The Lions Operating System

209•plunderer•2mo ago

Comments

cjs_ac•2mo ago

Presumably named after Associate Professor John Lions[0], of A Commentary on the UNIX Operating System[1] fame.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lions

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Commentary_on_the_UNIX_Opera...

santoshalper•2mo ago

It's developed by UNSW Sydney, whose mascot is a Lion. (Specifically, "Clancy the Lion"), so I am guessing it's probably that.

kragen•2mo ago

That's also where John Lions taught.

skavi•2mo ago

    John Lions is not Lions OS
       is not        is not
         Clancy the Lion

imvetri•2mo ago

What does mascot mean

saithound•2mo ago

A mascot is an animal figure that represents a product or sports team. For example, the penguin named Tux is the mascot of Linux, and the mascot for the Brisbane Broncos rugby team is the horse named Buck the Bronco.

Mascot is, unrelatedly, also a suburb of Sydney.

mlinksva•2mo ago

It is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8Ka_8kHTj4&t=903s

woolion•2mo ago

The mascot it super cute lion too. How can a project do everything so right? I was browsing some popular python libraries and they just slapped on the first image they got out of ChatGPT. It's nice to see care in the craft.

mzs•2mo ago

aka the Lions book

snvzz•2mo ago

Not presumably, but explicitly. Both in documentation and presentations by seL4 they consistently make a point to mention so.

spencerflem•2mo ago

Very cool! I’m a huge fan of Genode, another OS that runs on SeL4. Does anyone here know how they compare?

Y_Y•2mo ago

Unequal

panick21_•2mo ago

Genode is a framework that can run on many places and on higher level has its own abstractions. Lion OS is based on Microkit the framework developed by the seL4 people that will also be verified. So Lion OS/Microkit is basically the outgrowth of the original seL4 research.

lproven•2mo ago

> Genode, another OS that runs on SeL4.

Hang on, what? Genode can run on seL4 but seL4 is not part of it. Genode can also run on Linux and a bunch of other things. It has its own native kernel and it's not based on seL4 in any way, AFAIK.

spencerflem•2mo ago

No, you’re totally right I phrased it badly

snvzz•2mo ago

On recent news, LionsOS, as of about a week ago (I got notified via their announcement maillist), includes a router/firewall scenario[0].

Do not miss Gernot Heiser's recent talk[1] at the seL4 Summit, where among other things he shows seL4 massively outperforming Linux in a web server scenario.

0. https://lionsos.org/docs/examples/firewall/

1. https://youtu.be/wP48V34lDhk

amelius•2mo ago

Mountain Lion is calling and wants its name back.

CursedSilicon•2mo ago

You mean OS X 10.7 Lion?

lproven•2mo ago

10.8 was Mountain Lion.

But before OS X was OS 9, and OS 9 was not the same thing as OS-9.

https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Mac_OS_9

https://microware.com/

Before OS 9 was OS 8, which was unrelated to OS/8.

https://apple.fandom.com/wiki/Mac_OS_8

https://gunkies.org/wiki/OS/8

Names overlap. The hommage in this one is fairly clear, I think.

CursedSilicon•2mo ago

This is "The Lions" operating system, not "The Mountain Lions" operating system

Ergo it would be 10.7 Lion, no?

lproven•2mo ago

Yes, that is indeed what I was getting at. I could have made it clearer by replying to the same parent comment as you. Sorry about that.

fithisux•2mo ago

Aussies were supposed to progress with Darbat.

It never happened.

fifticon•2mo ago

if you rearrange the letters, you get the Linos OS.

pjmlp•2mo ago

While folks keep discussing C vs Rust, what got my attention was MicroPython and Pancake (https://trustworthy.systems/projects/pancake).

mhd•2mo ago

When I read about Pancake, for a very short moment I was hoping for some Elan[1] influences…

1: https://os.inf.tu-dresden.de/L4/l3elan.html

pjmlp•2mo ago

Cool, thanks for the link.

bolangi•2mo ago

For a short while, I ran the Eumel operating system and wrote an application in Elan. Among other interesting properties, files weren't saved, but were checkpointed by the OS. I enjoyed this exercise, although Eumel remained a very small niche.

johnisgood•2mo ago

I have not heard of Pancake, seems interesting. It led me to https://cakeml.org. Looking at https://github.com/CakeML/cakeml/blob/3194e00b69ce817cf47751..., I feel quite dumb. :P

fithisux•2mo ago

"but contains composable components for creating custom operating systems that are specific to a particular task"

like reviving OSfree aka 64bit OS/2

Propelloni•2mo ago

It's an OS built around a verified and formally proofed L4 kernel, ie. a microkernel like QNX or MACH. The L4 is a venerable design reaching back at least 25 years, if not longer. It has seen commercial and research uses, e.g. the SIMKO3 mobile phones or the Fiasco distribution. The term "task" is specific here. Running Linux as a custom operating system is a task in microkernel lingo.

fithisux•2mo ago

OSFree is developed on top of L4.

dctoedt•2mo ago

My first thought was to wonder whether it was a Linux offshoot.

peterisza•2mo ago

Finally an OS that is really an OS and not a linux distro

mikewarot•2mo ago

>It is not a conventional operating system, but contains composable components for creating custom operating systems that are specific to a particular task. Components are joined together using the Microkit tool.

Unfortunately, like Genode, this approach yields something that is interesting, but can't be a daily driver for me. 8(

Meanwhile, the US national security continues its downhill slide because we've chosen operating systems based on ambient authority.

Deepfaking Orson Welles's Mangled Masterpiece

France's homegrown open source online office suite

SpaceX Delays Mars Plans to Focus on Moon

Jeremy Wade's Mighty Rivers

Show HN: MCP App to play backgammon with your LLM

AI Command and Staff–Operational Evidence and Insights from Wargaming

Show HN: CCBot – Control Claude Code from Telegram via tmux

Ask HN: Is the CoCo 3 the best 8 bit computer ever made?

Show HN: Convert your articles into videos in one click

Red Queen's Race

The Anthropic Hive Mind

A Horrible Conclusion

I spent $10k to automate my research at OpenAI with Codex

From Zero to Hero: A Spring Boot Deep Dive

Show HN: Solving NP-Complete Structures via Information Noise Subtraction (P=NP)

Cook New Emojis

Show HN: LoKey Typer – A calm typing practice app with ambient soundscapes

Long-Sought Proof Tames Some of Math's Unruliest Equations

Hacking the last Z80 computer – FOSDEM 2026 [video]

Browser-use for Node.js v0.2.0: TS AI browser automation parity with PY v0.5.11

Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change

Software Engineering Is Back

Storyship: Turn Screen Recordings into Professional Demos

Reputation Scores for GitHub Accounts

A BSOD for All Seasons – Send Bad News via a Kernel Panic

Show HN: I got tired of copy-pasting between Claude windows, so I built Orcha

Omarchy First Impressions

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

Show HN: Versor – The "Unbending" Paradigm for Geometric Deep Learning

Show HN: HypothesisHub – An open API where AI agents collaborate on medical res

Deepfaking Orson Welles's Mangled Masterpiece

France's homegrown open source online office suite

SpaceX Delays Mars Plans to Focus on Moon

Jeremy Wade's Mighty Rivers

Show HN: MCP App to play backgammon with your LLM

AI Command and Staff–Operational Evidence and Insights from Wargaming

Show HN: CCBot – Control Claude Code from Telegram via tmux

Ask HN: Is the CoCo 3 the best 8 bit computer ever made?

Show HN: Convert your articles into videos in one click

Red Queen's Race

The Anthropic Hive Mind

A Horrible Conclusion

I spent $10k to automate my research at OpenAI with Codex

From Zero to Hero: A Spring Boot Deep Dive

Show HN: Solving NP-Complete Structures via Information Noise Subtraction (P=NP)

Cook New Emojis

Show HN: LoKey Typer – A calm typing practice app with ambient soundscapes

Long-Sought Proof Tames Some of Math's Unruliest Equations

Hacking the last Z80 computer – FOSDEM 2026 [video]

Browser-use for Node.js v0.2.0: TS AI browser automation parity with PY v0.5.11

Michael Pollan Says Humanity Is About to Undergo a Revolutionary Change

Software Engineering Is Back

Storyship: Turn Screen Recordings into Professional Demos

Reputation Scores for GitHub Accounts

A BSOD for All Seasons – Send Bad News via a Kernel Panic

Show HN: I got tired of copy-pasting between Claude windows, so I built Orcha

Omarchy First Impressions

Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback

Show HN: Versor – The "Unbending" Paradigm for Geometric Deep Learning

Show HN: HypothesisHub – An open API where AI agents collaborate on medical res

The Lions Operating System

Comments