[Cryptography] Simpler programs?

[Lodewijk andré de la porte]

2014-04-17 7:31 GMT+02:00 Bill Frantz <frantz at pwpconsult.com>:

> If I may toot my own horn here, I worked for many years on such a system.
>
> The KeyKOS operating system <http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~KeyKOS/KeyKOS.html>
> was such a system. It has also been known over the years as Gnosis and
> GuardOS -- they are all the same code base. (Well, kind of. The first
> implementation was in IBM 370 Assembler. Later versions were in C and ran
> on some Motorola 88000 hardware and some Sparc hardware.)
>
> The KeyKOS Design Document <http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~
> KeyKOS/agorics/KeyKos/Gnosis/keywelcome.html> is a comprehensive manual
> of the API for the 370 version. It also includes a number of design
> writeups which were not implemented. I think by reading it, you can tell
> which is which.
>
> The CapROS system <http://www.capros.org/> is a clean room clone which
> runs on Intel x86 and some ARM processors.
>
> Any questions?
>

Why is it that these things are always so.. outlandish? I can't use this
for a desktop environment.

Maybe I can use this for a server environment, but a lack of multiprocessor
support does not get my hopes up.

Multiprocessor support could be as simple as just running the OS n times,
once on every processor. Then communicating between OS's as if they're
accessible over the network. This would be pretty good for scaling servers.
But memory partitioning, sharing devices, etc. would be unpleasant.
Multicore instead of multiprocessor of course ruins the last of possible
fun.

I suppose I'm very defeatist about OS's. A lack of a truly portable
application format, thick OS specific API's, etc. cause so much pain in
this.

It's simply impossible for me to use these OS's in server environments, I
cannot run any software that makes up the stack I'd need for anything. I
guess! I'd like to be wrong, but that's what I guess. Coyotos is
unreleased, and unproven.

Is there any such project aimed at desktop users?
https://www.haiku-os.org/is the most promising alt-desktop that I know
of. But it's still a
fatkernel. It's promising because it aims to be simple, minimalist.
Something from which security always rises like zombies from graves.

Sorry for being unknowledgeable about the
secure-microkernels-for-which-I-never-had-purpose. I feel like they'd be a
treasure trove of interesting technology and activity that I could bury
myself in for years and years (seems you have ;), but it also seems like
something that will always have terrible limited purposes. If only we had
infinite summer vacations to learn things in.
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