Linked by Emmanuel Marty on Thu 2nd Sep 2004 07:36 UTC
As a programmer and manager of embedded software products for a living, I think that operating system programming is so much fun that it will eventually be outlawed. I've previously published two articles on OSNews, So, you want to write
an operating system and Climbing
the kernel mountain, and tried to summarize my experience in designing operating system kernels as well as technical traps that can be easily avoided.
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Solar,
I have nothing against alternative operating systems. It seems every alternative operating system is trying to achieve what the big three already have, perhaps with slight alterations and/or motivations.
My qualm with these alternative operating system projects is that they are eager to rewrite everything more stable, more tested and more trusted operating systems have had for years. In other words, they reinvent the wheel and don't do a remotely impressive job at that.
Name one alternative operating system that performs one function better than, say the big three, and I will name a million the big three does better than the alternative. Forgive my hyperbole.
I see, for example, many alternative operating systems trying to recreate BeOS. So what do these hackers do? They write a kernel from scratch to mimick good ol BeOS. Yes, BeOS was solid for its time, but heavens sake, Linux and BSD have a better kernel than BeOS could ever dream of, at least today.
Why not just use those already robust, stable and tested kernels? You get an upsetting amount of drivers for free. You get to pick and tweak which scheduler suits your needs. You get pick and tweak which filesystem better purports BeFS. You get chances of easily porting must-have apps to your new project among other benefits.
But what do our friends do? They do what every geek worthy of his esteem will do. They rewrite the kernel. They magically expect drivers to fall from heaven. The kernel they write hasn't seem any form of real life testing. The kernel is epileptic under high load. Aha, they forgot the kernel needs tools, applications, and a window system.
Instead of tweaking, modifying stealing already existing, well tested, well (ab)used, stable "free" tools, but God forbid! they rewrite those too.
Many of these so-called alternative system won't boot from a floppy, don't recognize your USB keyboard, wouldn't operate above 1600x1200 resolution, wouldn't recognize your printer, don't have an office suite, and on and on and on. The operating system they are trying to recreate had all that and more.
These are functionalities users have come to expect in an operating system. So we say alternative operating systems need to exist because of innovation and new ways of doing things. I say name one alternative operating system that is doing something I can't do on the big three.
Yes, it used to be that I indulged in alternative operating system just because they did something uber cool that wasn't done anywhere else. Today, that is all but gone. By all means right your kernel from scratch, I just hope its an intellectual exercise and nothing more.
When the alternatives do something I can't do on the big three, perhaps then it might raise some heads. Just don't tell me you can't recreate AmigaOS, BeOS, OS2, or whatever you were infatuated with back then with freely available tools and frameworks today. And don't tell me to keep your new innovative idea untainted, you have to rewrite everything from scratch. But geeks will always be geeks. Real men rewrite it from scratch, right?
Meh, I'm rambling.