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Comment by radlad | Hacker News Reader

I think because the idea of an "agent operating system" is starting to feel more and more inevitable. Since I can use AI to:

  - Pull information from external sources
  - Transform and/or augment that information
  - Publish information

I almost do not need a traditional OS anymore. This obviously isn't entirely true: I still use it to interact directly with humans, and it's the way I access my LLM. For now.

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You need a "traditional" operating system to even run your LLM, or do you have your own custom collection of drivers you flash your machine with? :p

I already mentioned this:

> This obviously isn't entirely true: [...] it's the way I access my LLM.

It doesn't change my opinion that there's a very real possibility that we move to thin clients or microkernels intended primarily to run chat interfaces (or some other UI that organizes LLM sessions and their outputs) either locally on the hardware, or against cloud computing environments. An operating system is just the interface a user has with their computer.

More to the point - it is possible to run an operating system on top of another operating system: this is what VMs are. I'm obviously not claiming that LLMs replace the glue between hardware and software(?!)

> I almost do not need a traditional OS anymore.

You sure about that?

smells like lock-in to me.

I'm not advocating for this model. But I'm also not sure it has any more lock-in than choosing an OS today: Windows, macOS, Linux, ChromeOS, Android, iOS.

Does your LLM have hardware drivers in it? this is silly.

Agreed, its like OSes have become so invisible people have actually forgotten what they do.

But "virtual machine" is not? Maybe "Virtual OS" is more acceptable?

This is really approaching peak AI psychosis

I'm obviously not saying that LLMs replace the glue between hardware and software. That would be absurd.

An operating system is just the interface a user has to the programs they run on their computer. Surely you can imagine a world where you boot into a ChatGPT-like interface instead of the desktop OS you are familiar with?

Different computing paradigms already exist: mobile OS sure, but also ChromeOS... heck, install Arch Linux and you're dropped into a shell by default - not a GUI. How is this so different?

And it doesn't even have to replace your existing OS to be your operating system: If you purchase a cloud VM (say from AWS or DigitalOcean), you're likely running an operating system on top of another operating system already.

You seem to have a wrong definition of operating system in your head. The definition of Operating System is "The main software that manages a computer's hardware and software."

An operating system is definitely not "just the interface a user has to the programs they run on their computer."

> If you purchase a cloud VM...

Then the operating system there is the link between the interface you are accessing and the underlying hardware on the physical server.

An operating system is not just something that opens apps, it is the thing that lets you type, use a mouse, and see things on a screen. LLMs cannot do any of that, they are an app which runs on an OS.

"The definition"? Whose? There are many definitions of "operating system" and I think it may be you who has it wrong: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system#Definition_an...

Having a kernel, drivers, or firmware does not disqualify an operating system focused on LLM-usage from being an "agent operating system."

Do you agree that Android is an OS, or would you say that the OS is Linux and Android is simply a distribution? Is the operating system "Windows 11" or is it Windows NT kernel? Is UEFI an OS? ChromeOS? Language isn't always black-and-white.

You seemed to miss the cloud computing point: are you running one OS, or two? Does one OS running on top of another OS with virtualized hardware count? If yes, then why do you think an agent OS is incompatible with a traditional OS?

> An operating system is not just something that opens apps, it is the thing that lets you type, use a mouse, and see things on a screen. LLMs cannot do any of that, they are an app which runs on an OS.

An OS is all of these things. I never once claimed that an agent operating system would have a kernel which "is" an LLM. This is an absurd interpretation.

No, I disagree with everything you are saying here. You have a very misguided opinion of what an OS is.

You linked the wikipedia page which clearly says OSes are defined by managing resources and have an always running kernel. LLMs do not meet either of these points.

> You seemed to miss the cloud computing point

You seem to misunderstand how VMs work. They are not OSes running on top of OSes, they are multiple OSes sharing the same hardware resources simultaneously side by side.

You also seem to keep avoiding the fact you wrote:

> it's the way I access my LLM. For now.

Inferring that you think soon LLMs will either not need operating systems, or will become them. This is not true at all. LLMs will never boot your hardware into a prompt. The OS will do that and hand off to the LLM. This is the main reason you are getting backlash and being downvoted.

Are we reading the same Wikipedia page?

> An operating system is difficult to define,[7] but has been called "the layer of software that manages a computer's resources for its users and their applications".[8] Operating systems include the software that is always running, called a kernel—but can include other software as well.[7][9] The two other types of programs that can run on a computer are system programs—which are associated with the operating system, but may not be part of the kernel—and applications—all other software.[9]

> You seem to misunderstand how VMs work. They are not OSes running on top of OSes, they are multiple OSes sharing the same hardware resources simultaneously side by side.

This is not strictly true. VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, QEMU run guests on the host. Even KVM operates in tandem with the host kernel. Maybe you're referring to Xen and ESXi VMs?

> Inferring that you think soon LLMs will either not need operating systems, or will become them.

You removed the key point of context:

> I almost do not need a traditional OS anymore. [...] it's the way I access my LLM. For now.

I believe we will move to something that resembles microkernels and/or thin clients. You'll still have something here, but it'll be about as impactful as BIOS is.

> This is the main reason you are getting backlash and being downvoted.

FWIW, I've received a single downvote.

Yes we are reading the same page, except you seem to be cherry picking comments and missing the main broader picture:

There are three main purposes that an operating system fulfills:

Operating systems allocate resources between different applications, deciding when they will receive central processing unit (CPU) time or space in memory.

Operating systems provide an interface that abstracts the details of hardware access

Operating systems provide common services, such as an interface for accessing network and disk devices.

LLMs will can not and will not ever do these things, and your idea that an OS will become a tiny thing like a BIOS is completely wrong.

If these things were true, an OS wouldnt need a BIOS by now, they would have merged into the same thing long ago. But they havent because they are distinct layers which require certain functionality performed before handing off to the next layer. This is why an LLM will never be an OS, and will always be an app that an OS hands off to.

Not cherry-picking, I quoted the entire first paragraph of the section titled "Definition and purpose."

> LLMs will can not and will not ever do these things

Once again, I am not claiming LLMs would replace an OS. This is a non sequitor, and I'm confused why you expect me to defend it.

Once again, I ask: Do you agree that Windows 11 is an OS? Android? UEFI? ChromeOS? At what point do they stop being an OS?

Language is fluid, evolves over time, and means different things to different people. To most people, an "operating system" refers to more than just the kernel. It refers to the entire system stack that defines how they interact with the computer (i.e. hardware and networking), how it manages resources (e.g. CPU and GPU time, memory), how they load software onto it (e.g. packages, APKs, .apps or MCP), and how that software is granted permissions to those resources (compare iOS/macOS/Android permission models to what people might want their LLMs to do), etc.

I expect to see a lot of changes in this area as a result of LLMs becoming more prominent in how people interact with computers. This is what I mean by an "Agent OS" - not an LLM replacing the kernel. That is clearly an absurd premise.

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