The most-recommended balanced take on systemd, from a BSD perspective, handed to anyone caught up in the systemd debate.
Topics › Systems, Networks & Security
The best operating systems & kernels videos, according to Hacker News
110 videos about operating systems & kernels that Hacker News commenters keep pointing each other to, ranked by how many separate months they were recommended. Part of Systems, Networks & Security.
HN recommends it, long as it is, as an eye-opening rant on software complexity and why systems became so complicated.
HN commenters recommend it for Thompson's funny, first-hand Unix history stories, some of which even Kernighan had not heard.
HN points to it as the definitive, entertaining account of Sun's fate under Oracle, and quotes its Ellison lawnmower advice whenever Oracle behaves badly.
Repeatedly recommended as a revelatory talk on how little control the main OS has over modern SoCs and PCs.
HN points people to it as the clearest primary-source explanation of Unix pipes and the small-tools philosophy, straight from the creators.
Regarded as the definitive, if heartbreaking, account of Terry Davis and TempleOS.
Cited constantly in threads on microservices, composability and the Unix philosophy as a compact explanation of why small interoperable pieces win.
Recommended repeatedly as the best account of container history and how Zones built on and went beyond Jails.
HN considers it one of the best talks for understanding how containers work from the ground up.
HN cites it as the key explanation of cooperative, user-scheduled kernel threads and the prior art behind later async and coroutine debates.
HN recommends Cantrill talks generally for their mix of industry history, technical depth and entertaining delivery, and this one is a favorite for storage and data integrity threads.
The default reference in Python performance threads for why removing the GIL is hard.
HN regards it as a gem of a technical talk that tackles a fundamental debugging problem and shows a new technology solving it.
HN commenters recommend it as a demonstration of the Unix philosophy, with small tools composed through pipes.
Recommended as a long, rich first-hand account of Mach, NeXT and Apple history and of working for Steve Jobs.
HN uses it as the go-to answer to claims that Wayland is unnecessary, from a developer who knew X's codebase well.
HN recommends it as an accessible way to remove the magic from Docker and understand how containers work.
Recommended as the go-to talk on firmware security risks, Intel ME, and why replacing UEFI with Linux speeds up and hardens boot.
HN recommends it for the toybox intro and for Landley's candid account of software licensing and why he created the 0BSD license.
HN points to it as an accessible explanation of microkernel isolation and fault-tolerant design, and as Tanenbaum's answer to performance objections.
HN recommends it as a balanced, eloquent take on the systemd debate that even skeptics find persuasive.
Recommended as an insightful and entertaining critique of UNIX design choices such as file descriptors and 'everything is a file'.
HN links it for Cantrill's entertaining epoll versus kqueue rant and his stories, such as bricking a machine with rm -rf.
HN recommends it as a talk that makes containers click, showing that containerization is not virtualization and demystifying what Docker does.
Recommended as the detailed, entertaining history of why 3D Pinball vanished from Windows.
HN points to it as an impressive look at how far WebAssembly can go, and as the explanation of the architecture behind CheerpX and its Flash support.
HN commenters recommend it as an engaging and informative explanation of why containers on VMs waste resources and hurt performance.
Recommended as an engaging, non-technical history of Unix and BSD from someone who was there, and cited for specific stories like the TCP/IP stack.
HN recommends it as a fascinating, authoritative account of console hardware security, often cited in threads on hardware security and anti-cheat.
Recommended as a long, excellent first-hand interview with a legendary OS designer, though some note it is light on technical detail.
HN commenters recommend it in Smalltalk and Unix threads as a demonstration of runtime dynamism hiding in native binaries and shared libraries.
Recommended in Julia threading threads as an insightful, simple explanation of the new task scheduler.
HN commenters recommend it as a demonstration of SerenityOS's hackability and fast iteration across all layers of the system.
HN uses it as the classic example of rapid visual app building and of a polished early Jobs presentation, often with timestamps pointing to the database demo.
HN people share it in Windows 11 backlash threads as an even-handed insider's view of what is wrong with Windows.
The go-to reference for why file operations are slow on Windows and how antivirus filters, not NTFS itself, are the cause.
Recommended as a brilliant demonstration of how to think in Unix pipelines.
HN points to it as the canonical overview of pledge and the ideas behind OpenBSD's exploit mitigations.
HN commenters share it as a rare, atmospheric look at what working at an early computing center was actually like, including how code was submitted and processed.
HN points to it as an entertaining deep dive on Linux emulation on SmartOS and on how the Solaris kernel and libc are tightly coupled.
HN points to it as the long first-person account of Linux history, including Linus on the GPL's role and on microkernels.
HN points to it as a vivid showcase of how much a modern-feeling GUI OS can do on slow 8-bit hardware.
Recommended as a rare long-form interview with a legendary operating system designer, though some find it light on technical detail.
HN points to it as the recorded talk behind the Netflix 800Gb/s slides and as a deep look at kernel-level optimizations for high throughput.
Shared in threads on window systems and X11 history as a primary-source talk on why NeWS was technically ahead of X.
HN cites it as Oxide's own explanation of how they ship hardware as a startup and why they picked illumos.
Recommended as the DTrace creator's own demonstration and a reference for dynamic tracing.
HN points to it as a deep dive into the surveillance features of North Korea's OS and the extent of that state's digital tracking.
HN uses it as the primary source for Microsoft's Rust adoption and its reasoning on TPM and security requirements.
HN people cite it as evidence of how fast and responsive a well-designed microkernel desktop could be on modest hardware.
HN repeatedly cites it for Midori lessons: compatibility matters for adoption, and the Windows team stayed sceptical even with Midori running real workloads.
HN recommends it as the definitive explanation of XFS metadata performance fixes and how XFS was developed and made robust on Linux.
Used in software bloat debates as a measured look at why binaries got larger.
Pointed to as an entertaining, informative explanation of why UEFI is troublesome, from a Linux UEFI developer.
HN points to it as a vivid example of the clash between two philosophies of Linux desktop design, often in systemd and Wayland arguments, though many find it disrespectful.
Whenever Wayland versus X comes up, HN points to this talk as the authoritative explanation from an X maintainer of why X was replaced.
HN points to it as an illuminating look at what containers really are and as a video companion to running desktop apps in Docker.
Recommended as a great overview of Qubes OS and how its compartmentalization works in practice.
HN commenters recommend it as a rare live look at kOS in action, and one that is fascinating and mind-bending.
HN points to it as the authoritative source for how WSL2 works and why Microsoft rebuilt it.
Cited as a deep, entertaining look at firmware-level software and vendors abusing pre-boot access.
HN cites it as evidence of Microsoft's backward compatibility and of upgrade engineering done well.
HN commenters point to it as the historic first Docker demo and a quick overview of what Docker is.
HN points to it as the video explanation of how RAID-Z expansion works without block pointer rewrite.
HN commenters cite it for the history of open source at Sun and Oracle, and for Cantrill's explanation of licensing choices.
Pointed to as the authoritative history of FFS from one of its original creators.
The author and others link it as the definitive explanation of redbean and the APE toolchain, including its performance claims.
Cited in ReactOS threads as an authoritative account of how Windows reverse engineering works and as a rebuttal to claims about ReactOS.
Cited in OpenBSD threads as a skeptical, evidence-based counterpoint to claims about its security, though some dispute its objectivity.
HN mostly cites it as background on Plan 9 and its ideas, with one commenter thanking the speaker for an enjoyable talk.
Recommended as the authoritative, first-hand telling of BSD lore whenever Unix and BSD history comes up.
Cited in debates about Rust versus C as a thoughtful systems programmer's account of falling for Rust.
HN commenters cite it as primary-source evidence of what Jobs actually said about Mac OS X's design, open-source kernel and NeXT-based transition.
Cited in init-system and Unix debates as FreeBSD's stance on launchd versus systemd, and recommended for its view of FreeBSD's future.
HN links it as the standard reference whenever laptop sleep and battery drain on Windows come up, including the later point that nothing has improved.
HN commenters cite it as a hands-on example of hot reloading and live coding in C.
Cited as a casual, insightful conversation with Cantrill, and referenced for his views on containers and unikernels.
Mostly cited as a source of Unix history stories and asides such as the Crabs prank program and the BLIT terminal.
Cited as the authoritative overview of kernel hardening goals and priorities, including Cook's car-safety analogy for kernel security.
Used as the reference example when people argue Windows UI responsiveness regressed after XP.
Linked for the Microsoft talks on WSL GUI support and how WDDM drivers map into the Linux VM.
HN commenters use it to show how responsive BeOS was on very modest hardware compared with Windows and Mac of the era.
Shared as a demo of a minimal Inferno-based phone OS and an unusual dumb-phone approach.
Cited as the primary source on how Nitro offloads I/O to dedicated hardware and keeps management tasks off guest CPUs.
Cited to explain what formal verification of seL4 guarantees, such as ruling out whole classes of bugs like buffer overflows.
Referenced in security discussions as an example of defense-in-depth sandboxing for a desktop Linux environment.
HN points to it as the primary source on Dalvik's dex bytecode, register-based design and memory-saving choices.
HN points to it as a practical reference for the Linux-VM-on-Mac workflow and as an entry point to NixOS.
Cited in ZFS and filesystem threads as the go-to source on ZFS limits and tuning for NVMe.
HN uses it as the counterpoint to a story where XP survived online, noting that a directly exposed XP machine is infected within minutes, though some critics say the setup is not representative of typical use.
HN cites it as an example of workload-dependent performance tuning at scale and of Netflix's AWS practices.
Used as a primary source for pKVM architecture in threads on Android virtualization and isolated VMs.
Cited as the authoritative explanation of why block pointer rewrite is so hard to implement in ZFS.
Referenced as an example of an innovative, ahead-of-its-time desktop interface.
HN references it as the explanation of how Valve uses containers for Linux game compatibility.
HN cites it as a demonstration of Windows' long backwards compatibility.
Cited as the official explanation of Google's scoped storage changes and its intent to limit broad file access.
HN cites it as a prime example of FreeBSD tuned for extreme network performance at massive scale.
Linked as a relevant explainer in threads about Windows quirks and reserved names.
Cited as a classic Cantrill talk when threads discuss madvise, malloc and Dirty COW behavior.
Cited as evidence that the KVM port was hard work and as background on Cantrill's illumos virtualization experience.
HN commenters bring it up as a joke about ridiculous movie computing, though some note it was a real Unix file browser (FSN).
Cited as Terry Davis in his purest form, and for his analogy of what an OS is to its user.
HN mentions it as a reference for Windows 11's actual CPU requirements and for how screen flicker is edited out of footage.
Posted as a joking reference to TempleOS and Terry Davis in unrelated threads.
Linked in memorial threads as his last video.
Referenced as the authoritative talk on Capsicum, including comparisons of how little code it takes to sandbox programs versus SELinux.
HN uses it as a quick citation of Alan Kay's dislike of Linux, in threads questioning whether the Unix way is the final word.
Referenced in discussions of GPU virtualization and VDI as a demo of licensing-free GPU sharing.
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