There's one complaint we here at OSNews get thrown in our faces quite often: what's up with the lack of, you know, operating system news on OSNews? Why so much mobile phone news? Why so much talk of H264, HTML5, and Flash? Where's the juicy news on tomorrow's operating systems? Since it's weekend, I might as well explain why things are the way they are. Hint: it has nothing to do with a lack of willingness.
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Member since:2006-10-18
You serve a good reply, but then you refer to the OS's which isn't mainstream as hobby OS's. How can you hurt me as a MorphOS user so much?
I use MorphOS for Web, e-mail, irc, msn, ftp... I play games on it, I write documents using Google Docs, I watch 720p movies on my macmini! I can multitask,.. I make web graphics with TvPaint.
MorphOS is not a hobbyst OS. Not for me and my usage! Maybe others uses it as a hobby OS, that doesn't mean it is because the other person doesn't know how to use MorphOS in a serious ways. Yes, the OS have its limitations compared to the big OS'es, but I find it way more comfortable to work with than any other OS's I've tried (never tried BeOS).
Stop treating Amiga, BeOS, SkyOS etc+++ users as dumb people. We use the OS's because they are alive. And yes your right. With more respect, people will have the will to try the small ones maybe. MorphOS needs more developers.. its screaming after that and now it exsists for cheap MacMini G4 hardware. It's never been easier to get a good AmigaOS compatible feeling and yet be able to watch HD content and surf the web faster than on most operating systems 
Member since:2009-01-06
This leads to the question - what really defines an hobby OS as opposed to a niche OS or a mainstream OS?
Another interesting definition to clarify is about when a given OS is truly dead.
A number of the great mini/mainframe/workstation OSes of the past can still be experienced but only via an emulator because the underlying hardware has essentially become a museum disply: ITS (PDP-10), RT-11 (PDP-11), RSTSE-11 (PDP-11), Genera (LISP Machine) and many others. Does this mean they are dead?
Similarly for the desktop OSes of the past. Being able to run AmigaOS on an recycled Mac Mini G4 is great. Yet, is there a renewed development of original applications for this OS? Many appear to be ports of existing Linux/Mac/Windows applications.
As an end-user of applications and OSes, I simply wish the geeks to have clear definitions.
Member since:2009-08-19
I did not intend to offend. I also referred to those OS's as "niche" and "alternative." I didn't want to be repetitive so I was simply using different adjectives.
Indeed, up until 5 years ago I used MOS as my everyday operating system and still own a Pegasos 1 and a Pegasos 2. I know the magic that is MorphOS and I'm glad they are on the move again.
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces."But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Member since:
2009-08-19
This thread proves Thom's point, doesn't it?
Nobody outside of the hardest core Amigans believe that AmigaOS will ever displace Windows. That doesn't mean that AmigaOS, BSD, Haiku, SkyOS, or any of the other niche operating systems don't have anything to contribue to the big picture of personal computing. Any promising ideas that the small players cook up will quickly be imitated by the big 3 anyway.
My point is that these hobby operating systems give geeks different angles from which to view operating system design. They are a playground in a time when the big operating systems are increasingly set in their ways--because they have to be. Mobile operating systems are exciting for the similar reasons with the added dimension that a new platform is being developed.
We geeks have to stop looking at alternative operating systems through the lens of market viability. So what if they don't make money? There is still value there.
An operating system is not dead as long as there are users and developers that support it. Since when are hobbies supposed to make sense anyway?