Quotes

Operating systems, in trying to meet the needs of applications, have to define what those needs are. Applications with different needs waste effort overcoming what is now a problem rather than a solution.
      -- Peter Williams, In Search of the Ideal Operating System for User Interfacing

Ideally, a general-purpose operating system that supports real-time execution should not a priori restrict the basic tenor of performance guarantees that any process is capable of obtaining.
      -- Ion Stoica et al., A Proportional Share Resource Allocation Algorithm for Real-Time, Time-Shared Systems

A schedule defends from chaos and whim.
      -- Annie Dillard, The Writing Life