Where are our lisp machines? Our plan9? Our microkernels? The first (mainstream) half-interesting OS we've seen in decades is NixOS and that's still got linux under the hood as a compromise [2]. At least this space is lively right now, and maybe something like nix will let us use some of the good software on whatever interesting project comes next.
[1] https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-one-half-a-ma...
[2] linux under NixOS isn't actually a hard requirement. There's no reason a brand new kernel can't be used. There are currently a few small projects that use rust-based non unix microkernels and other interesting experiments.
