Submitted by FreeVMS is an OpenVMS-like operating system which can run on several architectures like i386, PPC, Alpha, and many others. It consists of a POSIX kernel and a DCL command line interpreter. The only architectures currently supported are i386 and x86-64. Version 0.2.15 got released Monday.
The website says FreeVMS is a free but Very Much Strange operating system. If I wasn’t already curious, that wouldn’t attract me.
I’m tempted to try this just for old-times sake. I was hopscotching around the world networked VAXes long before there was Linux or FreeBSD or even Win32, which I recall with mixed feelings. But I’m skeptical about the utility of VMS or any look-alike.
free but Very Much Strange operating system.
As I understand it the author’s native language is not English. As such I don’t think he can be criticised too much if a pun is a bit off.
Is it as secure ?
That’s the question.
VMS is probably one of the most secure operating systems ever deployed. That HP is slowly strangling VMS is a (yet another) testament to their abysmal stupidity.
However, FreeVMS is really just a hack pasted on top of the Linux kernel, so I wouldn’t stand in too much amazement.
It may or may not be a good idea to try to replicate VMS in general, but the amount of work to do it for real on x86 (or x64) would be staggering. If you ever got anywhere close to something actually working you’d probably end up as a “person of interest” to HP’s goonsquads. Don’t pick up that cellphone! 😉
I doubt HP’d care that much. They don’t really care about VMS at all. I’d pick a better name than FreeVMS though. After all, it doesn’t make sense to antagonize the tradmark attorneys.
If Windows NT (WNT) is 1 better than VMS, how about “FreeZQW” – free (as in freedom), and 3 better than WNT?
awesome comment!
Yes, extremely secure. In fact, both the processor architecture and the OS were designed from scratch to exclude situations e.g., where unused memory areas would contain data from programs that have occupied that memory space earlier…
What is really strange is that the main architect of VMS actually ended up designing Windows NT.
What is really strange is that the main architect of VMS actually ended up designing Windows NT.
Follow the money. And factor in Cutler’s disgust with UNIX.
If it could be fully functional we might be able to virtualize the old VMS servers at work. That would be totally neat. 😀
You know, despite having (successfully, I think) buried the bad memories of when I had to admin VMS systems…. I might just see how well this thing runs under qemu.
Just for the heck of it.
Then I’ll go back to my therapies……
lalalalalalalalalalalalalalalalala
Download the disk images from the site links (under the USE link )
http://www.systella.fr/~bertrand/FreeVMS/indexGB.html
wget http://www.systella.fr/~bertrand/FreeVMS/a.img.gz
wget http://www.systella.fr/~bertrand/FreeVMS/c.img.gz
gunzip a.img.gz
gunzip c.img.gz
qemu -fda a.img -hda c.img -boot a -monitor stdio
Select the default grub option
…who f–king cares?