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Huh, just the other day i was pondering delivering the OS on a card/chip with a bit of flash space for storing patches and drivers.

Right now it seems we get into a whole lot of problems because we have the OS sitting on the same RW space as user files and programs.

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Would your idea include small form factor external media as the "card/chip"?

What would be the negatives to this approach?

I have been doing this for many years and have still not found any.

Currently I prefer RO space embedded in the kernel for the "core" OS and mfs/tmpfs overlay for a RW, larger "additional" OS.

If RW portion crashes, the system falls back to the RO portion.

Well my initial thought was a PCIe card, but it could likely just as well be an SD or such if set up right. And yeah, you can get an approximation of it using _nix and clever mounts.

But i was thinking about having the initial OS sit on an actual ROM chip with a flash chip next to it on the same board/die.

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