“What is the world’s most widely used operating system?” The answer is in an interesting Linux Insider piece about ITRON, ‘a Japanese real-time kernel for small-scale embedded systems’ that runs on a lot of “mobile phones, digital cameras, CD players and other electronic devices.”
ITRON: World’s Most Widely Used OS
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
I’m certainly glad we got this out of the way. Let’s just hope they don’t update the darn thing twice a week to generate another headline.
Now we know who to blame for the Microsoft monopoly:
When the Japanese government announced it would install BTRON PC in Japanese schools, the U.S. government objected. It called the Japanese initiative “actual and potential market intervention” and threatened the move with sanctions. The Japanese, dependent on the U.S. export market, quickly dropped the plan. The U.S. government later withdrew its threat, but the damage had already been done. Nearly all Japanese companies involved in TRON-related activities had canceled their projects
Political interference in the affairs of other nations, and the US wonders why it isn’t the flavour of the month.
Now we know who to blame for the Microsoft monopoly
Not that simple. The TRON project had already started losing credibility in the US because of its failures to meet its AI goals, and Microsoft had already had more than 10 years of growth by ’89.
Besides, the US government intervened several times in that timeframe in favor of the US supercomputer industry, and none of those companies still exist. (Yes, I know, someone is using the Cray name, but CRI is long dead.)
Not that simple. The TRON project had already started losing credibility in the US because of its failures to meet its AI goals, and Microsoft had already had more than 10 years of growth by ’89.
The AI goals were lofty at best; given that Japan has leadership in the consumer electronics market, even if the US were to play the typical role of the nigel no mate, the rest of the world would have been quite happily gone over to using TRON as the default system, and the US using some incompatible thing – just like the US is now with video formats (NTSC), measurement (Imperial), Voltage (110V) and lots of other things.
Besides, the US government intervened several times in that timeframe in favor of the US supercomputer industry, and none of those companies still exist. (Yes, I know, someone is using the Cray name, but CRI is long dead.)
And they still do through rediculous restrictions, pork barrelling under nationalist jingoism’s as spouted by the anti-China faction in the US senate.
Microsoft litigous A-holes.
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/07/16/1521208
How the worm turns. Microsoft being sued by Europe.
I would love to see tron/itron http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_OS
in Plasma screen Hdtvs’. Every Tv should have an opensource STANDARD OS. Not linux.
Edited 2006-07-14 04:31
T-engine seemed very promising. Tangerince cubes with MIPS64 or ARM were about to rock the world. But they are very expensive prototypes. How can we run TRON when it does not on standard PCs. Actually Tangerines are aimed at mass production, and could have been very cheap. They could have been produced for masses. But it did not happen. By the way the A6 (riscos) uses one of these Tangerines reference designs. I think they must reconsider their position and make Tangerines for the masses.
The A6 runs Windows XP on an AMD processor, and provides RISC OS compatibility through emulation. I can see no evidence that it’s a Tangerine reference design.
it sounds like one hell of a beast
but then real-time os’s seems able to draw out more of the computingpower then more “classical” kernels…
I found a Slashdot discussion of a CNN interview with the TRON creator, that’s no longer online, interesting, especially the following post:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=71308&cid=6453737
Somewhere someone also mentions it’s creator uses it on his home PC to do all his work.
Some official links:
http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/homepage.html
http://www.sakamura-lab.org/TRON/
http://www.tron.org/index-e.html
But what I’m wondering is what it’s really like; how to envision it being used on Japanese school PCs. Would it be a multi-tasking CLI with an API? Or does it feature graphical components?
You might want to check this out to see what a BTRON look like
http://www.chokanji.com/
Although I doubt that using this product in Japanese schools would have made it the world’s leading OS… I mean, Acorn machines didn’t exactly rock the world despite their high quality and ubiquitous presensce in British schools in the 80s and early 90s…
I would have guessed QNX or maybe *TCL.
*embedded os found in a lot of credit card/check verification terminals not to be confused with the interpreter.
I would be very surprised if ITRON is the “most widely used OS”.
More than likely, the most widely used OS is going to turn out to be some GM or Ford proprietary RTOS used in automobiles, if “widely used” means “in the most units”, or QNX if it means “used by the most embedded developers”
“And they still do through rediculous restrictions, pork barrelling under nationalist jingoism’s as spouted by the anti-China faction in the US senate.”
In all fairness, this is not behavior unique to the U.S.A but happens to some degree and in some way in most countries.
Edited 2006-07-14 17:00
I know this has beenmentioned, but my outrage calls for this to be reposted:
In 1989, Japanese electronics giant Matsushita introduced a BTRON PC, a machine that stunned the industry with its advanced capabilities. The BTRON PC had an 80286 Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) Latest News about Intel chip running at 8 MHz and a mere 2 MB of memory, but it could display moving video in color in a separate window. Also, it had a dual-booting system that could run both the BTRON OS and MS-DOS.
When the Japanese government announced it would install BTRON PC in Japanese schools, the U.S. government objected. It called the Japanese initiative “actual and potential market intervention” and threatened the move with sanctions. The Japanese, dependent on the U.S. export market, quickly dropped the plan.
I am sure MS had something to do with this, and/or Bill’s high-profile lawyer father.
I am sure MS had something to do with this, and/or Bill’s high-profile lawyer father.
Its possible but it appears MS did not get heavily involved in lobbying efforts within the government until the mid-late 90s after being brought up on anti-trust charges.
I can’t find anything related to MS lobbying in the late 80s, esp in regards to this.
So basically you think it happened and I think it did not happen, and there dosen’t appear to be any proof one way or the other.
Not that it matters either way.
I’d ahve to see another soruce before I believed that this happened, Plus, as other posters have mentioned it probely wouldn’t have made a difference. It was still a 16 bit OS. Plus 2mb was NOT a small amount of Ram on a 286. Try 256k, that would be impressive. With OS2 Warp, I could get four dirrerent videos running on a 386 with 1 mb of ram. Granted that system was slightly better,
I did find some information on this and here is the more interesting part of the original Business Week article published in 1988 concerning the matter:
Looks like it was more than just MS involved:
What is bringing the issue to a boil now are reports that the Japanese Education Ministry plans to require TRON computers in all of the country’s schools. U. S. officials estimate that the Ministry will subsidize purchases of about 2 million computers starting in 1992. Although the Ministry has not formally endorsed TRON, it is widely believed that such computers will get the nod.
‘Against a Wall’
That has dragged Apple Computer Inc. into the fray. Apple, which has the largest share of the U. S. school-computer market, doesn’t want to be shut out of Japan’s educational system. After five years of slow sales in Japan–partly because of its own mis-steps–the company now wants to build a $500 million business there in the next five years. Delbert W. Yocam, president of Apple Pacific, says that so far he has had little luck getting Apple into Japanese schools. ”We’re up against a wall,” he complains.
Microsoft Corp., which was the first U. S. supplier to lobby Washington about TRON, has backed off, at least temporarily. The company feared that TRON would end the domination of NEC Corp. personal computers in Japan. Those machines, which use Microsoft’s MS-DOS operating system, have an estimated 50% share of the market. However, NEC has designed a machine that runs MS-DOS and TRON for the Education Ministry bid, and Microsoft is lying low. ”Our earlier concern was that there were government people backing a nationalistic approach,” says Ron Hosogi, Microsoft’s director of Far East Operations. He adds that ”it still could be a political issue if we find out that a government body or a quasi-government body mandates TRON.”
http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/msvshistfact.html
.
ITRON is not an OS (someone had to say it).
Anyway, it sure is regrettable that MTRON was never implemented fully enough to deliver on its goals. It would’ve been some real neat stuff.
Those yellow-background web pages at
http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/
read like a lot of sour grapes babble for what is essentially vaporware; this gives a better view of the story:
http://www.glocom.org/tech_reviews/jt_review/20031023_s52/index.htm…