to unpack this a bit, an operating system which sees more structure than arbitrary byte-array files and arbitrary machine-code programs. Browsers actually are along these lines
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strangely, I'm also interested in the opposite way: an OS that _doesn't_ understand what's going on, i.e. "exterminate all operating system abstractions" go below files & expose raw disk blocks to applications as in Exokernel, so e.g. a DB doesn't need to go through a kernel FS
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there is probably a cool take here around 'legibility' of applications to the operating system and the constraints which that imposes
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Hot take: Could start with the file system, which really should be a full database + blob store. No application should have access to any simpler file primitive
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That's what was done with the BeOS file system by Be, an Apple spinoff https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Be_File_System …
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Huh, did not know that. Thanks! It's where they've been going with iOS as well!
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I think it's a perennial dream -- someone brought up the IBM mainframe OS which apparently had structured files and joins, and there was WinFS in Longhorn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinFS
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OS/400
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OS/400 treats files like databases, and lets you create logical files that are the result of joins on physical files https://www.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/en/ssw_ibm_i_72/dbp/rbafocrlff.htm …
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huh! reminds me of the Plan 9 union mount ('PATH' in Plan 9 just being whatever directories are union-mounted to /bin, for example) but for files I need to learn more about mainframes :)
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I did OS/400 administration as a summer job in high school, I had to relearn every OS concept all over again... Another neat thing is that it supports different character encodings down to individual fields within a file, and supports lots of encodings https://www-01.ibm.com/software/globalization/ccsid/ccsid_registered.html …
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"fields within a file" is already a leap for me haha
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wouldn't be much of an operating system
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what if that's good

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2019 last year of the operating system
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