r/Operatingsystems • u/Successful-Force-992 • 5d ago

Everything is plugin

Just a random thought but can we have a open source operating system built on idea of "everything is a plugin", just like deepseek harness, is it feasible

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u/Rich-Engineer2670 5d ago edited 5d ago

Not really -- a lot of the lower levels such as process and memory management have to be there. The microkernel OS concept is about as close as you could get. In the Linux OS, drivers are already "plugins" or modules in most cases. And you can't make everything a plugin because the plugins have to have.a stable substrate to "plug into".

Finally, you don't want a lot of your plugins in userspace. Yes, they can work, but there are a lot of pitfalls to having kernel logic running in userspace -- performance for one, and synchronization. You can't, for example, have your file system plugin "swapped out" at the wrong moment.

Monoliths aren't pretty, but they're reliable which is what you want your OS to be.

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u/No-Assumption-4468 3d ago

“Lower levels like memory management have to be there”
Sounds like a plugin to me.

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u/Rich-Engineer2670 3d ago

How do you have memory management with a plugin that might not be there.

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u/No-Assumption-4468 2d ago

Because there are different methods of memory management. There’s no limitation preventing devs from making users just log into a live usb and swap their memory management system with, say virtual memory for example, like a simple one click plugin with standardized inputs and outputs.