[forgotpwd16]

>Urbit is not an "operating system".

Agree, term is wrongly used. Here it is used in the literal meaning of it. A software stack upon which you can execute other apps. The original concept iirc was to run both natively and overlayed but seems they've settled down to just the later.

>It's a freaking web app.

You can use Urbit without ever touching the web app and the neworking protocol is independent of http.

[gonehome]

We want to get to native, but you don’t replace the hardware in a day. It doesn’t make sense to build a custom nock cpu until it’s necessary.

For a new system to succeed it has to run on the hardware people have. That’s why there’s a runtime. It is an OS, but there’s an interpreter for the machines of today. If urbit succeeds then running it directly would be the ultimate goal.