the kernel or addin, removinf device drivers

o Easy Sounds obvious but configuration and location of stuff should follow
the rule of least surprise. Unix got at least one thing right with its
'everything's a file'. Ditto Macs with Folders?

o Integrated 
Everything should work together ala OpenDoc and OLE/COM/whatever it's called
these days. Like piping on *nix but more so - when sending data it should
automagically present what type of data it is and the recieving app should be
able to automagically switch to deal with it. So 'cat foo.tar.gz | grep "some
string in a file in the tar ball" ' or equivalent would actually produce 

foo.tar.gz:bar.txt (line 20) "some string in a file in the tar ball"

o Highly but easily configurable
Again, following the principle of least surpris it should be obvious how to
configure stuff. Changing stuff simply should be easy ... chaging fundamental
suff shouldn't be hard.

o Document centric
c.f previous rants. Dead easy to do with the system above :)

o RDB fs
Fully journaled and, of course, Network transparanent. Possibly an OO RDB fs.

o other stuff 
Descibed elsewhere <g>

o Fill in the blanks here
Your answers and suggestions on an email to the usual list. I've ranted about
this sort of stuff before - what do other people want/like in other OSs? 




-- 
: "Don't worry," she said, seriously. "Most of the blood was someone else's."