Comment by starspangled | Hacker News Reader

Comment by starspangled | Hacker News Reader

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This type of thing always seemed to be in the very cool but pointless basket, to me.

A lot of systems researchers were absolutely obsessed with clustering, network transparency, distributed systems, and viewed them as the pinnacle of the operating system. I never understood why. I completely understand the coolness factor mind you, I just never could see why it was so important that your server-laptop-phone-network system behaved as a single system.

I think a lot of effort was wasted chasing that dragon. Wasted is probably the wrong word because research into cool things is good and probably created useful things along the way. I don't feel there was ever enough justification put into it and it could possibly have been better spent though.

The alternative of having multi-system tools and programming models that allow you to manage multiple systems without having them appear as a single image at the lowest level didn't get much love from academia after TCP/IP, and was largely developed by industry.

Very strongly disagree with you here.

We should have had a distributed OS like Amoeba/Plan9/Inferno/etc. allowing us to manage all our chosen set of devices using a single uniform interface i.e. "A Namespace" (in Plan9/Inferno speak). Such namespaces can themselves be connected into "Hierarchical Namespaces" and so on. This is a natural and easy way to let users keep their control over their devices while still being connected to the "Greater Internet".

But the Industry manipulated us into the Cloud model so that they could retain control and make money off of us. It was all Business to the detriment of a better User Experience via Technology.

> We should have had a distributed OS like Amoeba/Plan9/Inferno/etc. allowing us to manage all our chosen set of devices using a single uniform interface i.e. "A Namespace" (in Plan9/Inferno speak). Such namespaces can themselves be connected into "Hierarchical Namespaces" and so on. This is a natural and easy way to let users keep their control over their devices while still being connected to the "Greater Internet".

Why should we have?

> But the Industry manipulated us into the Cloud model so that they could retain control and make money off of us. It was all Business to the detriment of a better User Experience via Technology.

The choice was not cloud or distributed single system machine, they were and are orthogonal.

> Why should we have?

Because that is what an OS is supposed to do viz. provide a uniform interface and transparent access to various Compute, Storage and Network resources wherever they might be. A Distributed OS (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_operating_system) is a natural extension to a Single Node OS. Note that we have in a sense realized our distributed OS in the IaaS and PaaS layers of a Cloud network. However they are done in such a manner as to take control away from us unless of course you use some open source offerings setting up which is much more complex than a distributed OS should be.

I don't find "we should do that because that's what we're supposed to do" a compelling argument. If you rephrase the assertion that just leads to a rephrased question, why is the OS supposed to do that?

There are many layers and components, and functionality can be implemented in many different ways in different levels of these things.

> why is the OS supposed to do that?

Definition and Purpose of an OS - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system#Definition_an...

I am not sure what you are arguing here. The above definition + the previous link to distributed OS where the motivations for the same are listed establish the "reason". If you find other approaches more palatable that is fine (provided you know what you are doing) but the original blanket statement you made viz. "This type of thing always seemed to be in the very cool but pointless basket, to me ... I think a lot of effort was wasted chasing that dragon. Wasted is probably the wrong word because research into cool things is good and probably created useful things along the way. I don't feel there was ever enough justification put into it and it could possibly have been better spent though." is wrong.

> There are many layers and components, and functionality can be implemented in many different ways in different levels of these things.

All implementations are not equivalent w.r.t. all parameters; hence the various tradeoffs in competing designs.

Operating system purpose on some website is vague and not some canonical truth. It doesn't even necessarily say what you think it does, and doesn't justify itself if it did anyway.

> I am not sure what you are arguing here.

I'm not sure why you're replying then.

> All implementations are not equivalent w.r.t. all parameters; hence the various tradeoffs in competing designs.

I know, and not all are equally good.

> Operating system purpose on some website

Some Website? It's Wikipedia and curated; short of handing you a book (i recommend Tanenbaum) that is a good place to start from and then branch out of.

> It doesn't even necessarily say what you think it does,

That means you have not understood it.

> I'm not sure why you're replying then.

Because you made a untenable blanket statement that Distributed OS research was all wrong which cannot go unchallenged.

> I know,

I doubt it based on this conversation.

> Because you made a untenable blanket statement that Distributed OS research was all wrong which cannot go unchallenged.

You definitely didn't understand the first thing I wrote, or you're deliberately misrepresenting it because you're intellectually incapable of addressing it.

Weasel words and Ad hominem attacks are not arguments; I had quoted your own words to you which leaves no doubt as to your position.

"Because you made a untenable blanket statement that Distributed OS research was all wrong which cannot go unchallenged."

That was not my direct quote, so you can dismount your high horse now.

And it's telling that responding to the question of why an OS should do these things, you finding a definition of an OS and asserting (falsely, I might add) that transparent distributed systems and only those meet that definition.

> That was not my direct quote, so you can dismount your high horse now.

You apparently can't follow a chain of comments in a thread nor understand what is written down. My comment pointing out yours is here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40784174

> And it's telling that responding to the question of why an OS should do these things, you finding a definition of an OS and asserting (falsely, I might add) that transparent distributed systems and only those meet that definition.

Again, you have not read/understood what has been written down nor the sources to which i linked to elaborate my points. And also i never said "that transparent distributed systems and only those meet that definition". In my comment here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40766810 i explicitly say "an OS is supposed to do viz. provide a uniform interface and transparent access to various Compute, Storage and Network resources wherever they might be." and then link to the distributed OS Wikipedia page for further details. If you had cared to even read that page you would have understood the key "Design Considerations" (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_operating_system#D...) driving the approach. It is the "User Experience" that makes a distributed OS approach so compelling; though its realization can be more complex/difficult compared to other approaches w.r.t. certain parameters eg. Scaling.

To summarize, i would advise you to read up on Distributed OS research before making silly blanket claims which can be easily disproved. Just because today the Cloud model has established itself as the industry standard doesn't mean that is the correct approach. You have to know both sides before you can argue for/against.

> My comment pointing out yours is here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40784174

That's not the one I was responding to. I replied to the comment I was responding to, it's not that complicated.

> Again, you have not read/understood what has been written down nor the sources to which i linked to elaborate my points. And also i never said "that transparent distributed systems and only those meet that definition".

That was certainly the implication if you use that to answer the question, why must the OS do that.

You do understand how "The OS must do it because that's how I define the OS" does not actually say anything, right? Even if that is the definition of the OS (which it isn't), it just shifts the question to "why should the OS be defined that way?"

> That's not the one I was responding to. I replied to the comment I was responding to, it's not that complicated.

That is precisely the point; when something is referred to in a chain you have to look at where and not necessarily in front of your nose; it's not that complicated.

> That was certainly the implication if you use that to answer the question, why must the OS do that.

No, most certainly it is not when you are explicitly being pointed to resources where more details can be found. You are expected to do some self-study and not necessarily spoon fed when it comes to absolute basics like "why is a OS needed?".

> You do understand how "The OS must do it because that's how I define the OS" does not actually say anything, right? Even if that is the definition of the OS (which it isn't), it just shifts the question to "why should the OS be defined that way?"

You are either being intentionally obtuse or really are. The motivation for an OS is buried in its definition; this is CS101 and not something deep which you seem to think it is and i even linked you to the necessary definitions and mentioned terms like "Transparency, Resource Management, User Experience, etc." to highlight the essentials.

At this point i am can only conclude that you are repeating the same vague statements (they are not even an argument) over and over again without providing an iota of hard data (which i have done) because you really have no clue.

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