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froggey
Mezzano
Common Lisp2015–2025
froggey / Mezzano

Mezzano

An operating system written in Common Lisp

Systems & InfrastructureLanguages & Compilers
Explore on GitHubRead Hacker News discussions
53Distinct people
78Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
3.9KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

What to know before exploring

What it is

An operating system written in Common Lisp

GitHub

Where it is used

No documented product use was verified in the last source check.

What people are saying

No recommendation phrase was found in the indexed comments.

No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.

Also in these discussions

Mentioned in the same Hacker News threads. That is not proof they are substitutes.

This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year78 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2015-01-27 19:30:44 UTC to 2025-08-24 11:35:35 UTC.

0369122015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 2 submissions, 3 comments20152016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 2 submissions, 3 comments2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 1 submissions, 6 comments2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 2 submissions, 5 comments2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 12 mentions; 2 submissions, 10 comments2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 8 mentions; 1 submissions, 7 comments20202021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 11 mentions; 2 submissions, 9 comments2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 10 mentions; 0 submissions, 10 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 7 mentions; 2 submissions, 5 comments2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 5 mentions; 1 submissions, 4 comments2025

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20152015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC523
20162016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC523
20172017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC716
20182018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC725
20192019-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC12210
20202020-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC817
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC1129
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC10010
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC725
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC514

From the project README

An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.

Read the project’s introduction
Mezzano, an operating system written in Common Lisp. Pre-built images Demo releases are available through GitHub. These releases are designed to be run in VirtualBox, though QEMU is also supported. 2GB of RAM, a virtio-net NIC and an Intel HDA audio controller are recommended. x86-64 images are published. AArch64 has been made to work on some hardware. But to set expectations: making Mezzano run on any given piece of hardware or emulator is still typically a project that requires the user to dig into the code. Building from source See the MBuild repo: (https://github.com/froggey/MBuild) For help & support or to follow development, join the #mezzano IRC channel on Libera Chat (irc.libera.chat) Major changes since Demo 4 USB stack by fittestbits Improved overall file system support by fittestbits EXT2/3/4 support has been implemented by Bruno Cichon (ebrasca) GMA950 modesetting display driver Hardware accelerated 3D support via qemu's Virgl device Multicore/SMP support Improved atomic operations Async APIs: wait-for-objects, dispatch, and thread pools Networking improvements: Server support, DHCP, TCP retransmit Source locations are tracked for many kinds of definitions Weak hash tables and other weak objects Cleanup of object representation and unifcation of standard-object/structure-object Unboxed structure slots Short floats implemented using IEEE half floats Unboxed (unsigned-byte 64) arithmetic Stack overflows and memory faults are trapped and can be recovered from Support for building on Windows Major improvements to CLOS and MOP conformance Keymap picker More bug fixes, performance improvements and features Major changes since Demo 3 FAT32 support has been implemented by Bruno Cichon (ebrasca). McCLIM has been ported by fittestbits. Quicklisp has been ported by Peter S. Housel. Improved introspection tools: DISASSEMBLE and ED have been implemented. Generational collection has been added to the garbage collector. New SSA-based compiler backend, supporting unboxed value representations. Gray streams support has been overhauled. Major changes since Demo 2 Trentino, a media player, has been implemented by Eugene Zaikonnikov. Further improvements to conformance, stability and performance. The CLOS implementation follows the MOP much more closely. More traditional window management. Booting from CD/USB on real hardware is now possible. Driver support for Intel HDA audio devices. VirtualBox guest (mouse & display) integration. Major changes since Demo 1 Many improvements to conformance, stability and performance. The editor has been greatly improved, thanks to Burton Samograd. The system now functions correctly on computers with more than 1GB of RAM. The allocator and garbage collector now make much better use of available memory, with far fewer GC cycles occuring. (ROOM T) prints more detailed information about allocated objects. Transparency and premultiplied alpha support in the GUI. And more! Additional information "Hypothymis azurea - Kaeng Krachan" by JJ Harrison (jjharrison89@facebook.com) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hypothymis_azurea_-_Kaeng_Krachan.jpg "Mandarin Pair" by © Francis C. Franklin / CC-BY-SA-3.0. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mandarin_Pair.jpg "Handsome" by Andy Morffew - https://www.flickr.com/photos/andymorffew/19377769093/in/album-72157630893775092/ [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)] Includes Dejavu Fonts 2.37 (https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/) Some icons from Icojam (http://www.icojam.com)
Read the full README on GitHub

What Hacker News says

78 sources
lproven·Jul 1, 2025
> we need the “lisp machine” of the future Totally agree. Here's my idea: stick a bunch of NVRAM DIMMs into a big server box, along with some ordinary SDRAM. So, say, you get a machine with the first, say, 16GB of RAM is ordinary RAM, and then the 512GB or 1TB of RAM above that in the memory map is persistent RAM. It keeps its contents when the machine is shut off. That is it. No drives at all. No SSD. All its storage is directly in the CPU memory map. Modify Interim or Mezzano to boot off a USB key into RAM and store a resume image in the PMEM part of the memory map, so you can suspend, turn off the power, and resume where you were when the power comes back. https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano https://github.com/mntmn/interim Now try to crowbar SBCL into this, and as many libraries and frameworks as can be sucked in. All of Medley/Interli
Read the rest
sp, and some kind of convertor so SBCL can run Interlisp. You now have an x86-64 LispM, with a whole new architectural model: no files, no disks, no filesystem. It's all just RAM. Workspace at the bottom, disposable. OS and apps higher up where it's nonvolatile. I fleshed this out a bit here: https://archive.fosdem.org/2021/schedule/event/new_type_of_c... And here... https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/26/starting_over_rebooti...
In The Medley Interlisp Project: Reviving a Historical Software System [pdf]
culi·Jun 17, 2023
mentioned in this thread: C * Lua https://www.lua.org/source/ * Redis https://github.com/redis/redis (mentioned twice) * Ruby https://github.com/ruby/ruby * SQLite https://sqlite.org/src/dir?ci=trunk C++ * Botan https://github.com/randombit/botan * ClickHouse https://github.com/ClickHouse/ClickHouse Go * Go's standard library https://cs.opensource.google/go/go * HashiCorp repos, particular those by Mitchell https://github.com/hashicorp F# * jet.com repos https://github.com/jet?language=f%23 Haskell * Elm compiler https://github.com/elm/compiler Lisp * CL-PPCRE https://github.com/edicl/cl-ppcre/ * Mezzano USB driver https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano/blob/master/drivers/usb/m... PHP * Carbon https://github.com/briannesbitt/Carbon * Laravel https://github.com/laravel/laravel Python * pytudes (notebooks) https://github.com/norvig/pytudes R *
Read the rest
sf (ex of functional OOP) https://github.com/r-spatial/sf Ruby * Sequel https://github.com/jeremyevans/sequel/ * Sidekiq https://github.com/sidekiq/sidekiq Rust * ripgrep https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep Scala * fs2 (ex of good type safety) https://github.com/typelevel/fs2 * monix (ex of ugly code with great performance) https://github.com/monix/monix TypeScript * GitHub Desktop (ex of SPA) https://github.com/desktop/desktop --- thanks to: cejast, bb86754, wewxjfq, antonyt, bit, diego_moita, agjmills, freedomben, Contortion, valenterry, DethNinja, mberning, seneca
In Ask HN: What are some of the most elegant codebases in your favorite language?
mgsouth·Dec 26, 2022
Putting on my architect's hat--what is it the customer really wanting to do? So.. "Why do you want to make Lisp more popular? If you were sucessful, what would be different in the world, and why is that desirable to you?" Normally at this point I'd listen to the response, and ask more questions based on that. That would wind up with a very, very deep thread, so I'll break a cardinal rule and pre-guess at some answers. This kind of question comes up pretty frequently. In many cases, I suspect the motivation behind the question is "Wow! Here's this cool tool I've discovered. I want to make something really useful with it. I want to do it as part of a community effort; share my excitement with others, share in their excitement, and know that what I'm making is useful because others find it desirable and are excited by it." The field could be
Read the rest
cooking, sports, old machine tools, tiny homes, or demo scene. Its the fundemental driver for most content on HN, YouTube, Instructables, and such. It is a Good Thing. If that is your motivator, then my suggestion is to find something that bugs you and fix it. You've already decided you're only interested in code, not other aspects. You said you preferred vim, but the emacs ecosystem has a very rich set of sharp edges that need filing off, and a rich set of tools with which to attack them. One example: even after 50 years there's no open IDE which allows you to easily globally rename a Lisp identifier. I don't know about LispWorks or other proprietary environments, but you can't in emacs or vim do a right-click on "foo" in "(defun foo ()...)" and select a command which automatically renames it in all invocations. [Queue lots of "but you can..." replies here.] I don't think vim is up to the task of doing this internally. It would be possible in emacs; but would require a huge effort with lots of help from other people. If you emerged alive from that rabbit warren you'd join the company of Certified "How Hard Could it Be?" Mad Scientists such as Dr. "I just want to draw molecules" Meister [1] and "Wouldn't an OS in Lisp be Cool" Froggey [2]. [1] https://github.com/clasp-developers/clasp [2] Mezzano https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano
In What help is needed for Lisp community in order to make Lisp more popular?

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