Rust-Written Redox OS Enjoys Significant Performance Improvements

[Gonk]

Still more than GNU/Hurd, which is "only" a Kernel and not an entire operating system, which predates Linux I think.

It is kind of difficult to pin down when Hurd "started". It depends on how you define started I guess. Linux is easy: Torvalds started working on it in April 1991, it was released to the public on October 5, and became self-hosting with 0.11 in December. Hurd... well it is comically slow in comparison. GNU starts looking around for a kernel in 1986, spends five years doing that, then in May 1991 announces they are working on something based on Mach. It isn't until April 1994 that they get something booting and September 1996 that they release 0.1, but they only start developing their own fork of Mach in December 1996. The official docs say it works on IA-32 CPUs but is known to have problems with the new-fangled 64 bit ones. But you don't need that 64 bit stuff - Hurd will let you use nearly two gigabytes of RAM!

[rmfx]

This OS will gain traction one day.
Rust microkernel is too much of a cool concept to not take off.
This makes Linux distros look like they're bloated.

[ZephyrXero]

Would love to see a benchmark comparing its performance against a Linux distro! 📊

[Tomin]

Exactly! I think there is a big unfulfilled demand for an embedded RTOS implemented in a safety oriented language. More so than yet another Linux desktop wannabe.

... But, who am I to second guess, what the developers should spend their time on...

I think there is no lack of effort creating one though: https://arewertosyet.com/ Although I'd argue that some of those are more frameworks to build software for microcontrollers than (real-time) operating systems but there are some of those too.

[Volta]

This OS will gain traction one day.
Rust microkernel is too much of a cool concept to not take off.
This makes Linux distros look like they're bloated.

You mistook bloat with usability. Microkernel is bloated by design. However, it may be good for Rust as a playground.

[Developer12]

Exactly! I think there is a big unfulfilled demand for an embedded RTOS implemented in a safety oriented language. More so than yet another Linux desktop wannabe.

... But, who am I to second guess, what the developers should spend their time on...

There's a lot more to building an RTOS than just being memory safe. Hell, memory safety isn't actually required at all. Most RTOSs don't offer it.

An RTOS is all about predictable performance. Not *fast* performance. An RTOS can be as slow as it likes. It just absolutey has to be *predictable.*

[Developer12]

This is one project that I was very excited about, however it is still in a very raw state, nearly unusable,

I tested the live version of an Ice Lake laptop and even though it would boot, it was impossible to interact with it, the the keyboard didn't work, nor did the usb mouse or the touch pad.

It reminded me of the early days of Linux, where hardware support was very finicky.

It would be great if this, or HAIKU, became a viable option.

an OS targeting systems all the way back to the 486 doesn't work with fancy new peripherals on a bleeding-edge intel laptop? say it ain't so! /s

maybe try it again on a desktop system that's a few years older and has a normal USB mouse and keyboard.

[onlyLinuxLuvUBack]

Redox OS vs Postgresql OS that could be a phoronix benchmark.

[kylew77]

It always excites me news about Redox OS does. Give it about 5 to 10 years and it might be as polished as some of the other high security OSes.

[andyprough]

I tried it in a vm today. It's a so-so experience. Graphically it's smooth and good looking, and has a couple of demo games and an interactive periodic table that are good for showing off some of Redox's abilities. The terminal emulator responds to very basic commands such as ls and cd, but not much else beyond that. I should read the manual, there's probably quite a few useful commands in there, I just didn't find most of them through guesswork. Pretty interesting experience though. It's certainly far advanced beyond something like TempleOS in terms of polish, but nowhere remotely near the useabliity of Haiku due to the lack of programs.