If I understand correctly, Urbit is a new OS kernel and application layer, with a new weird FP language on a weird VM. Its first app is a crypto ID system.
Am I wrong or am I wrong?
Am I wrong or am I wrong?
you could say its first app is a decentralized chat & social software suite. everything built on the OS gets the decentralized network 'for free'; apps become protocols.
To unpack that: a virtual machine could be a real machine, it just happens to instead by a software-hosted emulation thereof. There's a hardware JVM in your SIM card, for an example.
arvo (the kernel) is the same deal: there's nothing stopping someone from implementing the syscalls it uses (used to be seven of them IIRC), writing some drivers, and running it on bare metal.
But that's a lot of work, and the Unix-hosted virtual kernel works well enough. The whole thing may be fairly compared with inferno, which is a hosted plan9 which runs on a VM.