BeOS, again

Posted Aug 17, 2016 21:07 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806)
In reply to: BeOS, again by renox
Parent article: Google is developing an OS called “Fuchsia,” runs on All the Things (Android Police)

I loved the crisp feeling too but you might care how it was done... It was responsive because the window manager and all drawing code was linked right into each application (instead of being separate processes, like all other OSes). BeOS even mapped all graphics card registers and the framebuffer into each application's memory space! Without context switches, yes, it felt lightning fast.

Problem is, now it's easy to program the graphics card to DMA anything to anywhere. If not, the network card or PCI bridge chips were happy to oblige. Basically, zero inter-application security. Or kernel for that matter. And we think X Windows keyboard capture vulns are bad!

This was fixed post-Apple-deal iiuc, but that removed some of Be's unique magic.

BeOS, again

Posted Aug 17, 2016 22:09 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (guest, #50784) [Link] (1 responses)

Which Apple deal? Was there some kind of arrangement between the companies before Apple bought NeXT? Or was it a consequence of Apple not buying Be?

BeOS, again

Posted Aug 17, 2016 22:23 UTC (Wed) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Right, I should have said "failed Apple deal." At the time, Be was doing everything it possibly could to get bought by Apple. Well, everything except lowering the asking price to something a little more reasonable. :/