OS News Archive

The 0.7 version of the Visopsys desktop operating system has been released. "More than four years in the making, this is a major new release offering an updated look and a number of new features, including JPEG image support, image resizing, 64-bit disk support, UDF (DVD) filesystem support, and GPT partition table support, as well as lots of new icons, wallpaper images, and file browsing functionality. New administrative applications and functionality have been added, and the ATA/IDE driver has been enhanced, including the ability to better support backwards-compatible SATA controllers. FPU context saving has been improved, and a number of tweaks and bug fixes are also included."

We have a new operating system! Well, no - we have a new operating environment, since it's technically not an operating system. Pyxis 2 is an operating environment written in C# on the .NET Micro Framework. The goal of the project is to make it easier for developers to develop robust NETMF applications, while providing users with a common environment to launch applications in. It is open source (Apache 2.0).

In this series of OS News articles, I'vedescribed how to refurbish maturecomputers. One useful technique is torun multiple operating systems on a singlecomputer. This retains the benefits of the existing Windows install andcouples it with the advantages of open source software.Thisarticle explores different techniques to runmultiple operating systems on one computer and discusses theirbenefits andshortcomings.

ChibiOS/RT 2.2.0 has been released. The new release of this open source embedded Real Time Operating System (RTOS) includes support for multiple compilers (Cosmic, GCC, IAR, Keil, Raisonance), drivers and demos for new hardware, internal optimizations and documentation improvements.

It's recently been a year since I started working on my pet OS project, and I often end up looking backwards at what I have done, wondering what made things difficult in the beginning. One of my conclusions is that while there's a lot of documentation on OS development from a technical point of view, more should be written about the project management aspect of it. Namely, how to go from a blurry "I want to code an OS" vision to either a precise vision of what you want to achieve, or the decision to stop following this path before you hit a wall. This article series aims at putting those interested in hobby OS development on the right track, while keeping this aspect of things in mind.

I just want to put up a little notice to inform you all about the lack of updates on the main page. The problem is that I've been hit by the flu and have been down and out since last Thursday, unable to do the news. The rest of the team has been occupied as well, so that explains that. I'm sorry for the inconvenience, and since I've pretty much almost recovered, normal posting schedule will resume either tomorrow or Wednesday at the latest. Thanks for understanding. Also, read more for the most beautiful piece of art ever created in the history of the universe. And I mean it.

What were the big themes this year? Which stories on OSNews were the most popular? We dove into our database (well, Adam did), and compiled a list of 2010's ten most popular stories on OSNews. As a metric, we didn't look at silly things like hits or whatever, but at the only metric that matters on OSNews, the only metric which really indicates what our registered (and thus, loyal) readers loved to argue about this year: number of comments. Yes, that headline is intentionally confusing.

Documentation on how to create a FreeBSD DomU is scarse, so I wrote this step-by-step guide, to guide users from the initial download to a complete, running FreeBSD DomU under a Linux Dom0 Xen host. The guide covers creating the initial Xen kernel, configuring the Xen host, generating the correct configurations, resizing FreeBSD partitions in Xen and cleanly booting the final OS. In the process, we will also create a template disk image which can be used to generate new VM's very quickly. The entire process can be completed in under an hour the first time, and only takes 5-10 minutes to re-generate future VM's.

First of all: the entire OSNews team would like to wish you a very merry Christmas. Even if you're not religious, there's always porn on the internet, right? Anywho, these wishes are a bit tardy, but that's because I've been fighting a battle with my computer the past few days trying to find a way to record Minecraft footage so I could make a Christmas wish from inside my creations - a losing battle, so it would seem. So, for Christmas, I have two OSNews Asks items for you to ponder. First, help me record Minecraft footage. Second, and this is of more practical use to myself and probably others as well, help me to set up an automatic backup solution that backs up the contents of one folder on an external hard drive to another external drive.

Check out the new screencast presenting the Genode Live CD 10.11. For those of you who like to get a glimpse of the recently released Live CD but hesitate to download and boot the ISO image, the Genode developers have prepared a screencast on Youtube with a guided walk-through.

I know that there's a number of readers who don't like it when OSnews covers political topics, I'm one of them. These political upheavals however spell danger for operating system hobbyists and so I dedicate this article to framing the political news within the context of what we are here to read about: operating systems.

The version 10.11 of the Genode OS construction framework has been released. Driven by the requirements for the recently published Live CD, the new version features an execution environment for drivers of the gPXE project, an on-demand-paged ISO9660 file system, alpha-blending support for the GUI server, a new virtual network bridge, and a http-based block driver. Enjoy the release notes for the full story.

The Genode project has released a bootable live CD showcasing the capabilities of their OS-construction framework. It boots in less than 10 seconds (on VirtualBox) to a fully functional graphical user interface featuring a selection of five subsystems (screenshot). Each subsystem demonstrates different aspects of the framework. One of the highlights is a web browser that is executed natively on the microkernel and is able to run a sandboxed Linux kernel as browser plugin. Among the other demos are the famous Gears OpenGL demo showing Gallium3D in action, and a user-level Linux seamlessly integrated into the system.

"This release builds upon the work done for the 2.5 series, and delivers many new drivers for internal MCU peripherals, USB support, Atmel SAM3N support, and a new API for block devices. New supported CPU: Atmel SAM3N Cortex-M3. Atmel ATmega1280 and Arduino Mega code. New module: USB support for STM32. New drivers: usb-serial, USB keyboard, and USB mouse. A new interface for block devices: KBlock. A new module: generic event completion infrastructure. A new and more flexible I2C API."