lua-users home
lua-l archive

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]


On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 5:39 PM, Tim Caswell <tim@creationix.com> wrote:
> What I would find extremely interesting would be a system that's bare-bones
> linux reusing all the linux device drivers (nobody wants to rewrite all
> those in lua, trust me).  Then on top of that lua, have a basic network
> aware lua engine that works somewhat like a web browser.  You can take the
> idea that Mozilla is doing with Boot to Gecko and instead use lua.  The
> system can have some basic abilities built-in that are exposed to lua and
> thus scriptable.  It could be HTML + CSS like the web or it could be
> something else.  Maybe a traditional desktop gui system that's based on
> widgets like GTK or QT or even a simple canvas-like API with optional
> opengl.  The key here is to use the internet at the core.  It needs a way to
> store applications offline in some local cache and a way to store data
> locally.  This would be a perfect operating system for Raspberry PI
> computers that are starting to ship.  People could write software that does
> anything they want, host it on network servers and interlink them.  It would
> be like the internet all over again, except using lua and aimed at
> applications rather than hyperlinked documents.

That's pretty much the point of Lua OS: Linux kernel plus a Lua
environment. But it is still in early stages and the guy has not been
working much on it recently.

If such an operating platform were already available, with a bare
minimum of functionality already working, I predict that it would be
soon colonized by us on this list. Eh eh :) And then we would have the
best of both worlds: Linux support for hardware, etc with a Lua
front-end for all system management, as well as for a whole range of
applications. Am I dreaming already?