OS News Archive

RT-Thread RTOS is an open source real-time operating system for 16-bit and 32-bit microcontrollers, with components which include a hard real-time kernel, a command line shell, a device virtual file system, and a graphic user interface. RT-Thread RTOS 0.4.x series will be licensed under the Apache License v2.

"In 2007, OSNews ran an article about OPIUM, showing how to cast apt-get installation problems (choosing which of several possible dependencies to install) as a set of pseudo-boolean constraints which could then be solved mathematically to give the optimal solution. We have recently adapted this technique to Zero Install, addressing some problems experienced by the Sugar environment (One Laptop Per Child) and allowing better integration with distribution packages."

"Joanna Rutkowska, a security researcher known for her work on virtualization security and low-level rootkits, has released a new open-source operating system meant to provide isolation of the OS's components for better security. The OS, called Qubes, is based on Xen, X and Linux and is in a basic, alpha stage right now. Qubes relies on virtualization to separate applications running on the OS and also places many of the system-level components in sandboxes to prevent them from affecting each other."

"ScaraOS is a 32bit mutiboot OS kernel for IA32 (PC/AT) systems. I wrote it to teach myself OS fundamentals and just to have a bit of fun. It already has PCI support, the beginnings of a paged memory management system, and the start of a VFS layer. It supports the basic PC/AT stuff such as timer, PIC, keyboard, floppy."

BeRTOS 2.4 has been released. "This is a major stable release, compatible with earlier versions. The most outstanding feature is the official release of the preemptive kernel and many other optimizations to context switching routines and the default scheduler. Other additions are dynamic stack allocation for processes (classic static allocation is still available), the ability to configure the heap module using the Wizard, a very low-overhead timer-based scheduler, and a new driver for Texas Instruments TLV5618 DAC."

Online advertising has been a hot topic for the past week or so, with Ars Technica trying out an interesting, somewhat desperate experiment wherein they blocked access to their content for people using Adblock. Of course, if this were to become some kind of movement among publishers, it would probably just spark a technological cat-and-mouse game that would surely be reminiscent of DRM cracking or iPhone jailbreaking. But in their post-mortem, Ars states that it was a worthwhile awareness campaign, and I hope that's true. But I thought it would be a good idea to try to bring the collective OSNews brainpower together and crowdsource the idea of how to raise money for a web site in an age where advertising is increasingly un-viable.

With the new version 10.02, the Genode OS Framework significantly extends its supported base platforms by the addition of two modern microkernels, namely Codezero and NOVA. In contrast to most operating systems that are tied to one respective kernel, Genode enables the development of specialized component-based operating systems that are portable across 6 different kernels including the whole family of open-source L4 kernels. Each kernel has different strengths, which increasingly become available at the framework's API level. For example, the new version 10.02 enables applications to benefit from the real-time scheduling as provided by the OKL4 and L4ka::Pistachio kernels.

Contiki is an open source, low-power operating system for networked embedded systems. It includes the worlds smallest IPv6 stack and provides full IP networking in a few kilobytes of RAM, as well as low-power mechanism that makes a tiny radio-equipped microcontroller run for years on a pair of batteries. Version 2.4 has been released today.

"Five years ago, the open source Xen hypervisor was the primary technology that big vendors like IBM and Red Hat were adopting and pushing. In 2010, that's no longer the case as the rival KVM effort is now getting the attention of both IBM and Red Hat, as well as many others in the Linux ecosystem. So what does this mean for the KVM community and the future of Xen? An IBM study looking at who's most involved in KVM may provide some answers."

This is part three of Ars' guide about virtualisation. "Part 1 described three ways in which a component might be virtualized; emulation, "classic" virtualization, and paravirtualization, and part 2 described in more detail how each of these methods was used in CPU virtualization. But the CPU is not the only part of a computer that can use these techniques; although hardware devices are quite different from a CPU, similar approaches are equally useful."

We've been working on an "OSNews version 5" upgrade for several months, and with several months to go, we decided to make some incremental changes to OSNews on the existing codebase. The major change, as you probably already noticed, is that we've removed the "Page1/Page2" tabs and instead have OSNews stories with original content and commentary in one column, and news, items on OS-related topics gleaned from other sources in the other. Read on for more details on the changes we've implemented.

"Atomthreads is a free, lightweight, portable, real-time scheduler for embedded systems. It is released under the flexible, open source BSD license and is free to use for commercial or educational purposes without restriction. It is targeted at systems that need only a scheduler and the usual RTOS primitives. No file system, IP stack or device drivers are included, but developers can bolt on their own as required. Atomthreads will always be a small number of C files which are easy to port to any platforms that require threading by adding a simple architecture-specific file."

You really know the tumbleweeds are rolling across the dusty plains of the internet when you have not one, but two technically pointless stories about "Show us your !" Yes, I figured that while we're at it, we might as well take a look at not just our operating system's desktops, but also our real desktops.

At the end of the year, mainly to shamelessly fill slow news around the holidays, OSNews usually asks the readers to share with all the other readers something about their computer setup. Since OSNews can be quite diverse when it comes to computing environments, these threads can often be quite interesting. This year, please chime in with the setup you use to read OSNews - computer, OS, software and maybe even provide screenshots or photos of your proud workspace. Has it changed a lot this year? Maybe switched browser, maybe switched OS even? Let everybody know!