Embedded systems?

[shapj@us.ibm.com]

Josh:

I think that you are confusing EROS with Dionysix. Dionysix is a planned
compatibility environment for POSIX, but it has *never* been an objective
of EROS to look like or run like (or as badly as) UNIX.  The long and short
is that if you want to run UNIX, UNIX implementations are very good at
running UNIX and there is reason to believe that no emulator is likely to
compete except as a backward compatibility bridge.  EROS is intended as a
solution to problems where UNIX is simply not reliable or secure enough.

As to the UI, I'm afraid that Kragen may have been unintentionally
confusing here.  It has been the intention from the start that EROS would
include a secure window manager and a full operating environment.  Much of
this can be had by porting existing tools, but the secure window manager
needs to come ahead of application ports.  While EROS *can* be used in
embedded systems, it is probably too big to be compelling for them. It's
got more potential in the handheld space, where there is an expectation of
high reliability in the face of unpredictable applications (in embedded
environments you generally know all the apps that will ever run and plan
accordingly).

Finally, one small correction on another point: MVS is way closer to UNIX
than EROS is (just tweaking Kragen :-).

Jonathan S. Shapiro, Ph. D.
Research Staff Member
IBM T.J. Watson Research Center
Email: shapj@us.ibm.com
Phone: +1 914 784 7085  (Tieline: 863)
Fax: +1 914 784 6576