[Oberon] Pepino LX9, USB, and other hardware running OBERON

[Bob Walkden]

I think I read somewhere, but can't remember where, that Prof. W considers that type-safety from the bottom up addresses the resilience (and resulting recoverability) issues that micro-kernels of the Minix-3 type and 'system space' are supposed to address. That is, the reasons for systems failing catastrophically are the result of writing them in badly-designed programming languages, and that the correct choice of language makes such facilities redundant.

I may be misrepresenting or over-simplifying as I'm writing from memory, in which case I beg forgiveness, but I seem to remember that being the gist of it.

I remember when I read it that it seemed rather idealistic, but I've spent my career in a world where software is, to quote Parnas, "ugly, unreliable, hard to change and certainly not something that Wirth or Dijkstra would admire".

B

> On 20 Feb 2016, at 19:16, Jörg Straube <joerg.straube at iaeth.ch> wrote:
> 
> Lars
> 
> Oberon OS is kind of both. It's monolithic in the sense that everything runs in the same address space.
> It's kind of micro kernel as you dont have to recompile everything if you want to add something to the kernel, as Oberon OS is split up in  modles.
> So you could perhaps call Oberon OS as kind of "modular monolithic" :-)
> 
> Br Jörg
> 
>> Am 20.02.2016 um 08:22 schrieb Lars <noreply at z505.com>:
>> 
>> 
>>> It is only the mass-market applications that will bring Oberon to the
>>> forefront - and the idea of a complete lightweight OS that resides in
>>> under 1Mbyte - makes it attractive for IoT devices that really do not need
>>> to carry around 20 million lines of source-code baggage.
>> 
>> 
>> What is Oberon's opinion on the micro kernel vs monolithic kernel debate
>> going on in minix for decades now.  Does oberon prefer simple monolithic
>> system or modular kernel. The modular micro kernel requires more code
>> bloat to make things happen, is the Torvalds opinion, and it becomes too
>> much work always trying to write layers of extra code so that the modules
>> can interact safely with the kernel, rather than just hardcodign
>> everything in one place in the monolithic kernel where everything is
>> shoved.
>> 
>> Is oberon a micro kernel, monolithic, or neither as you can't describe it
>> that way?  It seems like oberon modules themselves, which can be loaded,
>> are kind of pointing toward more modular micro design - but that's where I
>> have to admit I'm ignorant as I don't know about userspace kernelspace in
>> the oberon, if it even has what you call a kernel anyway. Micro kernals
>> according to Andrew T. of minix are safer, and superior to linux
>> monolithic. What's oberon's view on this?  Can't ask wirth because he
>> never involves himselves in such discussions via one way communication:
>> write a book, hope people except it, then leave to outer space.
>> --
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>> https://lists.inf.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/oberon
> --
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