Project Bluefin and the future of operating systems [Video]

A relatively obscure desktop Linux project hints at a containerized OS future that makes perfect sense for enterprise computing.

Credit: Guido Montaldo / Shutterstock

Even with all of the advances in IT, whether it’s modular hardware, massive cloud computing resources, or small-form-factor edge devices, IT still has a scale problem. Not physically—it’s easy to add more boxes, more storage, and more “stuff” in that respect. The challenge with scale is getting your operations to work as intended at that level, and it starts with making sure you can build, deploy, and maintain applications effectively and efficiently as you grow. This means that the basic building block of devops, the operating system, needs to scale—quickly, smoothly, and seamlessly.

I’ll say this up front: This is hard. Very hard.

But we could be entering into an(other) age of enlightenment for the operating system. I’ve seen what the future of operating systems at scale could be, and it starts with Project Bluefin. …