OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/20335/SqueakNOS_Look_Ma_No_OS_ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Mon, 20 May 2013 11:30:11 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Get rid of the OS by replacing it with a crippled one http://www.osnews.com/thread?331690 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331690 I don't get the point of this. From what I've read, SqueekNOS is just a greatly crippled OS that can only run Squeek. Sounds pointless to me (or is this another alternative OS?)

Is this getting rid of the OS or is it just putting in a lousy crippled one in instead? Sat, 27 Sep 2008 01:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sultanqasim) Comments RE: Get rid of the OS by replacing it with a crippled one http://www.osnews.com/thread?331692 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331692 I would agree - it's still an operating system, they just seem to be moving it into their own implementation. Sat, 27 Sep 2008 02:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jbrocklin) Comments dont know why... http://www.osnews.com/thread?331711 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331711 but im getting that pico-kernel vibe from this one... Sat, 27 Sep 2008 11:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (hobgoblin) Comments Finally, but maybe a bad route ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?331713 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331713 It just feels right to have Squeak running as an OS unto itself. After all, it is pretty much a self-contained development and education environment.

But I must really ask, is it wise to start from Scratch (sorry about the pun). Starting from scratch means that any piece of hardware that is supported for SqueakNOS will have to have a driver written for it. Some of that hardware can use fairly generic drivers, but it will never be optimised (which is fairly important for video in the case of Squeak). My past experience with alternative operating systems leads me to believe that some hardware will always be hit-and-miss (e.g. ethernet).

Maybe it would have been best to just set the danged thing on top of the Linux kernel, then writer squeakvm 'drivers' that interact with high level stuff (like the framebuffer). You get free hardware support that way, even for other CPU architectures. Sure you lose the glory of writing your own OS, but once you strip out everything but the Linux kernel, Squeak VM, image file, changes file, and maybe a few plug-ins; noone will recognise the thing as Linux anyhow. Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (MacTO) Comments RE: Finally, but maybe a bad route ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?331714 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331714
It just feels right to have Squeak running as an OS unto itself.

As an Isaac Asimov fan, the first thought that came to my mind was "Solaria". Looks like they're making all the same mistakes. Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments RE[2]: Get rid of the OS by replacing it with a crippled one http://www.osnews.com/thread?331715 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331715 Looks like an osmose operating system. Sat, 27 Sep 2008 13:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (turrini) Comments RE: Finally, but maybe a bad route ... http://www.osnews.com/thread?331720 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331720
It just feels right to have Squeak running as an OS unto itself.


I bet that's the same reason JNode exist.
Each language foo fan seem to want the whole OS written in foo.

If the language has special security features such as capability, this could be useful otherwise these OS are just toys, which is fine. Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (renox) Comments what Squeak needs... http://www.osnews.com/thread?331746 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331746 I wish that the person doing the port of wxSqueak would get it into a form that would compile for Linux. The GUI stuff that squeak has is pretty ugly. Rounded corners are not the be-all and end-all some people seem to think they are. I really like smalltalk and squeak, but creating GUIs that look decent in Squeak is an incomprehensible exercise. It speaks volumes about the state of smalltalk when the website at http://www.smalltalk.org/main.html still has articles on its main page dated from 2006 (yeesh!). Why is it that every really good OO language, such as smalltalk and Objective-C are just creeping along at a snail's pace? Come on folks, C++ is just a hideous mess compared to either smalltalk or Objective-C. Sun, 28 Sep 2008 00:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (StychoKiller) Comments Look No OS! http://www.osnews.com/thread?331755 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331755 I find these kind of articles to be ridiculous. The only software that can run without an OS are applications which access all their hardware directly; and even so, by attaching to interrupt vectors and the like they are arguably both an OS and an application.

So fundamentally, there is no way to run on conventional hardware without an operating system. Articles with this kind of title are obviously naive and I am stick of seeing them.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am a security specialist and systems software programmer with a computer science degree. Sun, 28 Sep 2008 02:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (voidlogic) Comments Will the CPU be next? http://www.osnews.com/thread?331771 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331771 The next logical(?) step such projects take is to create their own CPU architecture like Java and Lisp before them. e.g.

* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine
* http://www.particle.kth.se/~lindsey/JavaCourse/Book/Part3/Chapter24...

However, I don't think anyone has taken the final step and reimplemented the underlying physics. Sun, 28 Sep 2008 12:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Meridian) Comments RE: Look No OS! http://www.osnews.com/thread?331782 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331782 Why the hate ? Would you have liked the article if it said "SqueakNOS - Running Squeak on bare metal" ?

Well its 2008 and all of know what an operating system looks like. But thats also a issue - because we are held back from preconceived notions (like everything is a file). So someone is working on a clean room implementation - maybe it will yield some interesting and innovative ideas.
If you went back to 1990 and heard someone was implementing a UNIX like OS from scratch that didnt build incrementally on System 5 or SCO - you might have said the same thing - no drivers ....
But sometimes good things do come out of impractical ideas. Sun, 28 Sep 2008 19:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Dawgmatix) Comments RE[2]: Look No OS! http://www.osnews.com/thread?331802 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331802 I believe you are reading some things into what I said. I am in no way against experimental implementations or innovation. I don't care if you want to try to use an "everything is a function,file,object,kitchensink" paradigm.

All I said was I think all this talk of "getting rid of the OS" is silly. In this case, the OS really just being reimplemented in a way that is tighter with the language's run time.

My reaction is due to all these people saying things like "OMG the internet is killing the OS". Last time I checked you need an OS to run your web server or web browser on. An even in you integrated OS functionality into your web browser (which I am not endorsing!), your web browser would then become both a browser and an OS.

On a side note, I think this project fails to realize that the best part of a traditional OS is supporting multiple languages. Single language operating systems don't tend to last the test of time.

All this said, I wish them only the best, their results will be interesting. Mon, 29 Sep 2008 01:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (voidlogic) Comments Loved it http://www.osnews.com/thread?331816 http://www.osnews.com/thread?331816 Downloaded, tried it out. I can only say, its quite funny, i like it. Mon, 29 Sep 2008 09:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (kafanta) Comments This is just a return to tradition. http://www.osnews.com/thread?332027 http://www.osnews.com/thread?332027 Squeak is Smalltalk. Smalltalk originally ran as, essentially, its own OS, on the Xerox Alto, the first GUI computer. Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (madcrow) Comments Comment by Novan_Leon http://www.osnews.com/thread?332246 http://www.osnews.com/thread?332246 Phase 1: Make it boot
Phase 2: Make it breath
Phase 3: Give it awareness
Phase 4: Help it grow
Phase 5: Let it be
...
Phase 6: Squeak breaches the AI singularity
Phase 7: Squeak begins world domination

Skynet has nothing on Squeak. Thu, 02 Oct 2008 16:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Novan_Leon) Comments