Spoon is a hobby OS, a microkernel that’s fairly complete. In order to test it, Durand John Miller also building an operating system on top of the kernel.
The Spoon microkernel
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Congrats. The more the merrier !
I hope that Spoon will not be forked.
According to the site, it’s a little bit BeOS in design. Poking around, this looks like a cool project. Kudos!
I’ve been building an Operating System on top of spoon for a year or so. It’s a very good microkernel. It has clean design, and is very easy to develop for. Also, Durand is very open to suggestions to improve it. You should definitely check it out if you’re thinking of building a hobby OS.
looking forward to se how this developes, the more the merryer they say
i wonder, how does a gui that basicly ueses the same windows for everything sounds? like say open a file and the same window that you used to locate the file turns into a viewer or editor.
I hope that Spoon will not be forked.
Ofcourse not, there is no spoon…
I do hope it gets forked, since that would be a funny name for a GUI. Now I only have to find out how to stick a knife in it…
Kind of like kparts, if it was way more extensively used?
Wow, competition is on its way back, next for innovation…
yea, kinda like that. to make a “app” you realy make a set of plugins that coexist inside a common window.
and if one then expose the mail and addressbook as it if was files and folders under the user home area (stolen right out of plan9 you may say. the mails are not realy stored as single files but a special fs module is mounted at the base folder and translates a mbox into the folder structure and so on).
only realy freestanding app you would then need would be things like games and maybe a calculator and similar “tools”.
want to write a mail? fire up the “browser” and locate the address(s) you want to write to. action, mail. or if all windows have a address bar, write a mail address in there (complete with completion from the addressbook), hit enter and the window turns into a mail window ready for writeing. hit send or cancel and it will return you to the place you where before you started on the mail.
if you get a dialogbox then it should lock the input of the window it relates, stick itself centerd on top of that window (but not force window to to or anything like that) and if you try to move the parent window it will follow it around so that you dont loose the connection. a bit like how the mac makes the dialog come out of the top only without that visual effect
ie, try to center the gui around files and the windows related to those files rather then freestanding apps. maybe allow the diffrent windows to dock into a single window useing tabs. and/or split the parent window so that you can have files side by side and grouped for moveing
heh, starts to sounds realy much like kparts and konqueror indeed. still, have anyone tryed to make a irc client as a kpart? or maybe embedeed a im client into it so that the diffrent windows become tabs inside a single window?
hmm, marry plan9 with konqueror and kparts. crasy idea?
hmm, start typeing a mail to a person, he comes online as a im, the mail windows becomes a im window? maybe have a question there saying something like “this user just came online, want to send text as im?”.
feel free to call me nuts
I wish people would stop taking the linux approach to OS design – make a kernel, let others make the rest.
Systems like FreeBSD which take the approach of kernel and userland all together make a system much more integrated and easier to use.
Just my opinion of course, taking that approach doesn’t degrade the quality of a system usually – best of luck to you spoon devs!
Thanks for the interest in the microkernel. It’s my hobby and I’ve been at it for a few years so it’s coming along nicely. At the moment, I’m ripping it apart to make it able to support multiple architectures. So, the attention is maybe a week too soon or a week too early.
But try the ISO. It’s the better option out of the two. It has an mpeg player and a movie trailer on to experiment with. It’s a new release so I’m kinda sorting out the userland stability (especially the gui-side of things).
@anonymous: The OS on top of the kernel is something I’m busy developing too. It’s the best way to test and extend the kernel, I’ve found. So I’m hoping to provide a portable microkernel that’s not tied into any system, and a system that runs on the microkernel and uses it to it’s full potential.
but there can allso be problems with a integrated system, just look at windows where every small patch forces a restart of the whole system. under linux you can restart the diffrent parts without takeing down the whole system as they are not joined at the hip.
but there can allso be problems with a integrated system, just look at windows where every small patch forces a restart of the whole system.
That’s not a problem with integration. It’s just Microsoft and their usual lack of foresight, design and conceptual integrity.
but still with all that you will eventualy end up trying to force the system into a shape you not originaly designed it for. and then its simpler to remake it if its modular so that you can rebuild the problem modules without haveing to rebuild the entire system…
is this an OSBOS?
Not really. It used to have a large portion of BeAPI source-compatibility. You could create BApplications, BLoopers, BWindows, BViews, BButtons, BMessage’ing, etc and even drag & drop worked. Simple (very) BeOS apps could compile against the libspoon library and run.
Since then, I’ve removed all the B’s and I call stuff Windows, Views, Buttons, etc, and my C++ classes are a bit different. The old spoon library was moved to the real name of libbe and it has remained untouched until then. It no longer compiles.
But they are still very similar. It would be easy to copy the current libspoon library across, re-add the B’s and modify the classes a little, implement a few servers and.. tada… something pretty close to BeOS source-compatible.
Spoon can be the next cool mini-os similar to QNX. What developers and users looks for as follows:
1. Language
A a fun and easy to learn language like Objective C, Java, or C# with a nice scripting language such as Ruby.
2. API
Lean mean, consistent, and easy to write programs from a developer’s point of view such as OpenStep, Java, QT, or BeOS API.
3. Installation System
The OS and Applications should be very easy and clean to install, deploy, uninstall, update, and maintain.
4. Out of Box
Out of the box, this os should at least provide a nice plug and play networking like OSX rasphordy, office suite, secruity hassle free, multimedia suite, etc..
This is only some of the ideas that I have… Durand, are you planning to create a full desktop OS or embeeded os system like Windows CE?
Also have you check out the Contiki project that have a nice microthread api and networking stack. If we can work with Adam Dunkels with your project, I think we can create a very cool embeeded and desktop OS. If you are interested, send me an email.
His web site is: http://www.sics.se/~adam/software.html
-Kenneth