So today I learned about an obscure Japanese… well, it’s apparently not actually an operating system in itself, but a “operating system kernel design”, or “application programming interface” (API) or “a body of standards that define its frameworks”. I’m not very well-versed with this kind of computer terminology, but my layperson understanding is that it’s a framework from which you can make a number of different, similar operating systems, based on a common “blueprint”.
What’s most important to me, however, is its name: “The Real-time Operating system Nucleus”, or, abbreviated, “TRON”.
Yup, in 1984, some Japanese folks apparently created an operating system (kinda) named TRON (sometimes called the “TRON project”). And it apparently still exists in some form (the most recent implementation being called “T-Kernel”). There’s even been computer hardware designed specifically to run it!
But as I noted, it’s very obscure, at least outside of Japan. There’s apparently very little English-language information available about it. The always-excellent @foone did a Twitter thread some years ago about it with some fascinating tidbits (inlcuding that at one point, “the US government threatens a complete import ban on all TRON-based products”), and there’s also a Wikipedia page (and a separate one about T-Kernel specifically).
Again, I’m not very knowledgeable about the nitty-gritty of this kind of software stuff, so I can’t give any particular insights about it aside from “huh, that’s funny, it’s called TRON”. Except for one interesting quote from the Wikipedia article:
“The project’s goal is to create an ideal computer architecture and network, to provide for all of society’s needs.”
You might say that they’re attempting to create… the perfect system?