# From MS-DOS to the agentic OS: a conversation with Temporal CEO Samar Abbas

DevFeed: [From MS-DOS to the agentic OS: a conversation with Temporal CEO Samar Abbas](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/from-ms-dos-to-the-agentic-os-a-conversation-with-temporal-ceo-samar-abbas-35924.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://temporal.io/blog/ms-dos-to-agentic-os-a-conversation-with-temporal-ceo-samar-abbas>)

Author: Samar Abbas

Published: 2026-04-15T00:00:00Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Temporal Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/temporal-blog.md>)

Topics: [Artificial Intelligence](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai.md>), [AI Engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/ai-engineering.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/distributed-systems.md>), [Filesystems](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/filesystems.md>), [Operating system](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/operating-system.md>), [Programming](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/programming.md>)

Tags: [agentic-ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agentic-ai.md>), [agents](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agents.md>), [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [ai-engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-engineering.md>), [architecture](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/architecture.md>), [distributed-systems](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/distributed-systems.md>), [engineering](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/engineering.md>), [os](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/os.md>), [temporal-voices](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/temporal-voices.md>)

## AI overview

Temporal co-founder and CEO Samar Abbas discusses the analogy between the MS-DOS era and today's agentic AI systems. The conversation connects agent architectures built around sandboxes, file systems, memory, and I/O with early personal computers, and recalls how networked computers enabled distributed computation.

## Source excerpt

Johann Schleier-Smith sits down with Temporal co-founder and CEO Samar Abbas to trace the arc from MS-DOS to agentic AI and why the hard problems of distributed systems are only getting harder.