It sounds like a security nightmare and I'm not sure about how efficient it can be for not user oriented tasks. But the ubiquity of the system is like what XML pretended to be but never was.
If it doesn't have networking (which it doesn't) one would imagine the security attack surface is significantly reduced, and pretty much (outside of insane NSA style radio-transmitter-in-your-cable style attacks) requires physical access, at which point many (most?) machines are sort of hosed anyways, unless you've got things like SED/FIPS, etc.
What stops someone from creating files that exploit memory safety or other security issues, then sending them to a TempleOS user? Sure, they have to load the file into the system, but if they're using the OS it'd be safe to assume there's a way to do this.
Exploiting a non-networked machine isn't very useful. There's no practical way to get any data back, to use it as a bot worker, or to send spam, so what's the point?
Smuggle data out in whatever format the user saves data? Corrupt calculations so the user ends up destroying expensive equipment? It's the same issue as attacking airgapped networks.
It's only a security nightmare if the threat model assumes hostile user access and a passive main user, which, as it's not multiuser, and most definitely not a consumer OS, doesn't seem too bad to me.
I can't reply to you directly. I didn't mean to imply that TempleOS is not multiprocessing. From what I gather there is only one user (with multiple processes) and that user owns all the files, hence no file permissions that say "this file belongs to user X" and "this file belongs to user Y", only user X can read/write/execute X's files, and the same for user Y. The author of the article linked to here states that TempleOS is a single user (but multiprocess!) system.
I wonder why you haven't implemented threads? Not enough of a benefit in your opinion? Aren't threads supported by modern CPUs. Don't they allow faster context switching than switching context for processes? Though I guess Erlang disagrees!
There's no memory protection, so like for other multitasking systems without memory protection (like AmigaOS...) the process/thread distinction doesn't matter.
It is multiprocessing, but not fair sharing. I like to call it single-process multiple thread. There is no difference between "task", "Process" or "thread". It is single address map. Paging in not used, basically.
I don't think many people today realise how profoundly this can affect an OS (despite the many challenges). AmigaOS was the same, and it allowed a lot of hacks that are much more challenging to replicate in efficient ways on more modern OSs.
I think an admin has to approve his comments because he has been shadowbanned.
In the past he made racist and homophobic remarks and got shadowbanned. His mental illness is hard to understand at times. The same thing happened to him on Reddit. He has to use multiple accounts to get around the shadowbans.
I think he is like Brandon Eich who donated to the wrong charity, made good contributions and solid programming work, but holds opinions that are not socially acceptable.
