OS News Archive

Darwin/ARM running on a Nokia N900

OS News 16 Comments

Darwin is the core operating system that lies under both Mac OS X and iPhone OS. It is the true core foundation that bridges the kernel to the actual UI above. (SpringBoard/loginwindow/etc).

With the help of @plus_chan and his Nokia N900, I present to you, Darwin/ARM running on a Nokia N900.

I doubt this has any usefulness whatsoever, but that doesn't make it any less awesome. Great work (via Steven Troughton-Smith).

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MenuetOS inches towards 1.0

  Submitted by Rohan Pearce OS News 22 Comments

MenuetOS sits in an interesting nexus between astonishing technical achievement and computerised work of art. The super-speedy, pre-emptive multitasking operating system is still, despite adding more driver support, more included applications, an improved GUI and digital TV support over the years, capable of fitting on a floppy disk (assuming you can find one).

MenuetOS is a technical marvel. Not only is it written entirely in assembly, it also shoves a fully capable multitasking operating system on a single floppy disk.

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Contiki 2.7 released

OS News 3 Comments

The Contiki operating system, known for its super-slim IPv6 stack, has been updated to version 2.7 with support for new Systems-on-a-Chip: single-chip devices with a microprocessor and an integrated 2.4 GHz radio. This new version has a much strengthened IPv6 wireless mesh networking setup that allows a bunch of chips to autonomously form wireless networks that can be connected directly to the Internet.

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Samsung is already shipping its first Tizen device

OS News 14 Comments

Tizen holds the promise on shipping on lots of different devices. Samsung has already been shipping the Samsung NX-300M Camera for the last month or so but Today at the Tizen Developer Summit, Samsung has officially announced that this camera is actually running Tizen!

So, Tizen is now shipping... On a camera. On a related note, Samsung has let out some details of Tizen 3.0, planned for next year. It's going 64bit, will gain multiuser support, and will switch from X to Wayland.

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Wi-Fi Light Bulbs to run the Open Source Contiki OS

OS News 11 Comments
The open source Contiki operating system and its commercial Thingsquare distribution are making strides towards the connected home. According to a Computerworld article, a new LED light bulb manufacturer is putting small computers into their light bulbs. Each computer runs the Contiki OS, which gives each bulb an IP address and allows them to be controlled with a smartphone application. To connect the bulbs to the application, the bulbs use both Wi-Fi and the much lower power IEEE 802.15.4 mesh technology.
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OpenVMS taken out back, single gunshot heard

OS News 36 Comments
"HP has announced the end of support for OpenVMS, the ancient but trustworthy server operating system whose creator went on to build Windows NT. OpenVMS started out as VAX/VMS on Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX minicomputers, then later was ported to DEC's fast Alpha RISC chips – before the Compaq acquisition of Digital led to their untimely demise. HP ported the software to the Itanium, but HP isn't going to bother moving to the last generation of IA64 and support will finally end in 2015." The article seems to have confused the end of support of VMS (which projected to happen some time after December 2020) with the end of IA64 sales for machines that support VMS and/or the end of support of the Alpha version of the operating system, but it seems either way that the venerable operating system is on its way to meeting the same fate as MPE.
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Where are the hobbyist mobile operating systems?

OS News 124 Comments
Almost exactly three years ago, I wrote about why OSNews was no longer OSNews: the alternative operating system scene had died, and OSNews, too, had to go with the times and move towards reporting on a new wave of operating systems - mobile, and all the repercussions that the explosion of smartphones and tablets have caused. Still, I was wondering something today: why aren't we seeing alternative operating systems on mobile?
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Change platforms

OS News 67 Comments
Change platforms. Whenever you can. Ever since I got into computing, I've lived according to a very simple adage: change platforms all the time. For reasons I won't go into, the importance of this adage was reaffirmed today, and I figured I'd share it with you all - and hopefully, get a few of you to follow this adage as well.
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0install 2.0 released

OS News 11 Comments
0install 2.0 is out today. Zero Install is a decentralised cross-platform software installation system, allowing software developers to publish programs directly from their own websites, while still supporting shared libraries, automatic updates, dependency handling and digital signatures. It complements, rather than replaces, the OS' package management. Departing from its traditional use of installing desktop applications, many of the new features were driven by requirements from the Ryppl project, which is using 0install as the package manager in a modular build system for C++ projects.
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Genode 13.02 supports IOMMUs on x86, runs on Cortex A15

OS News 21 Comments
The just released version 13.02 of the Genode OS Framework comes with major improvements of the underlying kernels. Using the NOVA kernel, the framework can be used to build custom operating systems for IOMMU-enabled machines while also leveraging hardware virtualization. Using Genode's custom kernel or the Fiasco.OC kernel, the new version targets ARM Cortex-A15-based systems such as the Exynos 5250 SoC.
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webOS to be abused some more, LG to put it on TVs

OS News 90 Comments
"LG said today it was acquiring WebOS from Hewlett-Packard, with the intention to use the operating system not for its mobile phones, but in its smart televisions. With the deal, LG obtains the source code for WebOS, related documentation, engineering talent, and related WebOS Web sites. LG also gets HP licenses for use with its WebOS products, and patents HP obtained from Palm. The financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed." Completely and utterly pointless. Smart TVs are a dead end. The TV should just remain a dumb receiver for input - whether from a computer or console via cables, or wirelessly from a smartphone or tablet. Our phones and tablets are already smart so TVs don't have to be.
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DOS is (long) dead, long live FreeDOS

OS News 14 Comments
FreeDOS - the drop-in, open source replacement for MS-DOS - was started after Microsoft announced that starting from Windows 95, DOS would play a background role at best for users. Almost two decades later, FreeDOS has survived and, as its creator explains in the interview, is still being actively developed, despite achieving its initial aim of an MS-DOS compatible OS, which quite frankly is somewhat amazing.
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Whonix: building an anonymous operating system

  Submitted by rohan_p OS News 14 Comments
"Whonix is a project to build an operating system that will offer the maximum privacy and anonymity possible straight out of the box. Its creator, 'Adrelanos', says the aim is to make it as hard as possible for privacy-conscious users to make missteps when it comes to remaining anonymous. 'It also provides loads of documentation and possibilities for interested users to make it even more secure,' he says." We've already covered Whonix before.
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Whatever happened to Hurd? The story of GNU OS

OS News 63 Comments
The mostly-morubund Hurd project is well known for what it's not: the kernel at the heart of the GNU/Linux system. But there's a long and interesting story about what it could have been, too. From Linux User magazine: "The design of the Hurd was an attempt to embody the spirit and promise of the free software movement in code." Those are mighty ambitions, and this story is as much about competing visions as competing kernels. Says Thomas Bushnell: "My first choice was to take the BSD 4.4-Lite release and make a kernel. I knew the code, I knew how to do it. It is now perfectly obvious to me that this would have succeeded splendidly and the world would be a very different place today." This is a well-written and fascinating read.
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