Teenager programmer Wim Cools from the Netherlands released two new screenshots of his upcoming v0.0.3 hobby OS, TriangleOS.
Screenshots from TriangleOS v0.0.3
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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An OS is a kernel .. and nothing else. So on his website and as the screenshots show – he is not working on OS improvements but rather adding more applications. Like a desktop (which, yes – is only an application hence X), a clock, a terminal window etc.
>An OS is a kernel .. and nothing else.
In fact, this is a matter of a *huge* debate, for many years now.
An operating system is the groundwork/framework of what allows you to run other apps on top, in order to do your job. To do your job, you need to run these specific applications. If some of these applications require a specific framework to run which happen to come with the distribution of the OS software, then, that framework is part of the OS too. Java is such an example, a graphical server (which in a way is a “kernel” for the graphics operations) is another. So, an OS is much more than a kernel. If that kernel is enough to run the applications you need (e.g. as happens on Cray supercomputers where code is written directly to the hardware via a slim kernel) then yes, the OS is just that kernel. But when you use another kind of OS, where in order to do your job you need to run apps that require other layers of software found in the OS, then these layers are part of the OS too.
An OS is not only a kernel! It is a kernel+lots of utilities to run de system (a shell, etc.). For instance, Linux is a kernel and if you add the GNU utilities it become an OS -> GNU/Linux.
Gotta love those window tabs. I’m really suprised that no one else has picked that idea up. It really saves pixel space.
Anyhow, maybe one of these days I’ll put together a little PC to play with all these hobby OSes. It’d be nice if some of them were more portable.
> Gotta love those window tabs. I’m really suprised that no one else has picked that idea up
*cough* (since 1995)
http://web.archive.org/web/20010521150816/www.benews.com/beos/
Gotta love those window tabs. I’m really suprised that no one else has picked that idea up. It really saves pixel space.
Never seen BeOS have ya? =)
Several Linux window managers duplicate this behaviour though, and I agree it’s a fairly brilliant idea, I used it heavily when I ran BeOS, by moving/arraging tabs (the title) on maximized windows I freed up the space I otherwise would have to have the taskbar in.
Why can’t Linux or Windows or any other OS function as fast as BEOS?
BTW What’s so great about window tabs?
That’s pretty amazing for anyone to accomplish, let alone someone of your tender years. And I can say that without being a condesending old fart because I’m a youngster meself.
BTW, I totally disagree with the OS=kernel notion. In fact, I would say in this day and age, the OS is:
Kernel
Drivers
Shells
Window Manager
E-mail Client
Web Browser
Text Editor
Multimedia Jukebox
PDA/Mobile Phone Sync
etc., etc.
Why? Because, these days, no real average desktop computer can function without any of these components. This is the baseline, folks, not a command prompt and a C compiler.
Regards,
Jared
I forgot to mention the file manager and network share mounting tools as well. Oh, and perhaps a DVD player….
> BTW What’s so great about window tabs?
Tabs are quite good… esp. in fluxbox, a WM for linux (and probably other *nixes). They behave just like tabs in mozilla, so u can have multiple terminals tabbed so they occupy the space of one terminal…
That was my point. I was suggesting by no one else that I was suprised no one other than Wim Cools has picked up on the Be tabs. I was a 90% BeOS-only user for over 2 years, and the tabs are easily one of the top things I miss on my Mac.
Heck Tabs were available way before BeOS. You can actually configure TWM to do a tabbed window title bars…. and TWM was one of the early WMs for X! It predates BeOS by a few years..
Maybe you should see the newest Morphos 1.0 kernel on the Pegasos computer. It boots in 10 seconds and all stuff is ready to go.
Or at least not always !
Check out http://UUU.SF.NET/
This is cool!
I didn’t know nothing about OS when I was a teenager.
I have actually seen Morphos boot and it is not 10 seconds but rather 2/3!!!!
An OS is a kernel .. and nothing else.
Shhh, don’t tell David K. Every that!
BTW What’s so great about window tabs?
By re-arranging them, you can see and quickly access the windows behind it, which you can’t do with titlebars that stretch all the way across. In other words, you can put any windows in a “tabbed” view with a little manual window/tab movement.
What would be really nice would be a container app that you could drag any window into and it would display any windows ou dragged onto it in a tabbed view. That would let you arrange windows into any grouping you want – eg. one container for BeAIM conversations, one for Net+ windows, one for mail folders, etc. It would be pretty simple using replicants, I imagine, but unfortunately most BeOS apps aren’t replicable.
I know that this is a very young OS, but I must say…the GUI is pretty ugly. You don’t need to make it extremely complex to look good. For example, you don’t need gradients in the toolbars (the earlier versions had it), you don’t need to bold or italicize things (like the newest version has), and I realize that it can be changed, but that background doesn’t look too nice. I’m a big fan of single-color backgrounds. The color scheme is nice, except for that damn background. And what’s with the green text at the top? And that font?? Use some nice, standard fonts. Courier New, Times New Roman, Helvetica, whatever, just don’t make it look all blocky like it is now. And try to keep colors fairly consistent. And for God’s sake, make the scroll bars smaller, the mouse fairly normal (did he steal that from XP?), and stop using fixed-width fonts for labels. That’s just my take on the GUI…the rest of the operating system looks like it’s coming along pretty nicely.
“What would be really nice would be a container app that you could drag any window into and it would display any windows ou dragged onto it in a tabbed view.”
Fluxbox does this quite nicely. If you middle click a title bar and drag it onto another, it arranges them like tabs in mozilla etc. The tabbed windows now also resize+minimise together as well, and you can send them as a single object to a new desktop.
For a 0.0.3 OS I think it looks damn good.
Why do people have to be so negative about these things. :/ It’s not contructive… constructive criticism I’d accept.
I say kudos to the author and I look forward to seeing how TriangleOS continues to develop in the future.
No, the comments were right on.
… and constructive
It’s not contructive… constructive criticism I’d accept.
I agree…for 0.0.3 it looks good. Especially coming from a teenage with no background in…well…anything. However I still think that those changes would drastically improve the OS. And they were constructive. I gave a way to improve each and every one of them. Face it…it’s not perfect. And those are ways to fix it. What’s wrong with that?
Why do people who criticize always insist they are helping?
I’m sure the guy knows the problems with his os better than any of us.
He’s just one person, and he’s got to prioritize his time. Fix ng esthetics might not be the most important thing in version 0.0.3.
Are the TWM tabs slideable? Can you right-click to send to back?
Can you operate a computer with just a kernel? No? Then there’s more to an “Operating System” than a kernel.
I thought the comments about gradients and italic text were quite helpful. The thing is, while this OS GUI is hideous, I am impressed with the results the programmer has. I can’t program well, but I know enough to appreciate the effort involved. As a hobbiest project, it’s pretty cool. Plus, the better the coder, the worse they are at GUI and visuals, anyway, it seems. It’s not to slam him or make fun of him; it’s just the way it is. Ugly, but really cool and impressive accomplishment.
who cares?
it’s a hobby OS for his own personal use and experience it’s not like he is marketing it to everyone and expecting it to be used by millions.
you guys need to get a grip.
Yes, there should be some perspective on this. One person, a teenager making his own hobby OS. It is magnificent!
TWM tabs were not slideable, you can choose if you want the tab to start at either the leftmost or rightmost top corner of the window (or just centerd with respect to both corners).
You could devine all the x-events so you can configure right-click to send window to background if you so desire, I dunno remember if that was the default behavior though. It was my window manager for maaaaaany years. And it was funny when I saw the 1st beos screenshop, because I remember I changed the color scheme of my twm def file to use yellow for the window title tabs… and it did not look half bad (I wouldn’t have ever thought of using yellow in the first place)
and no a kernel does not equal an os.
Heh, the guy’s still working on it! Its not like he said “Yo, I’m done and i believe you ain’t seen this before”
How many of us here have gotten that FAR?! Give the young man some CREDIT!!!!! Please!
One the background’s on one of the screen shots, look very familiar? I won’t say which one, just look closely, and you’ll see it…
But anyway good work!!!
So, we’ve got a young programmer who is sending a preview of his windowing system on his kernel, and all you can do is attack how he defines an operating system?
I say good work so far, and I am excited to see further developments.
I think this is great!
An OS is a kernel .. and nothing else. So on his website and as the screenshots show – he is not working on OS improvements but rather adding more applications. Like a desktop (which, yes – is only an application hence X), a clock, a terminal window etc.
Oh, that’s pure bollocks if I’ve ever heard it. That’s all implementation specific. There are OSes out there with 3 MB macrokernels with everything and the kitchen sink built in, and there are microkernels out there with nothing but messaging and HAL built in.
By your definition of an OS, certain “OSes” would never start since they couldn’t load their drivers, and others couldn’t interact with the user, since they weren’t allowed to load the UI.
Look at UNIX. Macrokernel. Everything built in, save for the shell. OTOH, they have a TCP/IP stack built into the kernel. That’s not a kernel feature if you ask me, it’s an application or a library. The only usable OSes out there according to your definition would be 20 MB macrokernels with built in GUI, built-in drivers and built-in apps.
Some programmers like to throw everything into the kernel. Others prefer to implement it as components. But the latter can’t be real OSes, can they?