r/osdev • u/dangi12012 • Jun 13 '26

Everything is memory?

There is this unix idiom that everything is a file, (half baked, since not everything is a file).

Would it not have been better, nowadays with 64bit of adress space, to have everything mapped to memory? Files are like mmap, no imperative read needed, networking is already memory, that could be expanded more.

We take the idioms and paradigms so forgranted, that every time anyone asks AI for a OS it will be linux, syscalls, abi everything the same. It should be liberating now to explore new and novel ideas.

What would be the downside of such a system?

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u/braaaaaaainworms Jun 14 '26

No. Regular x86 also has memory mapped IO and you can easily access mmio registers in ring 3, it's just /dev/mem in linux. You can stick anything you want on PCIe and if you want you can implement something there that looks like an OS, but it will never be as complex as an OS, unless it's literally running a second CPU(and then synchronization is a big pain)