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What even is an OS now?

310 points · 479 comments · fratellobigio

  1. sollewitt · · focus · HN ↗
    You can’t

    > partition different applications off from each other, and carefully control how they can communicate.

    without

    > provide access to hardware resources

    That’s still definitely what an OS does. The application model is often very loosely coupled. See web browsers.

    A difference between embedded systems and operating systems is the ability to provide access to hardware (in such a way as to isolate and dictate communication) _dynamically_ with a-prior unknown requests.

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