OS News Archive

The Be operating system file system, known simply as BFS, is the file system for the Haiku, BeOS, and SkyOS operating systems. When it was created in the late '90s as part of the ill-fated BeOS project, BFS's ahead-of-its-time feature set immediately struck the fancy OS geeks . . . we'll take a look at the legendary BFS, starting with some filesystem basics and moving on to a discussion of the above features.

We've taken the next step in Internet connectivity, and have IPv6-enabled this site for testing purposes. Of course, this will only work if your ISP or some third-party gateway provides you with IPv6 connectivity, which you can check here. If you're all set, try the IPv6 OSnews out at http://ipv6.osnews.com/ and let us know if you have any trouble with it.

Okay, so building up on the feedback given on the previous item on that topic (thanks everyone, and xiaokj, Alfman and Brendan in particular!), I have tried to improve the design of my daemon and service model a bit further. Here is the new version, feel free to study and discuss it!

It's funny how trying to have a consistent system design makes you constantly jump from one area of the designed OS to another. I initially just tried to implement interrupt handling, and now I'm cleaning up the design of an RPC-based daemon model, which will be used to implement interrupt handlers, along with most other system services. Anyway, now that I get to something I'm personally satisfied with, I wanted to ask everyone who's interested to check that design and tell me if anything in it sounds like a bad idea to them in the short or long run. That's because this is a core part of this OS' design, and I'm really not interested in core design mistakes emerging in a few years if I can fix them now. Many thanks in advance.

The concern for efficient and easy-to-use inter-process communication is prevalent among microkernel-based operating systems. Genode has always taken an unorthodox stance on this subject by disregarding the time-tested standard solution of using an IDL compiler in favour of sticking to raw C++ mechanisms. The new version 11.05 of the OS framework takes another leap by introducing a brand new API for implementing procedure calls across process boundaries, facilitating type safety and ease of use, yet still not relying on external tools. Furthermore, the platform support for the Fiasco.OC kernel has been extended to the complete feature set of the framework. The most significant new features are L4Linux (on Fiasco.OC), an experimental integration of GDB, ARM RealView PBX device drivers, and device I/O support for the MicroBlaze platform.

There comes a time in a Linux-loving geek’s life when he or she needs a new challenge. Making desktop apps isn’t hacking it anymore and building yet-another-website seems passe. If you want to jump into the world of mobile, here are a few reasons why HP webOS is the platform for you.

BareMetal Node is a HPC platform based off of BareMetal OS. The kernel binary on the nodes is 6KiB and mainly contains the network and disk drivers. A C or Assembly program can make use of all available CPU cores via the Orchestrator program that controls what the nodes are working on.

B Labs demonstrates Codezero Embedded Hypervisor virtualizing an Android instance on Pandaboard with a dual-core Cortex-A9 based TI OMAP4 SoC. Codezero Embedded Hypervisor is a hybrid L4 microkernel that also acts as a Linux virtualization solution (currently version 0.4.4 in the demo). Earlier versions of Codezero are open source B Labs also releases open API toolkits for the hypervisor enabling operating systems and baremetal software development on multicore ARM processors.

Ah yes, why not? The last time we did this, it was March 2009, so it's been two years since we offered a little insight into what kind of operating systems and browsers you, dear readers, are using. In those two years, a lot has changed. I will also explain why in the few cases that OSNews does host video, I will host it in WebM.

HelenOS is a modern microkernel-based multiserver operating system running on a large variety of processor architectures. Version 0.4.3 thereof has been just released. The new release fixes many bugs and brings a lot of improvements in areas so diverse such as new hardware platform support, userspace device driver framework, device drivers, observability and robustness, programming languages, file systems and networking. For the complete list of user-visible changes, see the release notes. The released files can be downloaded from the project's download page.

It's not the return of the OSNews comic, but it was too good to let pass. Our coverage of the Apple event was minimal this week, so I decided to round the key points up in an illustration...

Oh. My. God. When I read this, and browsed the website, my face went like this. Do you remember the Amiga? That fun little computer that was miles ahead of its competition, but in recent years has been dragged through the mud by one shady figure after the next? Here's a new one: Amiga, Inc., the one 'run' by Bill McEwen, has partnered with a company called IContain to slap the Amiga logo on a bunch of low-end, incredibly sad products. Whether this is another shady deal I don't know, but worthy of the Amiga? I don't think so. I'm not putting this in the Amiga category, by the way. I refuse to. Forget it. It's going into our generic category. Fitting. Update: As was pointed out over at AmigaWorld.net, not only are these nothing more than brandless OEM products with Photoshopped logos, the website itself is just a standard, unmodified WordPress theme. Oi. Doesn't instil a lot of confidence, now, does it?

A list of intriguing rumours from the week that was... Firstly: Dell looking to buy AMD. Having one of its best financial years with revenue of $6.49 billion and net profit $471 million, the 'AMD in crisis' reports just won't go away. While news of execs leaving the company, and the almost total rebranding of its processor line-up won't help to quell this, the company sure looks healthy, at least in the short term. Although demand for its products is rising with demand exceeding supply in some cases. I can't help but think this has all to do with the Windows/ARM announcement.

Now that you have an idea of where your OS project is heading as a whole, it's time to go into specifics. The first component of your OS which you'll have to design, if you're building it from the ground up, is its kernel, so this article aims at being a quick guide to kernel design, describing the major areas which you'll have to think about and guiding you to places where you can find more information on the subject.