Is a blockchain the operating system (OS) of Web3 apps? I am trying to understand what constitutes the OS for Web apps.
In my understanding; apps interact with the OS, and the OS interacts with the machine.
Since a blockchain is a supercomputer of sorts, what would be considered to be the OS of Web3 apps?
In my understanding; apps interact with the OS, and the OS interacts with the machine.
If the blockchain is a computer, I can't seem to understand what the OS would be in a Web3 architecture.
They say that OS for Web3 is yet to be developed.
For example, such opinion has Moralis https://academy.moralis.io/blog/blockchain-operating-system-explained
They are not the only ones. Similar things trying to achieve for example https://www.alchemy.com and many others there. We live in a beautiful time of the beginning of something new :)
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It's been my understanding the OS sits on top of the hardware. Is it more or less the same to run windows from a macbook? When installing SQL on a windows partition, does this install similar to an all Windows setup?
I've heard the kernel is the main connector between hardware and basic OS, so would the mac kernel cause potential differences in operation?
Would installing the linux OS also adhere to these rules?
Thanks, and sorry for the simple question.
Generally, you are correct to say that, installing different operating systems on the same hardware would be the same. You will be able to both install Windows and Linux on the same laptop (whether that would be an Asus brand laptop, or HP, or whatever). Once you install an OS on some hardware, and the OS is able to recognize the hardware, and is able to utilize it, then you are in the clear. What's important is to install on OS that is compatible with the architecture of the computer. So if you get a Linux distro that supports x86 architecture, then you would have to install it on hardware that is with a x86 architecture.
Side note: Modern OS's are very smart and they have a wide range of architecture support (list of Linux architecture support, Windows support for ARM, Apple also has a wide range of architecture support).
Since you are asking about a macbook and Windows, then the short answer is: there won't be a problem for you to install Windows on your mac. Apple even gives you Boot Camp to easily do this (there are also quite a bit of recent tutorials on this topic as well).
So the end experience would be almost the same as having Windows on any other machine.
I've heard the kernel is the main connector between hardware and basic OS, so would the mac kernel cause potential differences in operation?
This is true. The kernel is the heart of any OS, but once you have your Windows running, it would be using its own heart and it won't touch the mac kernel. So if you remove your macOS and install only Windows, then only the Windows kernel would be taking control of the Mac hardware. But if you load your macOS, then the Mac kernel would be running and operating on the hardware.
Will Windows run faster on Mac hardware than macOS on its hardware? It's debatable and I would assume not a lot of studies have been made in that sphere. But, at least, it will run.
But what about dual-booting your macbook with Linux? Technically, it is possible (and the principle is the same), but Apple have made restrictions to their firmware, limiting the option of having both a macOS and a Linux distro at the same time. What's so different here than the case with Windows? Well mainly that the firmware of the macbook (the software embedded in the hardware of the laptop) doesn't allow for Linux to be installed. Maybe things have changed, but these are the (not so recent anymore) news I know about (I guess there are still ways of installing Linux on mac hardware).
I've heard that Smalltalk is also an OS.
How can I install Smalltalk on my X86 instead of Linux or windows?
What are the steps to do that?
Any tutorials on installing Smalltalk on a bare-metal machine ?
I don't know if there is a standalone smalltalk environment, but you can try squeak, which runs above your os (linux, windows or mac). Not just an os but a complete working environment.
There was a project called SqueakNOS. That was the only post-PARC experiment to use Smalltalk directly loaded over the hardware, with no other operating system. It had even a version to work on an OLPC.
I don't know if currently someone follows that development, but it's very interesting and an excellent place to learn about hardware, in human-readable (but executable) terms. You can see and debug how a device driver works, for instance.
Smalltalk Virtual Machine is handling memory allocation, access to file systems, network connections, process (green thread)...
So viewed from Smalltalk world, it is very similar to an OS.
But how to implement the virtual machine without an underlying OS?
There is a project SqueakNOS and a fork PharoNOS meaning No Operating System, whose goal is to completely bypass the OS, and have Squeak/Pharo running on bare hardware.
So yes, it's possible.
But what you'll get with this is still a Smalltalk world, maybe not what you expect from a linux or windows distribution...
I am New to VxWorks. First of all Can I use VxWorks OS as Normal OS on my PC? I mean Can I run my application software on VxWorks OS?
While VxWorks can run on PC hardware, it is not a general-purpose OS for running independent executables. VxWorks is an RTOS library; you statically link it to your application and the whole runs as a monolithic executable.
It does support a command line interface (intended primarily for development and debug), and from that it is possible to dynamically load and link object files, but these are not independent executables in the sense they are in a GPOS; they essentially become part of the monolithic application.
An RTOS such as OS/9 or QNX would be more suited as these can operate more like a GPOS in the sense of loading and executing independently linked executables.
In any event, application software must be specifically built for these targets.
For versions of VxWorks prior to VxWorks 6, the answer by clifford provides a good explanation of why this is not really possible.
VxWorks 6 introduced Real Time Processes (RTPs). These are independant, user mode applications, running on top of the VxWorks OS. Dependant on how the VxWorks OS has been configured and built, these RTP applications may have access to POSIX libraries, and so you may be able to run POSIX applications (eg linux programs) with little modification.
However, these must still be built for VxWorks, ideally linked against your own VxWorks Source Build.
You cannot, however, just pick up any old application and expect it to run. You are never going to get Word or Excel to run.
I'm reading an article about Xen, a virtual machine monitor. They say that an operating system requires some modification in order to be able to act as a guest OS on top of Xen. Now, for an OS like Linux, I can understand what a "modification" might mean but in the case of an OS like say, Windows XP, what does it mean? I mean, XP is closed source proprietary OS right?
It means exactly the same thing. It's just harder because the source is not widely available. Note that the modifications are no longer required when Xen is used in conjunction with hardware virtualization.
Xen was originally a university project. As a researcher (or as a government agency tasked with infrastructure security), you can get the Windows sourcecode from Microsoft. You're just not allowed to distribute your own version of Windows.
This is exactly what they did: they had the sourcecode of Windows XP and then they ported XP to Xen, just to show that if Microsoft were ever to officially support Xen, it would be doable.
On the other hand, although para-virtualization cannot provide an end-to-end virtualization solution, it can improve performance.
Where can virtualization techniques be applied by an application developer? How can virtualization be applied on a day-to-day basis?
I would like to understand from veteran developers making use of it. I am interested in the following things:
How it helps in development.
How it could be used for testing purposes.
What are the recommended practices.
The main benefit, in my view, is that in a single machine, you can test an application in:
Different OSs, in case your app is multiplatform
Different configurations, like testing a client in one machine and a server in the other, or trying different parameters
Diffferent performance characteristics, like with minimal CPU and RAM, and with multicore and high amounts of RAM
Additionally, you can provide VM images to distribute applications preconfigured, be it for testing or for running applications in virtualized environments, where it makes sense (for apps which do not demand much power)
Can't say I'm a veteran developer, but I've used virtualization extensively when environments need to be controlled. That goes for:
Development: not only is it really useful to have VMs about for different deployment environments (e.g. browser versions, Windows XP / Vista / 7) but especially for maintenance it's handy to have a VM with the right development tools configured for a particular job.
Testing: this is where VMs really shine: it's great to have different deployment environments that can be set back to a known good configuration and multiple server instances running in parallel to test load balancing.
I've also found it useful to have a standard test image available that I can run locally to verify that a fix works. If it doesn't then I can roll back to the previous snapshot with no problems.
I've been using Virtual PC running Windows XP to test products I'm developing. I have clients who still need XP support while my primary dev environment is Vista (haven't had time to jump to Win7 yet), so having a virtual setup for XP is a big time saver.
Before each client drop, I build and test on my Vista dev machine then fire up VPC with XP, drag the binaries to the XP guest OS (enabled by installing Virtual PC additions on the guest OS) and run my tests there. I use the Undo disk feature of Virtual PC so I can always start with a clean XP image. This process would have been really cumbersome without virtualization.
I can now dump my old PCs at the local PC Recycle with no regrets :)
Some sort of test environment: if you are debugging malware (either writing it or developing a pill against it) it is not clever to use the real OS. The only possible disadvantage is that the viruses can detect that they are being run in the virtualization. :( One of the possibilities to do it is because the VM engines can emulate a finite set of hardware.