Submitted by “Linux distributions such as Ubuntu, SUSE, and Linspire are making headway in the desktop market, but if you want to try something really different, you can find other, less-well-known alternative operating systems. While these OSes may not be the most stable, or have the greatest hardware support, they offer some unique ideas.” SkyOS, Haiku, Syllable and Visopsys are reviewed.
Haiku has taken quite some time to develop, and despite being so very old (relatively) I still use BeOS Max 3.1 as a very (VERY) reliable audio storage and playback platform. My harddisk had a cable-related seizure recently and after I lost my Win98SE installation (same drive, different partition) some of my hardware refuses to act properly, however BeOS still runs like nothing ever happened. This could just be driver problems or maybe my hardware’s flaking out, but Be still ‘just works’ – and with gusto!
If I were to finally say farewell to Win (98, XP, whatever) I would need a platform that can make use of my software (ten years worth of software is hard to let go). So ReactOS (and the quite expensive eComStation OS2) seem to by my only real hopes. I’ve toyed with the ReactOS live CD, and I was impressed to see how far they’ve come – but I don’t know how well some of the more recent hardware/driver developments will work with it. It does crash (so far, it’s holding true to the Windows tradition) but as it is still in fairly early development, I really can’t blame them for that. As far as OS/2 goes, I’ve used it before at a temp job – and it had a strange feel to it. It’s hard to describe, there’s something like a ‘Unixdows’ aura around it that makes you feel warm-and-fuzzy (perhaps because you never see a Microsoft logo).
I have a soft place in my heart for the BeOS/Haiku/Zeta community, and high hopes for ReactOS and what little is left of OS/2. Other platforms like SkyOS, Syllable, and Visopsys are just a wee bit too obscure for me to use daily, and despite popular opinion – BeOS does have a well-rounded software collection. I’ve actually noticed that a number of programs were originally written in BeOS and ported to other platforms (OggVorbisEncoder, Handbrake, some minor others). It’s not ‘bleeding-edge’, but sometimes a butterknife can cut the toast.
So ReactOS (and the quite expensive eComStation OS2) seem to by my only real hopes.
I read this here at OSNews and it’s just not true. The best non-Microsoft platform for running win32 software is GNU/Linux with Wine, and ReactOS is still very far from it.
Like I said, it’s just hope. Wine fails on large applications, should I try to run Simcity 4 under Wine…?
…no, I’m trying to preserve my sanity. However it happens, I don’t really care. I’ll just keep trying whatever becomes available. Hopefully, for free.
Edited 2006-06-16 01:14
Actually, you can run Simcity 4 under wine
The installer doesn’t work, so you have to manually copy some files, but apparently the game runs fine afterwards. Transgaming would probably run it even better.
Wine actually works pretty well now. The 0.9.x series are really good.
Haiku got the smallest writeup which surprised me. I suspect amongst the intended audience, Haiku still has the largest mindshare of the 4 given its commercial prior form of BeOS & cousin Zeta (my guess only !).
Given that BeOS actually had apps written for it, those (few?) that can run on Haiku now, I’d guess probably outnumber those written for each of SkyOS, Syllable & Visopsys.
The SkyOS file system writup could have given credit the bfs written by Axel Dorfler for Haiku.
Its wonderful the 4 exist and I’d love for them all to attract more developers, get more drivers & apps and attention.
About the status page on the website: Haiku is a lot further along. I don’t know if those bars have ever been updated. A new website might be on the way, BTW.
The reason you need a BeOS/Zeta partition already (to build/install or unzip a prebuilt BFS image) is because the team don’t want bad (unfinished, unstable) cd images to circulate, giving people bad first impressions. They want to release it “when it’s ready”, when it’s reasonably on par with BeOS R5, in terms of feature completeness, backwards compatibility, stability and a good user experience.
There are however harddisk images to try out and screenshots.
Areas where Haiku needs work:
– Networking works but is inccomplete.
– USB is (AFAIK) very far from complete.
There’s a 3’rd party bounty program targetting these two areas especially, and an official project employing a student to work on porting a BSD net stack. Our very own Summer of Code, minus the Google.
I wonder if the goal of most alternate OSes should be to just run on the standard hardware model provided by one of the VMs ie VMWare. I haven’t tried that so I don’t know how that would feel v natively run on better real hardware.
Building the OS out to completion with drivers for zillions of devices can only mean that it is never finnished or severely limited. Once you have the main OS up and running on VM with applications getting written, then see if they can go to native HW.
I also agreed that BeOS/Haiku/Zeta must be closest to a 4th OS, I couldn’t seriously consider the other 3 mentioned as interesting as they look.
Why would your comment apply to an OS like Syllable but not E.g. Linux, FreeBSD or even BeOS? All OS’s start with little to no hardware support and aquire more drivers over time. The hardware support in Syllable is pretty good, when you consider the stage of development and what is required for basic operation (which includes networking and multi-media here).
I couldn’t seriously consider the other 3 mentioned as interesting as they look.
Why? I can’t speak for the other three, but Syllable is a pretty decent system and it’s getting better all the time. Email, web browsing and multi-media are all available, and the development tools are good. It isn’t ready to be your #1 full-time OS just yet, but it makes a good 2nd system.
I’d second that. Syllable is coming along really nicely.
I’m working on something in the same area.
My new computer died, so I got a little set back.
Watch this space for fuether details.
Hi!
I’m doing a wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open_source_operating_sy…
any kind of help is welcome.
Mostly new info!
Sorry for spaming, but i think it’s connected.
I wouldn’t really call that a review, more like a synopsis
All I saw was ‘Review: Four Completely Useless Operating Systems’
Aww, don’t be bitter. It’s Friday! I’m sure you’re looking forward to going out for a drink later with your mates! If you have any.
Doesn’t sound like you’ve tried them.
SkyOS is quite good (memory consumption is on the large side, but that’s probably going to change), Haiku is an open source clone of BeOS and needs no further presentation.
And Syllable (uhhmm… I luv it). On my system applications start so fast I can’t start two at a time. The first application has finished loading before I can start another one (well, ABrowse is slow enough for me to open the Dock menu before it has finished loading, but that’s as far as I get).
And memory consumption is low, and applications are quite functional.
It has a wide array of applications, ( look at http://kamidake.other-space.com/ ), and with the newest release, it’s actually quite amazing.
I’ve dropped my jaw a couple of times.
One more alternative operating system:
http://www.losethos.com
Features no security, no virtual memory, designed for programmers who want complete access to their machines. Works on least common denominator hardware. Has live CD, so you can check-it out without installing. Efforts have been made to simplify programming. Intended for hobbiests who want to write their own games, but is flexible.
You guys missed a very important upcoming distro named Tomahawk Desktop (http://www.tomahawkcomputers.com).
Their latest release is very much better compared to Ubuntu’s latest (6.06) on technical merits and its very stable too. I have never seen a distro yet who offer fully automated Windows dual boot, complete implementation of QoS and something similar to Tomahawk’s /home/common/ to share files right out of the box like.
Just try this feature alone, try to browse some website on Ubuntu and compare that to the speed of browsing the same website on Tomahawk Desktop. The difference like the day and the night. As a user you have nothing to configure on Tomahawk Desktop, everything just right out of the box, maximum just adjust the fonts to your taste, that’s all.
Well, this is about alternative operating systems and not about alternative linux distributions
I am very much interested in SkyOS but don’t know how I can try it out. I have contacted the developer in this regard too. Anyone here tried out SkyOS, looks very promising to me. I have heard a lot of good about SkyFS, though. The programs having .app extension does remind me of Mac but it might only be a coincidence. Thanks in advance. I thought Thom was aquainted with the developer of SkyOS.
Just for curiosity sakes, what’s your primary OS Thom.
Hardware support Hardware support Hardware support Hardware support !!!!
This is the main problem with most os’.
We need something better than X-windows.
DirectFB maybe.
A windows driver wrapper ?
Something like Project Evil (FreeBSD) for Windows network drivers to work on FreeBSD.
Cooperation between the projects would be helpful too. Sadly it’s impossible yet to share code directly (it seems as if nobody has invented a programming interface for drivers yet that is system independent, easy to use AND doesn’t suck at performance). But proper documentation of the hardware itself would help too, once one of the projects has figured it out.
And maybe that next-generation programming interface turns out of it… the current attempts like OSKit are simply too system dependent.