Talk:Bare machine

Initial comment

Am I right in thinking that "Bare machine" simply means a computer without an operating system? Biscuittin (talk) 10:08, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

I have put this in the lead section. Biscuittin (talk) 15:25, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Well, I don't complete disagree with this. I think a better definition is a computer without a general purpose operating system. You need to ask what is an operating system? For a micro kernel, it is only scheduling and separation. The super loop is a form of scheduling and in some cases, code is also separated in bare metal by modes. If the image is an application specific OS that is completely integrated with the application, it is bare metal. It is misleading to say there is no 'OS'. Often the source code has everything built and linked together and documentation controls for a safety package are easier in this case for functionally safe domains as the authoring organization is the same entity. ~2025-33113-31 (talk) 17:37, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

What is an "application specific OS", and what is meant by "completely integrated with the application"? In my experience it is a computer in which application software directly interacts with the hardware. Lambtron talk 19:06, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Notability

I think notability has been established by the large number of articles which link to this page. Biscuittin (talk) 21:34, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

Failed?

"Although the bare machine approach failed" I don't think so. Our company makes simple 8-bit devices with no operating system. There are sophisticated toolchains (IAR embedded workbench, aVR studio, various debuggers) that allow you to write C or C++ code to targets with no operating system (eg reading and writing registers and i/o pins). In my opinion (and I'm not alone) if you want simple electromechanical control (eg no multimedia or tcpip) then its the best way to take complexity out and get super reliable functionality.Riceman0 (talk) 12:56, 25 April 2013 (UTC)

Yep, I agree that this claim by the article does not reflect reality; it seems to rely on the presumption that an OS is more effective in every context than OS-free is, which is simply not true. It also seems to imply that bare machine is a directly competing paradigm to use of an OS, which is only partly valid. I have removed it as it is also unsourced. —Quondum 22:30, 11 April 2016 (UTC)

Bare Machine vs Bare Metal

I'm not sure about the original meaning of the term "bare metal" but these days (2013/2014) I mostly hear it used (perhaps incorrectly) to describe physical rather than virtual servers. Thoughts? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:9:2700:31:4873:32C5:721C:2ADE (talk) 21:30, 27 February 2014 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.249.253 (talk)

I'm seeing the same thing. "Bare metal" means a physical server, rather than a VM or cloud. --Moly 21:17, 15 September 2017 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Moly (talk • contribs)

I agree that it (now) means either "code running on a machine without an O.S." or "running on a physical machine rather than a V.M. or (in the) cloud". This Wiki article needs updating with the latter! 82.21.133.132 (talk)

The definition is correct only that recent hardware prototyping efforts with microscopic investments has the term being bantered about loosely. condor (talk) 16:51, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Bare-metal server covers this topic as in the disambiguation page. ~2025-33113-31 (talk) 17:49, 8 December 2025 (UTC)

Merge from Bare machine computing

Proposed by Omegatron. Seems like a good suggestion. ~Kvng (talk) 15:21, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

There is clearly lots of overlap, but it seems that bare machine computing may not apply to microcontrollers or embedded microprocessors. Lambtron talk 18:42, 7 February 2026 (UTC)

Upon further review, the BMC article seems to be about a hypothetical computer architecture (or programming methodology; I can't tell for sure which) discussed in a multitude of research papers -- all written by the same principal author -- which are used as references for the article. The terms "BMC" and "bare machine computing" don't appear in any of those refs, nor have I found any other RS that defines the term, so I'm not sure at this point what BMC actually is or that it deserves its own article. I would suggest deferring merging until BMC can be satisfactorily defined and cleaned up. Lambtron talk 03:47, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

Proposal

I've substantially rewritten BMC and split it into two sections: a lede that's relevant to this article and a section about dispersed operating systems, which seems suited to a dedicated article. I propose the following:

• Merge lede from bare machine computing into bare machine
• Rename bare machine computing to dispersed operating system computing, and remove the merged lede
• Have bare machine computing redirect to bare machine

Lambtron talk 20:17, 9 February 2026 (UTC)

On second thought, "disbursed operating system computing" (DOSC) essentially consists of embedding the OS in "application objects", so it would seem to be more closely related to distributed operating system than bare machine. If no one objects or has a better idea, I plan to merge relevant content there (instead of moving it to a new name). Lambtron talk 17:09, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

No objection here ~Kvng (talk) 19:14, 10 February 2026 (UTC)

✅ Done. Thanks for the feedback. Lambtron talk 20:43, 10 February 2026 (UTC)