http://www.osnews.com/story/15924/OSNews_Alternative_OS_Contest_Results Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 11 Dec 2009 06:32:13 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread?165658 http://osnews.com/thread?165658 I made an entry. I had an unstable version posted--maybe that's why you didn't publish. Currently, a decent, but not perfect version of LoseThos is available at http://www.losethos.com . Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TDavis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165661 http://osnews.com/thread?165661 Cool initiative and cool submission overall... The GEOS review was indeed outstanding. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (XemonerdX) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165663 http://osnews.com/thread?165663 Anyone? Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Pixie) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165664 http://osnews.com/thread?165664 see topic Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ford Prefect) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165666 http://osnews.com/thread?165666 I really enjoyed reading all the great articles. Thank you, osnews and submitters! Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (maxx_730) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165669 http://osnews.com/thread?165669 Excellent Tue, 26 Sep 2006 12:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hhcv) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165673 http://osnews.com/thread?165673 Who is the crowd for LoseThos? What type of user are you aiming for? I know it's a hobby OS of yours, and appears to do what you want it to, so I applaud you for that.

But honestly, this is a direct quote from your website: "I love my operating system the way it is and don't give a crap what you think."

Who are the people using this operating system besides you? If people are providing you feedback and you're simply not interested, why would anyone want to use this OS? Operating Systems THRIVE on feedback. This is why Linux and FreeBSD are growing. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165675 http://osnews.com/thread?165675 LoseThos is for home computers. Security is not an issue. Everybody on this site obsesses on security. LoseThos is for programmers. Security means lack of freedom as a programmer. In losethos, you have kernel priviledge at all times, so you can turn-off interrupts or do other protected instructions. Needless to say, most people on this site find it an affront. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TDavis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165681 http://osnews.com/thread?165681 Kudos! Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sphinx) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165684 http://osnews.com/thread?165684 Congratulations to Kroc and Andrew. This was a very nice contest and goes back to what OSNews is about. I hope we see some other contests similiar to this, or maybe the same kind in a year to see how these alternative OS's have progressed. I'd like to get a shout out to James Ingraham for his QNX article. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 13:31:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TaterSalad) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165692 http://osnews.com/thread?165692 Me too. It was a really nice idea, a great response by everyone who wrote in, and some very good reads. Quite right to give something to everyone who was published also. It was partly the sheer variety that made it so interesting. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 14:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (alcibiades) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165705 http://osnews.com/thread?165705 I do not understand your point of view.

I am a programmer and I like to program for the PEOPLE or for other programmers which will program for the PEOPLE.

Programmers doing programs just for programmers does not make sense.

If your Operating System is oriented for programmers... the people which program for your operating system, what orientation must have? Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ebasconp) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165707 http://osnews.com/thread?165707 If he doesn't give a crap about what you think, I guess your feedback about feedback (meta-feedback?) won't have that much effect... Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165708 http://osnews.com/thread?165708 I personally share your point of view, but programming is also a bit of work of art. Programming for programming's sake makes sense: it's fun, it is a learning experience, it makes you test and learn new programming techniques (that you can apply to useful programs later). I prefer to code with a pragmatic target, but I appreciate elegance and fun in programming, and I'd just like to be good enough to participate to the International Obfuscated C Contest.

In addition, more often than note "just-for-fun" projects have later became important for people. No one would have given a dime on a monolithic hobbish hacked Unix clone tightly tied to i386 architecture that was done just for fun by an IT student. But now I'm running Linux. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (devurandom) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165710 http://osnews.com/thread?165710 I don't say that only the end user has to be the target of your work, but at the end of the chain, one end user will be at front of what you did (using an application that uses a library that uses another library that uses the library you have programmed).

If LoseThos does not have the vision to reach to the end user, his work will be useful for a tiny community of programmers.

Anyway, I hate the "I will not hear you, I do whatever I want" style of the owner of this proyect. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ebasconp) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165711 http://osnews.com/thread?165711 Needless to say, most people on this site find it an affront.

I think you might be placing your own point of view on my thoughts. What bothers me is the constant spamming of your site/OS. While I am honestly impressed with what you seem to have done (I am not a programmer, so these skills are something I do not posess), I am personally very annoyed at your actions of spamming, arguing and insinuating insults at other members here. A look at your past posts shows this is a habit of yours.

Perhaps you ought to consider this as another possible (and more likely) reason to the poor response you seem to get. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (markjensen) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165712 http://osnews.com/thread?165712 Why not run a contest like this every so often (quarterly would be nice)? Make a rule that you can't submit a review on an OS that was done in the previous contest.

Heck, the prizes wouldn't even have to be that interesting. It would just be nice to see reviews like this more often.

Bravo to the contributors and the OS devs. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 15:51:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (cujo) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165756 http://osnews.com/thread?165756 I think the winner was well-deserved. The article/review is a good model for anyone intending to write about an old OS. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 17:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mypinkshrimp) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165760 http://osnews.com/thread?165760 It's been over thirty days since being published on OSNews.com, so I can now link you to the original article (without paging) which you may enjoy

http://camendesign.com/kroc/stuff/geos/ Tue, 26 Sep 2006 17:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165765 http://osnews.com/thread?165765 paging is necessary for EMT64 on Intel. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 18:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TDavis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165785 http://osnews.com/thread?165785 The self-imposed limitations of our CMS, written to work in ALL brosers, prevented us from publishing the article unaltered. I'm glad people can reference your original work now. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Adam S) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165791 http://osnews.com/thread?165791 I didn't properly take into account the limitations you have; at the same time though, it gave me the room to write the article as I wanted it to be, and you poor guys worry about the limitations XP.

I felt that the original article was suitable in the middle, and quickly paced; where as on OSNews, the 14 pages meant that the middle seemed slow and uneeded (my own fault). The other contestants seemed to do a much better job of suiting their article to OSNews. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 19:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165814 http://osnews.com/thread?165814 9.8.5 Initializing IA-32e Mode
On IA-32 processors that support Intel EM64T, the IA32_EFER MSR is cleared on system reset.
The operating system must be in protected mode with paging enabled before attempting to
initialize IA-32e mode. IA-32e mode operation also requires physical-address extensions with
four levels of enhanced paging structures (see Section 3.10, "PAE-Enabled Paging in IA-32e
Mode").
Operating systems should follow this sequence to initialize IA-32e mode:
1. Starting from protected mode, disable paging by setting CR0.PG = 0. Use the MOV CR0
instruction to disable paging (the instruction must be located in an identity-mapped page).
2. Enable physical-address extensions (PAE) by setting CR4.PAE = 1. Failure to enable PAE
will result in a #GP fault when an attempt is made to initialize IA-32e mode.
3. Load CR3 with the physical base address of the Level 4 page map table (PML4).
4. Enable IA-32e mode by setting IA32_EFER.LME = 1.
5. Enable paging by setting CR0.PG = 1. This causes the processor to set the
IA32_EFER.LMA bit to 1. The MOV CR0 instruction that enables paging and the
following instructions must be located in an identity-mapped page (until such time that a
branch to non-identity mapped pages can be effected).
64-bit mode paging tables must be located in the first 4 GBytes of physical-address space prior
to activating IA-32e mode. This is necessary because the MOV CR3 instruction used to initialize
the page-directory base must be executed in legacy mode prior to activating IA-32e mode
(setting CR0.PG = 1 to enable paging). Because MOV CR3 is executed in protected mode, only
the lower 32 bits of the register are written, limiting the table location to the low 4 GBytes of
memory. Software can relocate the page tables anywhere in physical memory after IA-32e mode
is activated.
The processor performs 64-bit mode consistency checks whenever software attempts to modify
any of the enable bits directly involved in activating IA-32e mode (IA32_EFER.LME, CR0.PG,
and CR4.PAE). It will generate a general protection fault (#GP) if consistency checks fail. 64-bit
mode consistency checks ensure that the processor does not enter an undefined mode or state
with unpredictable behavior.


I couldn't get it to work, but can try some more stuff, except my new computer broke.

Maybe that's where I went wrong--I have 3 levels, not four for paging--didn't try that combination. Don't have a machine to work with, though.Edited 2006-09-26 20:47 Tue, 26 Sep 2006 20:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TDavis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165828 http://osnews.com/thread?165828 I'll second that. I don't really have much of a desire to use his OS, but I can certainly appreciate what it does and what he has done. His attitude on these forums has been a real turn off though. Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (smitty) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165831 http://osnews.com/thread?165831 Off topic tho.. i wonder what is your aim/goal for your own OS. what advantage does your OS provide to programmers better than (Free/MS)DOS? I am wondering because there's no information on your website whatsoever. BTW, I think it doesn't look good that you are complaining here that your article has not been published. If you can publish your article somewhere, maybe on your losethos website, I will definitly have a look.

Back to the topic, I've read GEOS article very interestingly too. I was really interested in Ensemble long long time ago when I was using DOS on XT. But I had no chance to play with it. Anyway, congratulations, Kroc! Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (t3RRa) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?165848 http://osnews.com/thread?165848 You suggesting something's a crock of sh*t?

You don't have to install losethos to a hard drive--it's live. It's a modern operating system, not something from the 70's or 80's.

I bought a pentium D from dell with linux and the CPU load tool only showed one CPU. Does Linux support more than one. LoseThos does, in a limited, but effective way.Edited 2006-09-26 22:33 Tue, 26 Sep 2006 22:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TDavis) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?166004 http://osnews.com/thread?166004 I found the AROS article to be a very interesting read, and I thought it was part of the contest at the time I read it. This seems not to be the case because its summary doesn't mention the contest. On the other hand, the FreeDOS article summery doesn't either, so maybe Adam simply forgot about the AROS article or somehow thinks it didn't meet the qualifications? Wed, 27 Sep 2006 08:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bogomipz) Comments http://osnews.com/thread?166206 http://osnews.com/thread?166206 Congratulations to the winners, I have particularly enjoyed the article about GEOS. Most of the contributions were very interisting, thanks to all participants, I learnt much!

I hope to see such contests again on OSNews. It was définitely worth the efforts Wed, 27 Sep 2006 19:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sigfrodi) Comments