
Another Free Operating System: NewOS 210
JigSaw writes: "Is the world ready for yet another Operating System? Travis Geiselbrecht, an ex-BeOS kernel engineer, seems to think so. (He is actually the one who wrote the Linux ext2 filesystem add-on for BeOS). He recently put up on his web site his personal Operating System, NewOS, with full source code. The OS was written from scratch and it is very modern and powerful as you can see from its feature set. It currently runs on x86 and... Sega Dreamcast but he is planning ports for Alpha, SGI and Sun Blade machines in the near future."
Not GPL... (Score:1)
Re:Very nice (Score:1)
t.
Re:oh yeah... (Score:1)
Funny. In the eyes of some still, Linux is not a "real OS." And never will be.
Some in Microsoft surely hold this opinion. And this was an opinion definitely held in the past, even by those fairly knowledgeable in the computer field.
Are you now devolving this to this low standard of blasting an effort before you've even loaded the product? That simply because it's new and that others, totally independent of this effort, have failed, that this project will?
Heck, where on earth on any part of the pages did he say, "We want to rule the world via this OS?" Unlike another OS that does (MS) and another OS humorously states its intentions as such (Linux), this guy seems to have just put this up for fun.
He's not even looking for money. He put up a page on a project of his. Someone posted it on /..
GET YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE SAND. People don't always use the dominant OS, or the one furthest along in development. They use the one that best fits their needs, whether that be by interest, technical merit, or shear joy in working on it.
Look at Linux. Look at OpenBSD. etc. etc. If people choose to put time into an OS, that's their business. Not yours. Linus did, and I'd guess that his "Best of luck to him" OS probably runs on your freakin machines.
Re:Dreamcast? (Score:1)
Re:Not at all surprising. (Score:1)
Despite what many people seem to think, an OS is not an inherently complex thing.
c:\> THAT REALLY DEPENDS ON THE OS.
Re:NewOS (Score:1)
New OS name - how about ... (Score:1)
Open Source Desktop OS (Score:1)
AtheOS was a good initiative and I really think a good
BeOS? (Score:1)
Re:Very nice (Score:4)
Why port to Sega Dreamcast? Why run linux on a Sparc? Why do this? Why do that?
I'm sick and tired of questions like these. For the love of God, can't someone do something for fun? Obviously, this guy has fun doing it or he wouldn't. So why not port your personal operating system to a Dreamcast?
Heck, my pc came with its own OS already. Why did I dump it in favor of Debian? Because I like Linux and I don't like Windows. Linux is fun.
Obviously not ready for military use. (Score:4)
To conform to mil-spec, that line would have to be changed to "hooah!"...
real soon now (Score:1)
yes, it's just it's polite southern manners that are causing it to wait until the confederacy has its turn . . .
hawk
that's a strange group (Score:2)
hawk
Re:Okay, this is ridiculous... (Score:2)
It gets worse. Microsoft would proclaim that they invented the BLT years before anybody else did but forgot to tell anybody. They would then lobby the government to have sandwich-hacking tools declared illegal. Suddenly anyone in possession of a butter knife is guilty until proven innocent. Microsoft then bundles a donut inside every BLT, claiming that this increases consumer choice because every consumer likes to eat donuts. Customers found removing the donut from their sandwich are cut-off from future BLT supplies because they have "ruined the Microsoft BLT experience".
The DVD CCA then wraps their own sandwich (a ham and baloney) in cling wrap and announces that this is an anti sandwich hacking device. They then take out a patent on cling wrap, claim that anybody opening the cling wrap to eat the sandwich is doing so to steal the intellectual property of the sandwich, and have cling wrap circumvention devices (such as fingers) outlawed with the government's blessing. Instead you need to hire the services of a DVD CCA employed Cling Wrap Removal Expert whenever you want to unwrap the sandwich. Naive customers who unwrap their own sandwich are sued by the DVD CCA. The customer claims that they did so only to eat the sandwich but the judge slaps the customer silly anyway.
Maybe we should all be glad that sandwiches have heaps of prior art.
Re:Jung's "Collection Unconscious?" (Score:2)
I think it's more likely that the toolsets are simply better now. 30 years ago if you wanted to build an OS, first you wrote the cross-assembler, then the boot strap, then the drivers, then the kernel, then the libraries, and then if you had any more steam left you wrote something useful like a text editor.
These days - mostly thanks to GNU - you get a cross-assembler and compiler for free. There are plenty of libraries already written (GNU and BSD at least). In the case of AtheOS you get most of the difficult device drivers via the BIOS. And once you're done, if you wrote a POSIX alike OS, you can fully populate user space in a day with some quick compilations.
And keep in mind that computers today compile 10000 lines of code faster than you can fart. 30 years ago you punched paper tape and waited for a week while the compiler chugged.
And the documentation! You can buy excellent books discussing in excruciating detail the exact workings of an OS. 30 years ago you probably had to invent half the concepts yourself!
It's simply so much easier to write an OS - in fact any software - these days.
Re:Use your own OS... (Score:2)
Now...the Win32 API is HUGE. There are so many minor compatability things between this and that revision (WindowOpen, WindowOpenEx). And while the function calls are documented (though sometimes not well) it's figuring out what is done behind the scenes that is taking time.
Re:Wrong project type (soft of) (Score:1)
X is built for remote displaying: run the apps on one computer, see the results on another. This is a smart feature, but again solved in a bad way. Every pixel changed is transmitted, instead of high-level commands like "draw button with text 'blah' and dimensions 80, 35 at 3, 3".
Wrong project type (soft of) (Score:2)
He should call it... (Score:1)
You know this is a damned funny idea.
Re:NewOS (Score:2)
This post has been rated
Re:name? (Score:2)
Re:Not at all surprising. (Score:2)
MSDOS, QNX, BeOS, Windows 2000, Linux kernel, Redhat Linux distro, Kallisti OS and many others are all described by their creators as an "OS". They all offer very different 'levels of service' and facilities to their client processes.
It's not well-defined.
Re:NewOS running on defunct hardware! (Score:2)
So what better use for it than playing around with his OS?
His page says "Also, I seemed to have collected a bunch of old non-x86 machines that need something running on them. I figure, "Hey, why dont I just port my OS over?" The rest is history."
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Re:VMware support? (Score:2)
Re:Very nice (Score:2)
Could this be the next bandwagon? Anyone's Jon Katz detector buzzing yet?
Use your own OS... (Score:4)
Re:Very nice (Score:2)
No, the machine as such only has a booter and some basic tools (memory pack management, play CD) - the "real" OS ships on the game/GD-ROM/whatever, most often this is Sega's OS, sometimes it's Windows CE - and smetimes it's apparently NetBSD or NewOS. :-)
Bah,writing an OS is sexy, writing drivers is NOT. (Score:2)
For me an OS is an interface between applications and the hardware.
Having applications for a new OS is easy: implement POSIX.
But at the lower level, there is no standard for the device drivers, so usually these new OS works on very few hardware..
GGI seems quite dead, that is too bad..
Re:oh yeah... (Score:3)
If this person can create a new OS kernel that is faster than BSD, Solaris, Linux, Windows, etc, and can replace lets say the Linux kernel .. then he has a big chance at success. The fact is that if you can create a new kernel like what the hurd is doing and to have it work as a drop in replacement into lets say the Linux kernel then he can have success. Ideally if he had a micro kernel that could actually run some of linux drivers with little modification he could go somewhere.
I doubt it, I think Linux is having enough trouble surviving and I think that the effort of the hurd, atheos, beos, and him could be better spent in improving an existing system, like Linux, (one of the BSD's), or any other Open Source OS.
just my opinion though.
good luck guy..............
I don't want a lot, I just want it all!
Flame away, I have a hose!
Re:No mention of "help wanted" (Score:2)
his effort to explore OS design not to design
yet another OS for mass consumption, which may
be why he is not looking for help.
Re:YAFOS ? (Score:2)
That said, most of them are active, and it's a good source of information on where to get system code.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Is Open Source getting too scattered? (Score:3)
To find the highest point you can reach, you survey the climbers, and choose the highest. If you don't think that he's at the top, you take all of the lower ones (that have finished climbing) and randomly redistribute them.
This can be fine tuned, but that's the idea. And that' open source development. Lots of developers starting in lots of different places, and heading uphill. (Well, you can see that it's really a bit more complex, but that's one valid abstraction of the process.)
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
Re:Use your own OS... (Score:2)
Re:Not GPL... (Score:3)
Re:Okay, this is ridiculous... (Score:4)
If there's a roach in a proprietary Microsoft BLT, you won't know about it until you've swallowed it and contracted some horrible disease. With open source sandwiches, you can send your changes back to the developer.
Of course, you could just reverse-engineer your sandwich and look to see if there's a bug in it, but that's not legal persuant to the DMCA.
darius
Re:Very nice (Score:2)
CD-ROM VHS... (Score:2)
Worldcom [worldcom.com] - Generation Duh!
Yeah (Score:2)
Dreamcast? (Score:2)
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Re:NewOS running on defunct hardware! (Score:2)
Re:Very nice (Score:2)
Re:Stop Naming Things NEW (Score:2)
Re:Stop Naming Things NEW (Score:2)
never call anything 'new' .... (Score:4)
Except the code is buggy (Score:2)
For the record, the definition is int getc(FILE *stream);
Maybe the booyah was a bit premature.
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Re:never call anything 'new' .... (Score:2)
Not really -- that just means that version 2 will probably be called "New and Improved OS."
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Your dream system exists... (Score:2)
They were CISC, and RISC outran them.
They were caught in the AI Winter downdraft.
LispOS was harder to port than Un*x.
Mass parenthephobia.
They were The Right Thing [dreamsongs.com] (see section 2.1) and were killed off by the New Jerseyites.
Choose any or all of the above.
Re:Use your own OS... (Score:2)
Issues with being from Be (Score:3)
Other OSes in development (Score:5)
For some info on developing your own OS check out:
http://www.execpc.com/~geezer/os/
Is just one of the regulars (well not too regular these days) on the newsgroup. The "Triple Fault Club" is kind of funny actually. Everyone's OS has flummoxed many a frustrated x86 processor at some point! From his site I learned some of the ropes. Also check out some of the sites on the webring. Many OSes, varying from toys to useable systems.
BTW, people on the newsgroup generally sneer at any OS named ____OS or ___ix. There are so many ChrisOS, and DaveOS, and Winix and Finix and Pukenix, etc...
But of course there is MacOS and Linux...
Re:NewOS running on defunct hardware! (Score:3)
MIPS (whose supporting that anymore?)
haha, this is so funny because i think you're actually serious. there are shitloads of companies suporting the MIPS processor and it's extrememly popular in the embedded market. there are a hel of a lot of devices that you probably use on a daily basis that use a MIPS processor, not to mention all the Cisco equipment this message passes through to get to you.
for a group that's supposedly in tune with technology it suprises me how many of the slashbots are so unbelieveably igornant. if it's not a PC it doesn't matter i guess. hah.
- j
Jung's "Collection Unconscious?" (Score:3)
If it is a "collective unconscious" thing though, that's going to blow a personal hypothesis of mine out of the water; that being that the collective unconscious (if it even exists) is primarily a genetic race memory thing. The explosion of knowledge that we're seeing in this field would tend to point to other factors.
YAFOS ? (Score:3)
As was noted by someone, he doesn't seem to ask for help either, so I think that sums it up quite well.
Still, this is nice but I'm not sure it's stuff that matters© that much. Oh well...
Re:Except the code is buggy (Score:2)
Re:name? (Score:2)
High UID kids these days -- no respect for their history. ;-)
Anytime (Score:4)
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NewOS running on defunct hardware! (Score:3)
By the way, this isn't troll...I'm just stating an obvious anachronism.
Ryan Finley
Re:Use your own OS... (Score:2)
well that team of developers has many fundamental problems. many include preferences and ability. in large groups there is probably more talk than code. this one guy decided himself what he wanted and went that way not having to prove anything to anybody.
Re:Other OSes in development (Score:2)
I think though, thanks mainly to a swift response from the government, which is using the army to destroy rogue OS`s, as well as fully qualified systems engineers working out in the field, that the number of new Operating Systems has fallen to its lowest daily level since 1991, so there is no need for the public to panic.
Re:Use your own OS... (Score:2)
Part of the problem is that they're trying to hit a moving target. It's not as though the Win32 API is as stable as the IA32 instruction set, you know. Microsoft is constantly adding new functions, and they're not quite as eager and Intel is to tell everyone exactly how things are working behind the scenes.
Re:Very nice (Score:2)
Re:NewOS running on defunct hardware! (Score:2)
Re:NewOS (Score:2)
Re:NewOS running on defunct hardware! (Score:2)
Re:*BSD is dying (Score:2)
/Brian
Re:NewOS (Score:2)
/Brian
Re:Stop Naming Things NEW (Score:2)
/Brian
Re:Very nice (Score:3)
/Brian
NewOS (Score:4)
Sort of funny. Like how CIPA (Children's Online Protection Act) means "pussy" in Swedish.
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Re:never call anything 'new' .... (Score:2)
I know of a company (www.compusenseinc.com) that has named their latest product 'nTierprise', because its written on the whole nTier model... Yeah, I'd invest in that company! That proves this company is looking toward the future. This is the same type of company that would write something called "DosApp" and nobody would buy it!
5 years from now, they won't be able to sell nTierprise either.
No mention of "help wanted" (Score:5)
Even if neither of these OSes take off, I admire their drive to focus this well as a solo developer.
Re:Very nice (Score:2)
Or, if you want a more usefull system, you could tell the boot CD to access a NFS on your LAN via the DC's ethernet adapter.
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Hero of the Day + an Idea (Score:2)
On the other hand...
It is absolutely great that they can even do this. Clearly it takes so much to make an OS work, and even more so to work well. It's really inspirational to "younger" developers interested in programming.
I once tried to write an OS for my PPC machine, based on a system called OpenOS and another, PowerOS.
Bombed horribly - it sucked.
The Idea: someone create a VERY simple OS... and let people build onto it. Not an open-source effort. But rather, they could "roll their own OS,' in essense, by following a tutorial, and see how it's done. I would feel SO proud to say, "I finally got threading written into my OS...."
So NewOS is my Hero of the Day.
idiots (Score:2)
division (Score:4)
[OT] division (Score:2)
:-)
OSkit (Score:2)
All the "basics" to get you started on your own operating system.
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Garett
Re:OSkit (Score:3)
Here [utah.edu] is the real link just in case....
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Garett
Re:Very nice (Score:2)
Why do would someone do something for fun?
Re:Your dream system exists... (Score:2)
Go forth to the land of heathens. Ascend your divine milkcrate and preach the Word of Lisp among them. Do not be deterred by the two-letter commands they hurl your way; do not listen to their treacherous Larry Wall-isms. For they know not what they do.
In the begining was Lisp, and Lisp was with God(el), and Lisp was God(el).
And Lisp was made flesh, and the Lisp Machine/OS dwelt among us...
For C/Unix was given by Kernighan/Thompson, but grace and truth came by McCarthy/MIT.
not many (Score:2)
Re:Is Open Source getting too scattered? (Score:3)
You're missing the point. The coolest thing you can possibly do in geekworld is to write your own OS. This guy is just having FUN! He doesn't want to concentrate on the OS you want him to concentrate on. He wants to be creative and come up with his own thing.
Re:Dreamcast? (Score:2)
Intel IA-32 (x86) - Tested on desktops all the way to 4-way server
Sega Dreamcast - Hitachi SH-4
looks like it runs in SH4. and once you got that going, think about all the things you could do! once you got telnet/ssh going, just about anything you want in a console...on a TV. woot!
in all seriousness, its always cool to have yet another OS not to run. No...seriously...it is...
Re:Obviously not ready for military use. (Score:2)
The US Army would prefer a "Hooah!", but...
Since the US Air Force would undoubtedly be funding it they might prefer the line to be "Air Force!".
If coding for the US Marine Corps, (which would never happen, since they NEVER buy anything NEW) they'd want a healthy "Oorah!" or maybe just an "Errrr!"
The US Navy would probably ask for a "Go Navy!" - there is however a limited part of the US Navy who does use "Booyah!".
The US Coast Guard would simply request that the entire source code be submitted in bright orange.
I guess it really just depends on which command requests it.
Okay, this is ridiculous... (Score:4)
Okay, I'm all for Open Source and sharing of ideas and all that, but this has gone too far. For the love of God, you CAN'T open source a good sandwich!
Where does it all stop? Why? WHYYYYYY?!?!?!
(sorry)
nice but nothing special (Score:2)
Very nice (Score:2)
Why a port to Sega Dreamcast? Doesn't it have its own OS already, in ROM or something?
Re:NewOS (Score:2)
I think
btw I`m still trying to work out if this whole thread is a wind up or not
A crash reduces
Your expensive computer
Re:feature set. (Score:5)
That's pretty cool. I was thinking of implementing a "packet-losing, barely functional TCP/IP stack" with the upcoming SantaOS, but I may have to change my strategy now that someone's come along and promised better...
Dancin Santa
Not BSD either. (Score:2)
Uh.. not according to the comments here [newos.org]:
** Copyright 2001, Travis Geiselbrecht. All rights reserved.
** Distributed under the terms of the NewOS License.
*/
Now I've been poking around his Perforce repository, but can't find a copy if this "NewOS" License anywhere.
Ryan T. Sammartino
Re:Use your own OS... (Score:5)
There's a lot in there. Somethings haven't really been done on built-from-scratch UNIX environments, never mind trying to emulate exactly what Microsoft did...
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
Re:Use your own OS... (Score:2)
There's a story that at one point, when they were really desparate, the managers were going around to the secretaries and asking them if they'd like to become programmers.
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Re:Not GPL... (Score:2)
Gnu/Newspeak?
Re:Use your own OS... (Score:2)
Of course, even if it did have a spec, reimplementing something obscure and complex to a spec is a lot harder than creating something and the later writing an obscure and complex spec for it.
Not at all surprising. (Score:3)
As far as I can see, there are only two extremely difficult (read: time-consuming, tedious) things to do re something as familiar and well-defined as an OS: comply fully with someone else's standard, and tune an entirely original design (not borrowing the main character from a familiar system).
Making a unix-like OS is not much harder than making a compiler for a c-like language (I dunno about you, but I could do the latter in a couple of days). But then supplying every library routine and going and checking that you comply with the POSIX standard on every point would take forever (alone, that is).
The win32 thing is a hundred times harder than that, because it's a huge, poorly designed, inaccurately specified, buggy interface. It's painful enough to even use that the vast majority of windows programmers hide it behind some other tool. Recreating it perfectly, without access to the source, is an exercise in futility, far harder than making it in the first place.
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Re:NewOS (Score:3)
Perhaps you meant Polish where cipa indeed means "pussy"
Re:feature set. (Score:2)
If it can run my alcatel internal DSL modem (Score:2)
Microsoft out the window!
Linux out the window!
C'mon new OS... save me taht 75 bucks!
Re:name? (Score:2)
Isin't newOS the default folder name Microsoft Operating System Creator uses for a new project?
No, that would be "MyOS".
(Giveaway)
Is Open Source getting too scattered? (Score:3)