OS News Archive

Return to Hell: Inferno 4 Available for Download

Inferno is a compact operating system designed for building distributed and networked systems on a wide variety of devices and platforms. With many advanced and unique features, Inferno puts an unrivalled set of tools into your hands. It runs in hosted mode for: Windows (Nt, 2000, XP), FreeBSD (x86), Irix (mips), Linux (x86), MacOSX (PPC), Solaris (sparc), and Plan 9.

Opinion: Common OS Myths Debunked

One day while doing my daily browsing through the web, I came across a message board post that was in response to a Linux zealot's rant. It went a little something like this, "If Linux had the market share of Windows, and Windows was the underdog you would be saying how great, and easy to use Windows is, and how it just works." My first reaction was of anger and dismissal, "Linux is open source Linux uses protected memory..." But the more I thought about it the more it disturbed me because I knew it was true. What do you do when you think an opinion you have may be in jeopardy of being wrong? You compare the facts and sort out the myths.

Having fun with unattended installation

In an ideal world, all your code is packaged into a universal install script, with dependency checking, updating, and logging services handled automatically. Conflicts between resources required by different applications are resolved according to predefined policies. Site-specific configuration changes are automatically applied as part of the unattended installation, and tests are run across the environment to confirm that everything is good to go. This article shows you how the general tenets of autonomic computing are applied to software installation.

Athene 3.4 – Now X11 Compatible

Athene 3.4 is now available for download. The major new feature is backwards compatibility with X11 programs. This is achieved by running a rootless X11 server, the same technique employed by Mac OS X & QNX. The need for a separate window manager has also been eliminated by merging the window management functionality into the server itself. Screenshots demonstrating all this are here and here.

Design Patterns for High Availability using an RTOS

This technical overview by veteran real-time instructor David Kalinsky examines a number of design patterns used to architect high-availability embedded systems that utilize a real-time operating system. The design of high availability systems is based on a combination of redundant hardware components and software to manage fault detection and correction, to achieve "five-nines" (99.999%) or greater availability, equivalent to less than 1 second of downtime per day.

QEMU Windows Port in the Works

QEMU, the free software PC emulator available, has a Win32 port (and another CygWin port) pending commit (screenshot). The port is "only" for the emulation of a complete x86 PC (QEMU supports two other modes too), and that is initially also the only mode considered.

VMWare 4.5.1 Released

VMWare 4.5.1 includes updates and fixes include changes to the EULA, a more reliable SCSI implementation, better support for Linux guest operating systems using kernels in the 2.6 series, and support for Windows 95 guest operating systems on high-speed processors. Some of the new features are an increased memory range up to 3.6GB per virtual machine (4GB to all vms), experimental support for Longhorn, support for PXE on virtual network hardware, and support for Novell NetWare 5.1, 6, and 6.5 and SUSE LINUX 9.0.