[Haskell-cafe] OS design & FP aesthetics

[brad clawsie]

> software packages, configuration files, boot scripts and the like are all
> managaed in a purely functional way, that is, they are all built by
> deterministic functions and they never change after they have been built.",
> from http://nix.cs.uu.nl/nixos/index.html
> 
>  One thing microsoft has being doing which is interesting is
>  singularity.

its just not clear what these projects are trying to fix. i am all for
good research, indeed a lot of it manifests itself in linux, bsd
etc...but chucking a decade+ of debugging, userland tools, docs,
etc...its a nonstarter. who is downloading minix3? purity of design at
the os level has few takers in the real world. people want high
performance, small footprint, and security. linux is delivering on
these as good as anything else actually in use by mass markets.

there have been other softball comments here, like the offhand comment
that linux is not reliable and secure, but i haven't seen any
substantial commentary on why this is the case. try these comments
out on the kernel mailing list if you want to be brave AND ontopic.

i say all of this as a freebsd user, so don't construe my defense of
linux as a political bias.