A full operating system in c#

Question

I saw this thread here. I was wondering if this was legit (sounds like it) and what are the drawbacks of doing this. What does it entail to run it stand alone in some architecture? Thanks

Answer 1

Trying to create an operating system in a managed language is currently an "interesting research problem". This means that it seems possible, but there are still quite a few important issues that need to be resolved (for example, I wouldn't expect "managed windows" anytime soon).

For example, take a look at the Singularity project (also available at CodePlex). It still has some native parts, but very few of them. As far as I know, even the garbage collector is written in managed code (with some language extension that allows safe manipulation with pointers).

The trick is that even managed code will eventually be compiled to native code. In .NET, the compilation is done usually by JITter when you start the application. In Singularity, this is done in advance, so you run native code (but generated from managed). Singularity has some other interesting aspects - for example, processes communicate via messages (and cannot dynamically load code), which makes it possible to do some aggressive optimizations when generating native code.

Answer 2

It is legit. Drawbacks are clear, this is a micro kernel. It is going to be a while before your video adapter driver will be fully managed as well. That takes acquiring critical mass with many devs and manufacturers jumping on the bandwagon. Difficult, but it has happened with Linux as the obvious example.

This is being pursued by Microsoft as well. Singularity has been well published about. It has evolved into a secret research project named Midori. There have been enough leaks about it to know its goal, Wikipedia has an article about it. I think lots of the devs that worked on the original CLR joined this project. Whether it will come to a good end is an open question. If it does, clearly the project backer is probably enough to get that critical mass rolling.

Answer 3

Microsoft's Singularity project is a operating system architecture framework which will allow people to write customizable operating system and probably Microsoft's new operating system will be based on singularity.

.NET is very powerful framework, it evolved and it probably contains everything from metadata attributes to linq and which certainly makes us free from bad pointer errors.

Just like Windows Phone and iPhone, people will be able to write customizable operating system for devices.

Today most of firewall, routers (the hardware ones) contain customized linux, that can be replaced with Singularity kernal and your own business process.

Singularity kernel is small it looks like perfect alternative of embedded windows/linux.

I dont think there is any drawback, except that it is totally new system and it will take time for hardware vendors to supply devices comptabile with this, but it will happen in future.

Answer 4

There's an open source project that's trying to achieve exactly that. It's called the "Managed Operating System Alliance". Mainly targeted as a framework (supplying users with a compiler, libraries, interfaces, tools and an example kernel), it will also feature a complete operating system kernel and small apps.

For further information:

• Website: http://mosa-project.org/projects/mosa
• IRC: #mosa on freenode