Submitted by The 0.7 version of the Visopsys desktop operating system has been released. “More than four years in the making, this is a major new release offering an updated look and a number of new features, including JPEG image support, image resizing, 64-bit disk support, UDF (DVD) filesystem support, and GPT partition table support, as well as lots of new icons, wallpaper images, and file browsing functionality. New administrative applications and functionality have been added, and the ATA/IDE driver has been enhanced, including the ability to better support backwards-compatible SATA controllers. FPU context saving has been improved, and a number of tweaks and bug fixes are also included.”
You fail to mention what the heck is Visopsys. People shouldn’t have to read the news behind the news to just understand what the buzz is about. And in this case even that isn’t enough, because you only link to a change log.
Edited 2011-02-20 06:53 UTC
“JPEG image support” + “64-bit disk support” + “DVD filesystem support” + “GPT partition table support” + “ATA/IDE drive” + “FPU context saving”
Of course, it’s hitting toward a new spreadsheet navigator :p
OSNews at its fullest !
Kochise
Bet it’s a web browser myself. They tend to be so all-inclusive in terms of features on these days
Is the new teaser better ?
Edited 2011-02-20 08:13 UTC
News about OS’s on OSNews clearly befuddles the average readers.
Odd.
Don’t be silly, it is obviously about the RIAA. The parts “op” and “sys” clearly gives that away.
I agree. A single sentence explaining why you should care about Visopsys would be much appreciated. Though if jpeg support is a new feature I should probably not care about that OS.
Perhaps the “image resizing” feature will tickle your interest?
It’s a hobby OS. One that’s been well reported on in the past (not just here, but internet wide)
So that might be why there’s a lack of detail – it was assumed that people who would read this were already following this OS.
Edited 2011-02-20 11:19 UTC
If you want 4-word sentences explaining in simple staccato English what we report on, go read Engadget.
I wouldn’t mod you down because there is some truth in that not everyone on the face of the planet will know what Visopsys is and maybe a (very) brief reminder could help those people. However, on the other hand, this is OSNews, you know, news about operating systems, and Visopsys is certainly not a newcomer in the hobby OS area. I’m sure the vast majority of people coming here know what it is, and if they don’t, will take action to find out. And to make matters worse, I could take any search engine or go to Wikipedia and by simply typing “visopsys,” immediately get all the information about this OS. So really, I see no reason to complain.
You have the resources in front of you without even having to get off your ass or even wasting more than a minute trying to get it, use them. I would say not doing so is pure laziness, but then, you felt the need to post a comment and complain about it, so it sounds like you just want to complain.
This is something I’ve commented on in the past, but this time I don’t see the issue. Maybe the news blurb has been changed since you first read it, but the brief highlight seem OK to me.
1) What it is? Desktop operating system.
2) Why is it in the news? Major new release.
3) Why is it so important as to earn a place on OSNews? Well, it’s one of the few quite successful and long-standing homegrown OSes with also a very small development team. For a homegrown OS Visopsys is actually pretty advanced and since this release brings along several really big features it’s very deserving of a spot here.
Off-topic: I personally have no interest in it, but I have to say the author has done an amazing job at it and I really do commend him on that, and his resilience on keeping developing it further. Keep up the good work and ignore the trolls.
The first line has been added due to his comment, I must give credit where it’s due
I found the author’s comment that writing a pascal compiler over 8 months was trivial compared to writing an OS. I suppose I can believe it but I wasn’t sure, since compilers typically involve more math but OS involve more hardware and signal-related details. I suppose a kernel is more painful to debug as well. What really makes a kernel so painful compared to a compiler? I have only ever written a toy compiler with another person, long ago, and that was definitely the most difficult thing I have coded on. On the other hand, my OS class never had us write an OS … so perhaps that also hints at the truth.
Well first Pascal is an old language which is not too difficult to compile: Haskell is a much more complex language for example.
Then a compiler has one input (your set of source files) and one output (the generated .o files) whereas an OS has lots of input (all the hardware state changes) and lots of output (all the scheduling and hardware commands), so that make an OS much, much more difficult to write..
We can read from VisOpSys new release, but many linux distros remain unmentioned… Ofcourse OSNews should nt be another distrowatch but for example new release of sackware should be mentioned. Last time when the 13.1 was released, no mention in OSNews…
I can imagine that making OSNews more like distrowatch would make some of its readers rather unhappy.
What’s wrong with distrowatch anyway.
Everyone’s a critic
Absolutely nothing. Distrowatch is just perfect for covering news related to mostly Linux distributions. The intended auditorium might not be aligned with that of OSNews, where I would expect more stuff like this one rather than distro-related news.
Nothing per se, but OSNews is aimed at reporting happenings in the IT field much more widely whereas Distrowatch is only following happenings in the Linux-related field and even there mostly about distro-specific stuff. Distrowatch really only caters to those who are really, really damn passionate about Linux and atleast I have no interest whatsoever to follow such a site. OSNews is much more interesting especially because it covers so diverse topics.
Did you submit anything?
EDIT: Also:
http://www.osnews.com/story/23353/Slackware_13_1_Released
I was about to say – we reported on that alright.
Edited 2011-02-20 11:33 UTC
Comme on dit chez nous : “Cassé” (broken) !
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrqdjTAcCYY
Kochise
C’est supposer qu’il existe au moins une circonstance où citer Brice de Nice est pertinent
Oh, right, I spend a lot of time quoting Star Wars and LOTR characters after all…
Perhaps “Same player, play agin !” should have been more dedicated to the situation, yet the famous Brice’s breaking sound echoed in my head while reading Thom’s comment :p
Et oui, il n’est pas toujours facile de le caser quelque part, le Brice, même dans une simple conversation il arrive à tout… casser :/
Kochise
An old – 1997 – one man project. Doesn’t have very exciting features or a sensational OS architecture.
Edited 2011-02-20 13:22 UTC
Do VESA, do SATA, do multitask, do GUI, do… sure, it’s not even close to standart Windows’ feature set :/
Kochise
At least it’s interesting and that’s more than I can say about your comment.
So what? WTF are you doing on a website named “OSnews” if you belittle a commendable effort like his?
And btw, where is **your** OS? I bet you’ve never even considered writing one… hence your abysmal comment.
Thanks to everyone for checking out the release.
It seems the standards of some people for hobby OSes have changed — apparently now they’re expected to be better than Windows? Or they’re bad (old) if they’ve been in development for a while?
It also seems like the general comment quality on this site has taken a beating in the last couple of years. Getting closer to the Internet average, it seems.
Heh, this is why in my kernel design article I’ve been talking about the “cool factor”
Technical achievements are not sufficient nowadays, OSs also have to be impressive in some unique way in order to go beyond a “meh” reaction.
I’ve tried the image myself, and I think that you have reached a nice technical level (although you really should consider embracing double-buffering, especially in the snake game, and I can’t understand the controls of minesweeper : how do I put flags ?). But there’s simply not enough “wow” around here, you should maybe work on that side of things.
There’s multi-buffering throughout the window system. The minesweeper game was written by a contributor; I’ve maintained it since then, but to be honest I’ve got higher priorities than perfecting that game.
Which brings me to the point that I disagree about ‘bling’. It’s funny how peoples’ ideas of what an operating system should be, changed when Microsoft started including the kitchen sink in Windows.
Believe it or not, my Visopsys is probably one of the most heavily used hobby operating systems out there, though the users might not know it. http://partitionlogic.org.uk. After the last release, it was being downloaded ~200,000 times per month.
So, I disagree that technical achievements shouldn’t be the primary concern of an OS developer; but to each their own, I guess. I guess it depends whether you’re trying to impress people on the Internet, or trying to build something good.
Technical achievements are primordial, but a bit of bling is also nice to have, in my opinion.
I’m as baffled as anyone at the purpose/us of this project but the hostility displayed here seems way out of line.
Yes, but just like the os it concerns, the hostility is graphical, multi-threaded, serialized and rooted to a one-man project ! Wonderful…
Kochise
Let’s see a software project you founded, then.
Post a link and we’ll have a little discussion about it.
What, exactly, is your objection to my operating system project? Or is it just general trollery?
Actually, nevermind, I don’t care.
[note to self: don’t feed the trolls]
Good luck.
Edited 2011-02-20 17:46 UTC
Don’t worry – just think how often other scientists ask mathematicians what the use of something they are working on is…
As someone else said, everyone is a critic.
Do you speak to me, man ? No seriously, I’ve nothing against your os, quite the contrary in fact, I’m very eager to follow its evolution, I have a look on it since mostly 0.4… Like you said above, people awaits to run Doom 4 on it (http://www.osnews.com/thread?461307) otherwise it’s considered not worthwhile.
Kochise
Keep up the good work Andymc.
I don’t follow your project but still find it important to write positive comments when I see small projects and challenges come up. There are always going to be some posters that keep forgetting the old saying: “If you have nothing good to say, don’t say anything at all”.
This is great news! I’ve been following the development of Visopsys for years, literally, and am very excited to try this latest version. Unfortunately I am away from home at the moment and will have to wait a few days longer to see the improvements first hand.
Congratulations to the developer, and a big Thumbs Up to OSNews for covering this release news.
Nice job man, can’t wait to take it for a spin. Keep up the good work