Thanks for the link to Erik's essay - it was a great read.
I like the idea of an image based system, eliminating the need for the filesystem itself. I think the 'filesystem' and 'executable-process' ideas are so prevalent that they frame our thinking, and any new OSes tend to adopt these right away. But more interesting and powerful systems might emerge if we find a new pattern of operation and composition. Are you aware of any image based full stack systems that are in active development?
Android is one such system. Each app gets its own image (called Bundle) where it can store it's state. OS manages those state bundles to offer multitasking on memory-constrained devices and persist app state across reboots.
Android has a file system. It's a operating system (a Linux variant). I'm suggesting that neither a file system nor an operating system is necessary, or even desirable. Just run an interactive programming language continuously on the bare metal, with its image periodically backed up to secondary storage.
I like the idea of an image based system, eliminating the need for the filesystem itself. I think the 'filesystem' and 'executable-process' ideas are so prevalent that they frame our thinking, and any new OSes tend to adopt these right away. But more interesting and powerful systems might emerge if we find a new pattern of operation and composition. Are you aware of any image based full stack systems that are in active development?