Mezzano – An operating system written in Common Lisp
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2007–2026One slot for every year since HN launched. Height is that year's peak points; orange marks a 100+ point or 50+ comment breakout. Select a bar to open its strongest thread.
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There are still people explaining to me why you need a 'system programming language' like C or Rust for certain tasks. Meanwhile, I'm playing a game of Quake on Mezzano, where everything from drivers to the actual videogame is written in pure Common Lisp. In case you wonder how froggey managed to obtain a Common Lisp version of Quake, have a look at https://github.com/froggey/Iota.
Some starting points: USB mass storage driver: https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano/blob/master/drivers/usb/m... ext4 file system (read-only): https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano/blob/master/file/ext4.lis... TCP network stack: https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano/blob/master/net/tcp.lisp
Very impressive. Since the demise Lisp machines, there have been several attempts at developing a Lisp-based operating system which didn't deliver anything: LispOS, Tunes, and Loper; and one successful attempt at getting Lisp to run on the bare metal: Movitz. Lisp was its own operating system on the original Lisp machines developed at MIT, and this evolved into Genera at Symbolics. Is this the case here? I notice that Mezzano has files. Files are inherited from operating systems running non…
Related to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8943709 ?
The first top-level comment from each of the four biggest threads, in HN’s own order. Excerpts are shortened; open a comment for full context.
HN stats
- Breakout years
- 5
- Total points
- 1121
- Total comments
- 307
100+ points or 50+ comments
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
reference only — not used in Hall rules or ranking
Every submission
| Date | Title as submitted | By | Points | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015-01-27 | Mezzano, an operating system written in Common LispFirst breakout | PuercoPop | 149 | 15 |
| 2016-08-22 | Mezzano, an operating system written in Common Lisp | mark_l_watson | 1 | 0 |
| 2016-08-25 | Mezzano – An operating system written in Common Lisp | arm | 213 | 63 |
| 2018-02-01 | Mezzano: OS Written in Common Lisp | equalunique | 5 | 0 |
| 2019-01-14 | Mezzano: an operating system written in Common Lisp | HerrMonnezza | 5 | 0 |
| 2019-06-18 | Mezzano – An operating system written in Common LispHall induction · Best thread | pjmlp | 396 | 136 |
| 2021-01-06 | Mezzano – An Operating System Written in Common Lisp | griffinmb | 4 | 0 |
| 2021-02-06 | Mezzano: Operating system written in Common Lisp | ingve | 224 | 68 |
| 2023-06-02 | Mezzano – An operating system written in Common Lisp | ecliptik | 6 | 0 |
| 2023-06-10 | Mezzano, an operating system written in Common Lisp | andsoitis | 4 | 0 |
| 2025-07-30 | Mezzano, an operating system written in Common LispLatest 20+ point return | dargscisyhp | 114 | 25 |