Submitted by “Whitix is a 32-bit operating system for the Intel and AMD range of processors, licensed under the GNU GPL. It features a C compiler (tcc), Python, assembler (nasm), text editor, shell and filesystem formatter. See the Introduction to Whitix for more information.” Version 0.03 was released a month ago. My, aren’t we sharp today.
The thumbnail sized screenshots were not that impressive!
Thanks for your comment. I’ll upload some (better) screenshots soon!
Version 0.03 was released a month ago. My, aren’t we sharp today.
Hunh? See the Recent Releases section on the main page: “Whitix 0.03: 24 March 2008”. Then the blog says February. Who knows which one is correct.
(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.)
How many POSIX-ish Desktop OSes do we need? The FOSS world is already hard at work on two “desktop only” OSes of the sort (Haiku and Syllable) and some crazy hacker with more of a profit motive has been banging away at SkyOS for years, too. When you combine those with the fact that Linux (and these days FreeBSD) can form quite a nice base for a GUI desktop system, I frankly fail to see the point of this one.
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.
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).
Valid comments of course. By the way, Whitix isn’t actually a POSIX OS (it requires a POSIX compatability layer to run typical Linux applications).
The great thing about Whitix is that, since it’s not an extremely popular OS, the developers at whitix.org can quickly incorporate new and innovative changes into the kernel without millions of users, plenty of architectures and years of backwards compatability.
However, at the moment, we’re working on actually getting working versions out. (I made a conscious decision to sacrifice “cool new features” to “release early, release often”, rather than spend years in development like Hurd and others).
In short, keep an eye on Whitix. Expect it to divert from the traditional POSIX hobby operating system soon; the developers have got bigger plans (and look at the frequency of releases!)
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.
Yeah, what he said! There’s way too much bloat in OSes these days — for very little in the way of visible advantage. What’s wrong with having a slick, bare-bones OS that zips along and lets you add stuff to it as you please?
I could do my daily tasks in DOS on a 386 all those years ago much faster than my Vista-laden Pentium-something-or-other can do them today. And this is progress? All you get in return is some fancy graphics. Big friggin’ deal.
If you’re not writing a desktop OS, then it can be streamlined. But desktop OSes need to have all the features that users expect these days.
A common misconception. There is no magical list of features that are “bloat”. Despite what lots of people think, if you remove the 20%/30%/50% of features that are least frequently used, you will lose a far higher percentage of your users.
Features, features, features. As the features expand, programmers require more frameworks to keep up with development. Those frameworks require more resources. Sure if we all still developed in C and assembly everything would run a lot faster, but it is completely impossible to write complex software with such basic tools in a reasonable time frame. Sorry. Just not possible.
It would be great. But unfortunately completely impossible.
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..
I can’t get to the site – did someone post to Slashdot?
it all started – the Preface…
“…Hey Joe! Hey Frank! Cool party yesterday, huh? Yeah, dude, cool – and lots beer! Yeah, that was great. Hey, listen, when I stepped out for a moment, you know – huh – I was thinking, you know. With all that cool Linux stuff, you know, how’bout we make our own little X-kinda thingie, you know. Stuff with X, out there with people working for us, you know. Hey, coool, dude, that’s fun, huh-huh. You know, we’re in charge and tell them what to do, you know, huh! Dude, awesome, dude! Hey, you know, let’s get started, huh! Hey, the other day I downloaded the code from FreeDOS, you know, huh! We can get started there, you know. Cool, dude! Awesome, you know, I still have my web-site cupon here somewhere, huh. Cool, man, let’s load some stuff up there, you know. With screen shots and other trivia what people are asking for, you know, you know, huh! You’re DA MAN, dude, DA MAN, huh! Now one last thing, you know, the name! What’s the name of that stuff, you know, a nice name, flashy and cool, you know. Something with an X in it, huh, that goes the best, you know. Yeah, hmm, hmm, you know, how’bout DosequiXX, kinda like the beer from Mexico, huh? That’s cool, whatdayathink, huh? Yeah, no, dude, not good, you know. Hey, you know what, huh, the X-thing is usually with white letters, huh, you know, huh? Yeah, dude, what’s your point, huh? You know, we can call it the White – X thingie or so, huh, whatdayathink, huh? What, huh? WhiteX, nah, bah, huh. How’bout WhitX, nah, nah. Hmmm, WhitiX? Whoa, dude, YOU ROCK, dude! Com’on, let’s get started, huh! WhitiX, cool, dude, AWESOME! Now, let’s go have a beer, huh, you know, a Dosequis, you know, with two Xs in the logo, dude…”
…and so it all began! The world anxiously anticipates the 1st Alpha release around 2030 (A.D. that is), unless…
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!
BSDs and GNU/Linux, with all the apps, drivers, stability, etc they have, aren’t considered “desktop” OSs by 99% of mainstream media. I think it is too early to call an OS with only 4 packages (assembler, C compiler, text editor and a shell) a desktop one.
Also, I think it’s hard, as it is, to convince any developer to contribute some time to it. There is no focus: a redesign of the kernel already?
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.