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Thanks for your comment. I'll upload some (better) screenshots soon!

(I'm Whitix's author). Apologies. It's fixed now, the data's were a month behind. No need to worry OSNews, it was just an error with the blog dates. (No idea how it happened though.)

It seems to be a hobby OS. If you've ever checked out osdev there are hundreds, if not thousands of hobby OS's that follow POSIX's ideas. Most of them never make it past the initial development stage, and ones like this are the result of a lot of determined work, and are quite rare.

Their point is usually a combination of study and or accomplishment.

I think Linux started his OS as another hobby OS too.

We do not know whether one of these "experiments" will grow up as a mainstream OS.

Anyway, doing something that starts in the bare metal and gets stood in its own feet is a very respectable thing.

True, but OSes were a lot simpler back then. It is just about impossible for a new OS to emerge today and be successful. The work required is just too much.

Especially when the advantage of the new OS is simply speed. That's not an advantage. It's just a symptom of being incomplete.

Nothing wrong with hobby/educational OSes, but lets not kid ourselves as to what they are.

True, but OSes were a lot simpler back then. It is just about impossible for a new OS to emerge today and be successful. The work required is just too much.
"

While I tend to have the same feeling about OSes then and now, they thought the same then too (that operating systems were already too complicated for a hobby project to grow into something big).

Who says an OS has to be one massive, complex beast of code with bleeding-edge 3-D graphical effects and every "feature" imaginable in order to make it past pure hobby status? Sure, it needs to look nice enough to to be able to comfortably use, but even that doesn't need the latest Quartz, Compiz or Aero with a recent graphics card. As long as it works, and it works good... that's what really matters. If it has the most important features, but not little-used ones, again... what's the problem? Smaller code size, leaner OS, still functional. Too many unused features are just bloat.

I have yet to find a practical reason for an OS to explode in size like the OSes of today are, other than sloppier programming. As processor speeds increase, it should be spent on optimization, to make the most of that extra power... not wasted by lazy programmers, making that extra power useless (yet at the same time, just to be able to run their POS program). In some of the worse cases, a new version of a program on newer hardware can still run slower than an older version of the same program, on *slower* hardware... with absolutely NO new features (at least, none that are of any use). Mostly just a shiny new resource-intensive GUI. That is beyond disgusting.

In conclusion, I think it's the other way around. The typical operating system these days is *too bloated*... if any OS manages to make its way out of hobby status while having good hardware support, having all the main features that are expected in an OS today, and still being lightweight, that would be great. From what I hear, Haiku appears to be approaching that point, and I hope they succeed.

Sure, but now the existence of Linux raise the barrier of entry to make another useful OS..

When Linus started Minix wasn't really Free and there was a lawsuit against BSD and no major Free OS existed..



No, but we do know that from the kernel POV being able to provide something to users that the hundreds of kernel developers working on Linux cannot replicate is very difficult, except for a totally different design (like L4 or EROS for example).

And from the userspace either you provide a POSIX layer and you look very much like a Linux distribution which makes it hard to interest users or you don't and you don't have much software..

That said if Haiku/Syllable starts to gain traction, perharps this will motivate other OS dev to improvement for desktop usage..

Well, Mister SpeechManiac,

You may have a point, but your sarkasm is a exaggerated, don't you think? I mean, if your point is there are many new OSes already and only a few will see the finish line.

Why not another OS? I think it's cool to start a new one. But I agree with you, it's like the Paris-Dakkar ralley where only a handful of contestants will make it to the Finish-line. Except there is no Finish-line (nor is there a Start-line... but that's only philosophical).

I personally think with Linux in general we already have an excellent horse in the race against Microsoft, Apple, Symbian, etc... I couldn't see myself investing time in yet another pony trying to get it where the horse already was. But again, that's just me.

In any case, I salute the guy(s) at WhitiX trying to create a new star in the Open Source Universe! I'll keep an eye on them and see, how far they'll fly...

But I do have to say, I found your posting rather funny! Don't know why you got all those negatives. Do you really think, they cooked that up after a party, haha? During a hangover I don't particularly think of an OS, hahaha...

Anyway, this forum could loosen up a bit and your contribution may just be that.

Best regards.

PS: Smile and be happy!

The desktop OS is an eventual goal; it may be a bit early to call it one, but I believe stating the project's future intentions (a display server is planned for the next release, so it won't be a million miles away) is no bad thing.

At any rate, this is a pretty early release of the software. Comparing it to Linux at this stage is a little unfair, and that link was more to stimulating discussion of Whitix's general architecture than a concrete prosposal on its future design.

>>The desktop OS is an eventual goal; it may be a bit early to call it one ...

<RANT MODE ON>
It is so refreshing to be told what the aspiration of a project is. Too often we get a list of acronyms and buzz words. It is far more enticing to try a program and stick with it if one shares the aspirations of the developer. With that enticement comes a virtuous cycle of encouragement back to the developer.
<RANT MODE OFF>

Besides future goals of having a GUI for your OS...I'm still very unclear what the other goals of the project are. I've looked around on the site/wiki and have found very little info on what the real purpose and goals of the project are. Not to hate or anything, I'm still very interested... I do have one question though, that may sound like some other comments on here, but I don't intend it to: Why start a new OS based around 32-bit? It seems pretty obvious the future is in 64-bit, multicore processors... so why not create a new OS for the future rather than trying to support 486 processors that maybe 12 people on the whole planet still use?

Otherwise good luck! Don't listen to all the "why bother" guys. One of the key problems with the Windows world is that it's a monoculture...and so a monoculture of only Linux would be almost just as bad

BTW...really glad to see your not using the old legacy Unix file system hierarchy, it's one of my biggest peeves with the current Linux community with the exception of Gobo (simply going on the blog post about /System/Devices if I'm wrong).

Edited 2008-03-29 05:48 UTC

Actually, when I started the operating system (it was about two or three years ago, but I took about a year's break in that time), 32-bit single core processors were very common. However, a x86-64 port and SMP support is definitely in the works.

I'm currently adding a "Our vision" page. It's a good suggestion actually, so hopefully I can clarify things for you.