Re: Lua OS

[Michal Kottman <k0mpjut0r@...>]

On 23 April 2012 17:39, Tim Caswell <tim@creationix.com> wrote:
> What I would find extremely interesting would be a system that's bare-bones
> linux reusing all the linux device drivers (nobody wants to rewrite all
> those in lua, trust me).  Then on top of that lua, have a basic network
> aware lua engine that works somewhat like a web browser.  You can take the
> idea that Mozilla is doing with Boot to Gecko and instead use lua.  The
> system can have some basic abilities built-in that are exposed to lua and
> thus scriptable.  It could be HTML + CSS like the web or it could be
> something else.  Maybe a traditional desktop gui system that's based on
> widgets like GTK or QT or even a simple canvas-like API with optional
> opengl.  The key here is to use the internet at the core.  It needs a way to
> store applications offline in some local cache and a way to store data
> locally.  This would be a perfect operating system for Raspberry PI
> computers that are starting to ship.  People could write software that does
> anything they want, host it on network servers and interlink them.  It would
> be like the internet all over again, except using lua and aimed at
> applications rather than hyperlinked documents.

How about creating a basic Linux rootf with X server and Qt set up,
and handle the rest with Lua + lqt? You get networking, databases,
filesystem access, WebKit for HTML rendering + CSS + JavaScript,
OpenGL (OK, you also need Lua OpenGL bindings), XML and some other
fancy stuff. At startup, load up a single /init.lua and from there,
manage your "processes" in Lua.

I don't know if I would call this a "Lua OS" though...