The kernel actually talks to the hardware, gives system calls access to what they need, does process management, multi-tasking, etc. etc. But an Operating System is a heck of a lot more than that. Thus the big 'GNU/Linux' thing.

My understanding is that his idea is to re-write as much as possible (certainly all the boot scripts, core utils, etc.) in node/js.

I think this is more likely just an fun excercise than likely to actually go anywhere - but it is the kind of thing I've wondered about doing (but not in javascript!).

You could come up with many unique and interesting things to do with a js based shell... perhaps more background jobs coolness.

$('rsync' '-avR' 'blah/' 'ssh://blah').error(function(){alert('failed')}).success(bell);

I dunno, and then have all spawned tasks open new background tabs in a GUI...

But this kind of thing would be a long way down the line.

Still, why not? Scratch an itch! It's the open source way...

My guess is that because Node has access to the file system and can create,update,delete files, along with all of the networking which comes out of the box, it can do much of what an 'operating system' can from the experience of many people. It can create and manage files. The Linux kernel is still doing all the heavy lifting and i/o.