What to learn next?

Originally Posted by echoSwe As far as I'm concerned, an operating system is a big program. It's run with the same fetch-execute cycle as any other program, besides that the CPU has hooks for virtual memory, interrupts and traps which not normal programs in user space have access to, but only because of the layered security model in operating systems (which if you take an operating system like singularity, doesn't exist, instead they have software isolated processes). Care to tell me why it's not?

Our difference is just that of semantics it seems. In my view, an OS is a collection of programs, libraries and tools that offers an abstraction to the hardware (through the kernel). Its true, an OS facilitates the programming of the processor, but strictly calling it a program is like calling a consortium a company. In effect, a consortium is not a company, but rather multiple companies acting together.

Anyway, when linking to that post I was referring more to the general advice in the thread. I just linked to the first post with misleading information. There are many more examples like this I've run into recently, this was just one from this community that I read through only minutes before.

Originally Posted by unclekyky Our difference is just that of semantics it seems. In my view, an OS is a collection of programs, libraries and tools that offers an abstraction to the hardware (through the kernel). Its true, an OS facilitates the programming of the processor, but strictly calling it a program is like calling a consortium a company. In effect, a consortium is not a company, but rather multiple companies acting together. Anyway, when linking to that post I was referring more to the general advice in the thread. I just linked to the first post with misleading information. There are many more examples like this I've run into recently, this was just one from this community that I read through only minutes before.

So you're saying operating systems have to be big? By what standard? What about mobile/sensor networks/smart dust research operating systems? Aren't they operating systems? http://www.tinyos.net/ for example? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinyos It's 579 812 bytes long, in its current size. I would wager to say, that's not a big collection of programs. And what about monolithic kernels where most of the actual OS is in kernel space?

Originally Posted by echoSwe So you're saying operating systems have to be big? By what standard? What about mobile/sensor networks/smart dust research operating systems? Aren't they operating systems? http://www.tinyos.net/ for example? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinyos It's 579 812 bytes long, in its current size. I would wager to say, that's not a big collection of programs. And what about monolithic kernels where most of the actual OS is in kernel space?

I don't recall ever saying anything about how large an OS needs to be. You did though

Originally Posted by echoSwe As far as I'm concerned, an operating system is a big program.