FreeVMS 0.2.15 Released
Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 26th Oct 2006 16:02 UTC, submitted by mariuz
OSNews, Generic OSes FreeVMS is an OpenVMS-like operating system which can run on several architectures like i386, PPC, Alpha, and many others. It consists of a POSIX kernel and a DCL command line interpreter. The only architectures currently supported are i386 and x86-64. Version 0.2.15 got released Monday.
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Maybe
by KenJackson on Thu 26th Oct 2006 18:45 UTC
KenJackson
Member since:
2005-07-18

The website says FreeVMS is a free but Very Much Strange operating system. If I wasn't already curious, that wouldn't attract me.

I'm tempted to try this just for old-times sake. I was hopscotching around the world networked VAXes long before there was Linux or FreeBSD or even Win32, which I recall with mixed feelings. But I'm skeptical about the utility of VMS or any look-alike.

Reply Score: 2

RE: Maybe
by twenex on Thu 26th Oct 2006 21:23 UTC in reply to "Maybe"
twenex Member since:
2006-04-21

free but Very Much Strange operating system.

As I understand it the author's native language is not English. As such I don't think he can be criticised too much if a pun is a bit off.

Reply Score: 2

.
by Eric Martin on Thu 26th Oct 2006 18:59 UTC
Eric Martin
Member since:
2005-11-11

Is it as secure ?

That's the question.

Reply Score: 1

RE: .
by davidl on Fri 27th Oct 2006 13:30 UTC in reply to "."
davidl Member since:
2006-01-04

VMS is probably one of the most secure operating systems ever deployed. That HP is slowly strangling VMS is a (yet another) testament to their abysmal stupidity.

However, FreeVMS is really just a hack pasted on top of the Linux kernel, so I wouldn't stand in too much amazement.

It may or may not be a good idea to try to replicate VMS in general, but the amount of work to do it for real on x86 (or x64) would be staggering. If you ever got anywhere close to something actually working you'd probably end up as a "person of interest" to HP's goonsquads. Don't pick up that cellphone! ;-)

Reply Score: 1

RE[2]: .
by madcrow on Fri 27th Oct 2006 14:28 UTC in reply to "RE: ."
madcrow Member since:
2006-03-13

I doubt HP'd care that much. They don't really care about VMS at all. I'd pick a better name than FreeVMS though. After all, it doesn't make sense to antagonize the tradmark attorneys.

Reply Score: 1

RE[3]: .
by twenex on Mon 30th Oct 2006 11:19 UTC in reply to "RE[2]: ."
twenex Member since:
2006-04-21

If Windows NT (WNT) is 1 better than VMS, how about "FreeZQW" - free (as in freedom), and 3 better than WNT?

Reply Score: 1

RE[4]: .
by m1t0s1s on Tue 31st Oct 2006 04:01 UTC in reply to "RE[3]: ."
m1t0s1s Member since:
2006-04-05

awesome comment!

Reply Score: 1

VMS security
by vanfruniken on Thu 26th Oct 2006 20:36 UTC
vanfruniken
Member since:
2006-07-18

Yes, extremely secure. In fact, both the processor architecture and the OS were designed from scratch to exclude situations e.g., where unused memory areas would contain data from programs that have occupied that memory space earlier...

What is really strange is that the main architect of VMS actually ended up designing Windows NT.

Reply Score: 2

RE: VMS security
by twenex on Thu 26th Oct 2006 21:03 UTC in reply to "VMS security"
twenex Member since:
2006-04-21

What is really strange is that the main architect of VMS actually ended up designing Windows NT.

Follow the money. And factor in Cutler's disgust with UNIX.

Reply Score: 1

Interesting...
by JamesTRexx on Thu 26th Oct 2006 21:31 UTC
JamesTRexx
Member since:
2005-11-06

If it could be fully functional we might be able to virtualize the old VMS servers at work. That would be totally neat. :-D

Reply Score: 1

Golly
by McBofh on Fri 27th Oct 2006 04:04 UTC
McBofh
Member since:
2005-07-07

You know, despite having (successfully, I think) buried the bad memories of when I had to admin VMS systems.... I might just see how well this thing runs under qemu.

Just for the heck of it.

Then I'll go back to my therapies......

lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala

Reply Score: 1

Howto use it with qemu
by mariuz on Fri 27th Oct 2006 06:35 UTC
mariuz
Member since:
2006-02-21

Download the disk images from the site links (under the USE link )

http://www.systella.fr/~bertrand/FreeVMS/indexGB.html
wget http://www.systella.fr/~bertrand/FreeVMS/a.img.gz
wget http://www.systella.fr/~bertrand/FreeVMS/c.img.gz

gunzip a.img.gz
gunzip c.img.gz

qemu -fda a.img -hda c.img -boot a -monitor stdio

Select the default grub option

Reply Score: 1

This rises the question...
by fooman on Fri 27th Oct 2006 11:32 UTC
fooman
Member since:
2006-10-27

...who f--king cares?

Reply Score: 0

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