tralarpa

Is it actually possible to implement security in this OS without a complete redesign and basically redoing what all other existing OS have already done?

I am aware of two ways to enforce security for applications running on the same hardware:

(1) at runtime. All current platforms do this by isolating processes using virtual memory.

(2) at loadtime. The loader verifies that the code does not do arbitrary memory accesses. Usually enforced by only allowing bytecode with a limited instruction set (e.g., no pointer arithmetic) for a virtual machine (JVM, Smalltalk) instead of binaries containing arbitrary machine code.

The author of Fomos doesn't want context switching, memory isolation, etc. And Rust compilers don't produce bytecode. Is there another way?

yencabulator
Theseus is an example of (2), in Rust, without bytecode. As far as I understand, done by enforcing no-unsafe etc rules in a blessed compiler, so basically source code becomes the equivalent of the byte code in your thinking. At a glance it's very similar to Midori, but the details of how it's done are quite different. In Theseus, drivers, applications etc are ELF objects, dynamically linked all together into one executable (which is also the kernel), with some neat tricks like hot upgrades.

https://github.com/theseus-os/Theseus

https://www.theseus-os.com/