the way this works is that all of the operating system facilities are provided as language features. including managing access to low-level hardware access. in #tomo, for example, the cpu is completely virtual and garbage collected. the os does eventually generate machine code or interpret instructions, depending on the runtime settings, but as a programmer or user everything is presented through the lens of the language environment.

some programmers might find this distasteful, but that's ok. inside the os all of the regular low level stuff is possible and can easily be added or accessed through a device. the goal is to keep this collection of potentially unsafe trusted code as small as possible. the language environment works towards a similar goal by forcing everything to be done in a shared language runtime. like on the java vm, you can still use a variety of languages but everything ends up interoperable and runs on the same engine!