[starspangled]

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.

[rramadass]

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.

[starspangled]

> 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.

[rramadass]

> 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.

[starspangled]

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.

[rramadass]

> 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.

[starspangled]

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.