Why build Dusk OS?

Most modern operating systems can do whatever we want them to do. Why do we need another one? Simplicity.

It's difficult to predict post-collapse conditions, but we can suppose that many operators will need to use their machines in novel and creative ways. Hackability of the operating system then becomes paramount. Open source modern operating systems all can be modified to fit its user's needs, but their complexity limits the likelihood that the user is able to do so. A simpler OS increases this likelihood.

But we can't have our cake and eat it too, right? Either you have a simple toy OS or a complex one. Well, maybe not?

Its instigator (and, I guess, some of its authors and sponsors too) believes that in the history of computing, Forth has been under-explored. Its approach to simplicity is, I think, revolutionary. It has significant shortcomings when system specifications become more complex (Forth hates complexity and doesn't manage it well), but I believe it possible to elegantly marry it with languages that like complexity better.

This mix could provide the operator with computing powers rarely seen with other approaches. We've got to try it.

A challenge to the conventional software culture

While the primary purpose of this operating system is related to civilizational collapse, it's also in big part a reaction to the modern software stack. That stack is disgustingly complicated. It's a product of the compounded effect of a software culture that breeds complexity and had the opportunity to build upon itself over decades, unchecked and unchallenged, oozing its inscrutable pus at every corner.

The further we let that culture creep out, the harder it is to get out of it. Hardware follows it dutifully -- and in the same spirit of spurious complexity -- making clean slate approaches more and more out of reach... but not impossible yet!

Dusk OS has an amazing "power density", that is, it packs a lot of power in a very small package. This density allows it to do many things that the modern stack can do at a fraction of the complexity cost.

It is partly intended as a wake up call to software developers: the regular way to develop software today is stupid and wasteful and has been for the last 30 years. This stupidity and wastefulness feeds itself and makes us design bigger and stupider¹ hardware to cater to bigger and stupider software.

We don't need this. All this sweat, tears and blood (because yes, blood is involved in having a global supply chain enabling these crazily complex machines we produce) is futile because the conventional approach to computing is an evolutionary dead end.

There are other ways and we urgently need to explore them. Forth is such a way. It had a hard time adapting to bigger machines because of its affinity for simplicity which makes it a bad fit to spurious hardware complexity.

Dusk OS aims to bridge that gap and be a Forth that, yes, is a bit more complex than your run-of-the-mill Forth, but is careful to keep that very high "power density" making Forth revolutionary and use that spurious power that modern hardware gives us, thus competing better, feature-wise, with the modern software stack.