Mezzano – Common Lisp OS: Demo 3 released | Hacker News Reader

Mezzano – Common Lisp OS: Demo 3 released

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48 pointsphoe-krk22 comments

Operating system, written in Lisp, where manual begins with line editing commands which feature combinations with Ctrl and Meta keys... When I hear this description, I'm thinking of something else.

Emacs doesn't run on bare metal.

(yet)

Someone managed to have emacs standalone on the Linux kernel.[0] Maybe it will be possible to run it on bare metal with the help of Mezzano or Yalo.[1]

[0] http://www.informatimago.com/linux/emacs-on-user-mode-linux....

[1] https://github.com/whily/yalo

OSs don't run on bare metal. They run on a kernel.

Italian here: in Italian "mezzano" means "pimp": a derogatory term for a man getting clients in touch with prostitutes.

Anybody knows why they selected this name?

Seems to be the second meaning: http://www.wordreference.com/definizione/mezzano

The first being "an intermediary".

Surely "pimp" is a secondary meaning right ? isn't it from the same root as mezzanine ? (which I associated with meso- middle)

As an article, yes: "Luigi è il figlio mezzano" would be parsed as "Luigi is the middle son". But "Luigi è un mezzano" would sound as "Luigi is a pimp". Keep in mind that this is a bit archaic anyway so I suppose that someone in their twenties would probably have to check a dictionary for it, but I am older than that so it looks a bit odd to me.

It's also a place in Northern Italy.

I somehow doubt they were actually looking at a map while looking for a name.

Its media player is also called Trentino, really hope it's not a monicker for prostitute.

As I remember, somebody brought up the Italian meaning, but they decided that's irrelevant

Funny and sad to see that the meaning in the ORIGINAL language was considered to be irrelevant... This shows the level of respect our culture has for others.

Original? Why original, it's not. Just a coincidence. It's very often for brand names to collide with slang or even obscene word in some of the world languages.

This is a word with no meaning in English, and which not only has an Italian meaning but also clearly looks like an Italian word. So why do you have a problem in understanding that Italian is the original language from where this word was taken from? What do you think if somebody in Italy named an international piece of software as "MotherFk" and said: who cares what this means in English... I guess you would be appalled by the lack of cultural concern.

One of the first links in google: http://www.oddee.com/item_93544.aspx

The word is not taken from Italian, it was invented first, and then somebody said it collides with an Italian word.

If they changed the name to avoid Italian clash they could collide with Swahili or some other of hundreds of the worlds languages.

I don't find it insulting (as an Italian), just odd. And even if they dismissed when found out it I am not outraged: it is hard to look for obscure terms in all languages to make sure you don't get bad associations in Sumerian or whatever. I just wanted to know what process (if any) they followed to pick that specific name.

If it is also a geographical place name, though...

Naming is hard.

I'm sure they care a whole lot more about the project than the name.

where can i found an introducion to this os? The readme is more an instruction manual, and google dosen't seem to help much.

There isn't much documentation on the internals, aside from source code. Mezzano is mostly one-man effort, and documenting things properly (and keeping it up to date!) is substantial extra work. But you can ask the author on Freenode #mezzano IRC channel if you wonder about something specific.

Too lazy to download it, but whould like to watch a video

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