Talk:Multi-Environment Real-Time

"Mert" as a given name

Mert is a common name in Turkish that has many celebrities associated with it. I redirected MERT to Mert disambiguation page and correcting other pointing links accordingly. — Preceding unsigned comment added by MKS (talk • contribs) 20:12, 18 August 2008‎ (UTC)

Actually, MERT just comes here now; it's Mert that goes to the disambiguation page. Guy Harris (talk) 19:26, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

shared file

i just changed "shared file" to point to computer file as i assume thats whats meant? ie the 2 (unix type) process could commune via writing to a file they both had open()'d? (btw nice article, i hadnt heard of it before. ta.) Mission Fleg (talk) 10:45, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

• Yes, that is what was meant. Sirgorpster (talk) 19:34, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

UNIX-RTR

This descendant of MERT is active today in wide range of Lucent products. This should be the main focus of the article and MERT should be a sub-paragraph. Sirgorpster (talk) 19:34, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Then make it so. Guy Harris (talk) 19:21, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

MERT was the basis of Bell Labs trunk routing in the early 1980s. No mention of that here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.202.180.104 (talk • contribs) 11:21, 14 February 2013‎ (UTC)

If you're familiar with that, feel free to mention it here. Guy Harris (talk) 19:21, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Microkernel or hypervisor?

The article currently starts with

The Multi-Environment Real-Time (MERT) operating system was one of the earliest to be constructed using an organizational concept that later became known as a "microkernel".

Aside from this not being a good introduction (I'll change it in a moment), this is not properly sourced. It has introduced in the original version of the article without a footnote; the only source for MERT being a (proto-)microkernel design is now Altinsel, M (October 6, 1983). "Resourceful uses of M.E.R.T". Scientific Philosophy.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link), which I haven't been able to trace down using either GScholar or MS Academic Search. From what I read in other sources, I have the feeling that MERT was actually quite close to a hypervisor, a concept that had been used by IBM in commercial products a decade earlier, although I confess I've never seen a MERT system at work, nor am I an operating systems expert. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 11:31, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

In fact, Lycklama and Bayer cite CP-67 as prior art when it comes to their kernel design. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 11:45, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Having read some more I'm convinced that this system was microkernel-like in that it had message passing processes with privilege between kernel and supervisor. However, I still find the Altinsel source, added by 212.152.11.215, rather fishy, since I cannot find it online (not even references to it), except in Wikipedia clones. WorldCat doesn't know this Altinsel either. QVVERTYVS (hm?) 21:13, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

Have you been able to find a journal named "Scientific Philosophy"? You presumably didn't find a paper titled "Scientific Philosophy" by any "M. Altinsel" if you didn't find Mr./Ms. Altinsel. The first of 212.152.11.215's edits gave the author as "Mert Altinsel". For what it's worth:

1. the address is, according to RIPE, assigned to Tele2;
2. there are some people in the US named "Mert Altinsel", although I didn't find anything about people in Sweden named "Mert Altinsel";

so I'm also a bit suspicious of that reference - perhaps 212.152.11.215 was just trolling. Guy Harris (talk) 22:10, 24 April 2014 (UTC)

No such journal in DuckDuckGo, Google, GScholar, MS Academic or DBLP. CiteSeerX and DBLP have no Altinsel. I'm concluding it's bunk and removing it. (It's been there for 8 years...) QVVERTYVS (hm?) 22:24, 24 April 2014 (UTC)