OSNews

If I may be so bold to ask, what is the news here? Streaming was added to an obscure microkernel and a few bugs appeared?

What debate? Look, we're OSNews, and as such, this news is more than appropriate. Or would you want us to report on Linux, Windows, and OSX only, just because AnalystX finds the kernel obscure?

I just though it might be better if it was done when there was actual news rather than following several heated debates on kernel design.

The only one seeing this magical debate is you.

Yes, very magical.

I still don't see that debate here, though. In other items, oh yes, but here? I dun see it.

This is my contention: this is not news.

And my contention is that this is news. Every now and then, a small project gets attention. AOS4, HURD, and others. We don't keep track of every change, but we do report on them every now and then.

That ain't gonna change.

"Simply bringing attention to small projects != reporting on news."
- Um, yes it does. That's like 99% of the purpose of this site (as far as I've seen in the past four years). Have you even read many of the artices here? This is O(perating) S(ystem) news, thus (get ready!) operating systems qualify as 'news'.

"I love hearing about small projects, but I come here to hear about news."
- So what exactly do you 'love hearing', especially if this isn't 'news' to you? And why would you go through all the effort of complaining about this null point?...

...heck, why am I bothering to get involved in this petty argument? I'll stop now, it's a waste of time.



I like spoon. It's fairly new, it's a hobby OS, it's had some developement done - so Thom, keep up the good work and have more articles about spoon!

i've modded you up 3 times because i think debate is a good thing, but please shut up. you made your point and i won't mod up for a 4th time.

ontopic: how is that libunix thing of spoon interesting for other projects?

Some people (such as myself) occupy some of their time researching these "obscure" microkernels (and OSs in general.) In fact, not only do I occupy some of my time reading about such things, I actually enjoy doing so!

Wait... we're on OSnews... and I'm interested in OSs... something must be wrong here...

That being said, this looks like an interesting project. Who knows if it'll ever be commercially successful, but one thing is for certain - the people involved are very likely learning huge amounts, and no matter what the outcome of this project, they will be better for it. So will I.

Congrats on the progress guys/gals, and keep up the great work!

dude, this is a cool project. i look into research os's or hobby projects regularly, and didn't found this one yet. So, on a site called OSnews, i find this a good and appropriate reading..

What kernel debate? You made the first post, and I don't see anything about the article that razzes micro or monolithic kernels. So there was a post about a kernel project, and that kernel happens to be a microkernel. Big deal. Do you expect OSNews to refuse to post anything that has something to do with the subject of a heated debate? If that's the way things should go, the whole site might as well close down, because there couldn't be any posts about Linux, Windows, OS X, any BSD, X, Novell, the BSD TCP/IP stack, techniques for handling virtual memory, Amiga OS, windowmanagers and desktop environments. . .

Come to think of it, name one topic that has never sparked a debate. Just one.

The news here is that it's an interesting kernel. I was glad to see the link; maybe it's been around for a while, and maybe it's not news to you, but I hadn't heard about it before and I'm always glad for a link to an interesting project.

Forking is so last year, were into sporking now.

And thanks for pointing this out Thom, as one of the most interesting parts of this site was how it used to have a lot of news about obscure and otherwise unmentioned oses and other projects that deserved to be seen.

Ha! 'Sporking'!!! That's the funniest thing I've heard in days!! (my life is so lame)

I'm a little out of it today, so I didn't really 'get it' until I went to lunch - when I nearly choked to death on a chicken salad.... while eating WITH A SPORK!

Whhoooo..... you had to be there to appreciate it.

I think we should have "Spoon Week" at OSNews, just to rub in the 'newsworthyness' of this project. Any takers? Thom?

I believe the decision of forking the spoon is balancing on the edge of a knife... *sigh*

Sorry, I just had to write it

Well, it is better than my idea of a 'butter knife' for buttering up the developer anytime.

'It may be that it doesn't qualify as news in the strict sense'

Thank you for your sincerity. If it were an editorial I wouldn't have asked what the news was. I find things like this interesting too (I modded you up for that reason), but when it comes down to getting the news quickly, I like just knowing "where" the news is.

'There are also things as interviews, views, reviews etc.'

You are correct. That's why there are sections for those things: Interviews, Editorials, Meta Blog.

'I had hoped for a discussion on the kernel's technical merits'

The fact that this hasn't happened yet, seems to indicate people are more interested in attacking someone that states what should be obvious. For those that said I should have just skipped the article and not posted, you are hypocrites. You could have just skipped reading my post, but you didn't.

'Sorry for submitting "news" unworthy for your eyes'

What would have been nice is if this was submitted as an editorial with more information about what's going on with the project. There are very few details in the progress section. I would have still read it, but at some other time since it isn't time sensitive (as news is expected to be).

'What do you think of Miller's approach in regard to devfs?'

I think it's interesting. I like the idea of a file system for devices. I think more needs to be written up about this kernel though. That's why this would make a perfect editorial.

Hey guys (and gals).

Don't mod his post down. This one does not deserve it. His earlier posts are a different issue.

Thank you for your sincerity. If it were an editorial I wouldn't have asked what the news was. I find things like this interesting too (I modded you up for that reason), but when it comes down to getting the news quickly, I like just knowing "where" the news is.

As you very well know, here on OSN all articles are posted under the common hat "News".

"Features", "Interviews" and "Editorials" are merely subsections to the common hat "News".

And I did post it as news, because I wrote about the latest progress (some of it from yesterday... well, yesterday's yesterday

Besides that, your first posts were somewhat unfortunate (to put it mildly) if all you wanted, was this post to be placed "properly".

The fact that this hasn't happened yet, seems to indicate people are more interested in attacking someone that states what should be obvious. For those that said I should have just skipped the article and not posted, you are hypocrites. You could have just skipped reading my post, but you didn't.

Well, you did come out in a pretty offensive manner, going far beyond what was reasonable, if all you wanted was a "proper placement" (in your eyes).

What would have been nice is if this was submitted as an editorial with more information about what's going on with the project. There are very few details in the progress section. I would have still read it, but at some other time since it isn't time sensitive (as news is expected to be).

Well, perhaps somebody is studying spoon much closer now, after this submission, and will write an editorial. Who knows? The progress pages are going several years back, and nobody prevents people from downloading the source and study it.

Yes, devfs is interesting, but I wonder how it affects spoon's capability to play videos, and how the heck it did it before

Another, perhaps more interesting element is libUNIX. It won't affect OS'es like SkyOS, Syllable and Haiku and other already POSIX compatible OS'es, but I believe it would be quite useful for other tiny early stage OS'es.

And yes, an editorial would be nice. Are you going to write it?

[EDIT:] Fixed a typo.

Edited 2006-05-30 22:11

'"Features", "Interviews" and "Editorials" are merely subsections to the common hat "News".'

The titles are red if they aren't news.

'perhaps somebody is studying spoon much closer now, after this submission'

I can just about guarantee it now. Perhaps more people will read this "story" because of how much "interest" it has garnered, unmistakably evidenced by the number of comments. ;-)

'Are you going to write it?'

As much as I like some of Spoon's concepts, I don't have enough inside information to write an editorial on it. I have a title for it though, "Why I Like Spoon" in honor of Thom's example.

> dylansmrjones:
> I submitted this story because I've following the spoon microkernel for the last couple of years, and have often wondered why it was mentioned so little in here.

Well, I for one am glad you submitted it. I must of miss the old posts because this is the first I remember hearing of it. I personally have no use for 'Spoon' but I like know about such things, you never know when it will come in handy to point out as the solution to some-else's problem. And sometime just looking at a diffirent OS like this clues you into something you don't understand about the one you are using. Thanks for submitting.

From the basic discription on the website, streaming sounds like an interesting idea where the kernel/device driver will push events up into user-space, rather than having the user-space code poll for events. It's an interesting approach and I always like to see this sort of approach of taking an idea and genericising it; you can discover all sorts of interesting ways of using a previously limited feature.

I'm not too convinced by libunix though. An OS is usually either POSIX compliant or it isn't. Writing a POSIX compatability layer over a non-POSIX kernel can be done but it usually ends up being so system specific that you may as well write a seperate layer for each system instead of trying to create a portable one.

His SMP/APIC code works, too.

> If it is another unix variant based on C, I would like to say "please, no more c/unix"!!! in this day and age, an O/S should be (at least) garbage-collected.

Why?
Is it better for the end user?