[Tfug] Partition Second Drive

[Stephen Hooper]

>
> Technically, an Operating System doesn't have to
> run on bare metal.  All it has to do is provide
> certain services to it's applications.  You can
> argue as to whether or not something like Windows
> 3.1 qualifies as an OS (vs. a GUI *on* an OS)
> until you start looking at how those services
> are provided and by whom (which is where W3.1
> falls down).
>

I think that you are on a slippery slope: you can now argue that
everything up to, and including Microsoft Word is an Operating System.

Maybe I should ask instead, does Inferno always rely on third party
code to manage its memory allocation, its disk access, or its
scheduling.  Can  it do any of those things natively on any hardware.

If it can't then it is not an Operating System.

> E.g., MULTICS supported different OS's layered in
> this (Inferno) manner.
>

Yes, but the question then becomes did those OS's have direct access
to the hardware which Multics allocated to them (ala VMWare, or HP/UX
virtual partitions, Xen, etc.).  If they do then Multics wasn't really
performing memory management, or disk management for the Operating
System that were running on it, but instead building up a containment
area in which those Operating Systems can play.

I got the impression that Inferno basically just called malloc, open,
etc.  The same as any other virtual machine would do.

> I believe you can run Inferno on x86 metal -- though
> I haven't tried.  I was looking at doing a port to
> ARM but the v4 license made such an effort infeasible
> from an economic point of view.  :<
>

You see... that is what I was looking to do! Just never could figure
out if it was even possible.

>
> Like the brownies?  :>


Yup.