OS News Archive

"If you want to get involved in business," Sen. Orrin Hatch warned technology companies at a conference in 2000, "you should get involved in politics." Hatch was referring to the shortcomings of then-software king Microsoft, which he had spent most of the previous decade harassing from his perch as Judiciary Committee chairman. The message was clear: If you become successful, you must hire lobbyists, you must start a political action committee, and you must donate to politicians. Otherwise Washington will make your life very difficult.

The average computer user might think that the number of languages their operating system supports is pretty long. OSX supports 22 languages, and Microsoft claims to support 96, but they're counting different regional dialects multiple times. But there are over 6000 languages, and though many of them are spoken by a dwindling few, there are some languages that are spoken by millions of people that are supported very poorly, if at all, by computer operating systems. The reason for the support being poor is that the people who speak those languages are poor, and are not good "markets." It's only because of the efforts of a few dedicated people that computing support for languages such as Burmese, Sinhalese, Pali, Cambodian, and Lao have been as good as they are, but the trends for the future are not good.

So, I've been sitting on this one for a few days now, since I decided to let the sensationalist headlines pass by before I took a stab at it. Developer Christina B. has started - and released code for - an amazingly intriguing project: implementing Darwin/BSD on top of the Linux kernel. Just to make this absolutely clear: it's not her intention to allow iOS applications to run on this new, hybrid system. Let me reiterate: it's not her intention to allow iOS applications to run on this new, hybrid system. This, however, does not make this project any less interesting.

With the ability to run the GNU tool chain including GCC, binutils, and GNU make, the Genode OS framework has taken another big step towards becoming a general-purpose OS. The just released version 12.05 introduces Genode's file-system infrastructure along with support for stacked file systems, extends the framework API with support for configuring system components on-thy-fly, and adds media replay capabilities.

"Lua OS is - or aspires to become - two things: 1) a first-class modern Linux distribution for the desktop that you can use every day for everything you want to do with your computer - and something that is always offering enjoyment. 2) a next-generation, orthogonally persistent operating system for portable, manageable and secure scripting code. The Lua OS project is spearheaded by Stefan Reich who deserted from Google Inc. in 2008 in order to pursue much greater visions."

"Punix is a Unix-like operating system for the Motorola M68000-based TI graphing calculators, starting with the TI-92+. It is currently under development and is not ready for widespread use yet. So far the kernel is being written, and user-space utilities and applications will follow." ...amazing.

MINIX 3.2.0 stable is released. Major features include: Asynchronous, multithreaded virtual file system (VFS) server, Better reliability, Better virtualization support, and much more.

The Android x86 team has released Android x86 4.0 RC1, based on Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and features support for multi-touch, Wifi, audio, bluetooth, G-sensor and camera, OpenGL hardware acceleration for AMD Radeon and Intel chipsets, Kernel 3.0.8 with KMS enabled and more. Android-x86 is a project that provides Android support for x86, making it easy to install it on netbooks or laptops. You can use it like any other Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich device: install applications from the Android Market, add widgets and so on.

As you've undoubtedly noticed, OSNews has been down most of the day. We're back up now, running like we always do. We rarely have this kind of extensive downtime, so in the interest of full disclosure, here's what happened. If you're expecting some sexy story - think again.

...and we're back. Like so many other sites on the web, OSNews joined the worldwide protest against the Stop Online Piracy Act and the PROTECT-IP Act, which threaten to end free speech, economic innovation, privacy, and the free exchange of information on the web. I don't wish to waste too many words on our participation, so consider this item as a sort of comment lightening rod to make sure that when the next story is posted, we can focus fully on its topic. Update: DC seems to be getting the message the internet sent today.

Ah yes, why not? The last time we did this, it was March 2011, so it's been almost a year since we offered a little insight into what kind of operating systems and browsers you, dear readers, are using. Nothing particularly earth-shattering going on here.

We're looking at two alternative operating systems hitting updates. MenuetOS, the operating system written entirely in assembly, hit version 0.98.27. Meanwhile, FreeDOS 1.1 has hit final.

InfoWorld's Keith Schultz provides an in-depth comparison of enterprise-grade virtual desktop infrastructures from Citrix and VMware. 'As in my comparison of entry-level VDI solutions, my goal was to see what it would take to deploy a complete VDI solution based on Citrix XenDesktop 5.5 and VMware View 5 for up to 50 users,' Schultz writes. 'When compared to the Kaviza, NComputing, and Pano Logic solutions, XenDesktop and View take much more effort, knowledge, and time to get up and running. But for companies that need to be able to grow and manage a large number of virtual desktop users, XenDesktop and View are the only way to go.'

ToAruOS is a hobby operating system project under development by UIUC computer science undergraduates. It is based on POSIX and runs on x86. While the ultimate goal is a microkernel, it is currently a very monolithic kernel. The documentation includes links to guides on OS development.