DistOS 2014W Lecture 1
What is an OS?
- Hardware abstraction
- Consistent execution environment (think portable code)
- manages I/O
- Resource management/Multiplexion
Really, the answer is resource management and abstractions. Turns hardware into the computer/api you WANT to program. It is more about the role it plays in the programming of systems.
This is similar to how the browser is becoming the OS of the web. The browser is the key abstraction needed to run web apps. It is the interface we target.
Distributed OS?
Anil prefers to think of this 'logically' than functionally/physically cause
systems today have multiple cores, distributed multiplet resources. "What's
running on your phone follows the D.O.S. model of the 80s".
But the tradition definition is .... Tradition TCP/IP definition ... LOOK UP
A lot of these definitions are hard to define because simplicity always gets in the way of truth. These concepts to do fit into well defined classes.
Anil's defitinion: taking the distributed pieces of a system you have and turning it into the system you WANT.
The traditional kernel-process model is a dictatorship. Authoritarian model of control. The kernel controls what lives or dies.
The internet, by contrast, is decentralised (eg. DNS)
Distributed systems may have distributed policies.
KEEP IN MIND THROUGOUT SEMESTER: Who's in control?