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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.

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.
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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).

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.

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..