OS News Archive

JNode is a Java new Operating System design effort. The goal is to get an simple to use and install Java operating system for personal use. Any java application should run on it.

Jonathan Shapiro has changed his mind about halting EROS development. In an email this morning, he wrote:"The EROS project is back. I'm sure this will seem very funny to some of you, but sometimes you have to firmly put something down in order to step back and think clearly about it." Since his first email, the list has hosted a flurry of productive discussions about the strengths and weaknesses of EROS.

Slashdot reports that TICalc.org announced yesterday that Patrick Pelisier has released a new beta OS, called PedroM, for the TI-89 and TI-92+ under the GPL.

"Everyone is talking about Windows clusters, Unix clusters and Linux cluster. But all we are saying, is that the 20 year-old architecture of clustered OpenVMS can teach these whippersnappers a thing or two. At OpenVMS.org there's a report about an OpenVMS cluster which handles the major processing for the Greater Amsterdam Police and naturally is required 24/7." Read the story at TheInquirer.

I find myself using a number of OSes daily but for the OSes I use most, I have some favorite third party applications that I can't live without. Here are my application lists for Windows, Unix/Linux, Mac OS X and BeOS; applications I always download and install after a clean OS installation. Please tell us about your favorite third party apps you use on different OSes by using the provided comment section.

Jonathan S. Shapiro, architect of the EROS persistant operating system announced that he would be putting the project on hold for at least a year. This followed a series of emails describing the mistakes he felt that EROS had made: 1, 2, 3, as well as an email describing what he thought it had done right.

The Storm Operating System is based on x86 family architecture with paged, protected memory, heavy proccess software multitasking and GUI. Storm OS is being created with asembly (NASM compiler) and General C (GNU GCC compiler) language.

As previously reported on OSNews, Visopsys is a kernel and operating system for PC compatible computers. It has been in development since late 1997. The kernel is small, fast, and open source. Check inside for more info and a screenshot.

This article by veteran real-time trainer David Kalinsky provides an introduction to real-time operating system (RTOS) kernel services. The paper is of particular interest to developers new to real-time concepts and vocabulary. Kalinsky begins by offering a comparison of RTOSs and general-purpose operating systems. He then covers real-time kernel services including task scheduling; fixed-time task switching; intertask communication and synchronization; determinism and high-speed message passing; and, dynamic memory allocation.

From Newsforge: "This question is behind most of Microsoft's recent antitrust problems. Microsoft's defenders often point out that Linux distributions include not just Web browsers and multimedia software, but office suites, graphics packages, and many other programs that are not "part of the operating system."

The Fiasco Team is pleased to announce version 1.1 of the Fiasco L4 microkernel developed at the University of Technology, Dresden and released under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

The Active Objects version of the Oberon operating system running under windows was updated today to version alpha 1.5. AOS Oberon is a descendant of the Oberon system designed by Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht in the late 1980's. Enhancements to the AOS system include multitasking and MP aware objects.

There's been much discussion over the past few months about the marriage of databases and filesystems - with Microsoft's Longhorn reportedly sporting the Yukon integrated SQL Server, and GNOME Storage in heaty debate, if not development, there's been lots to talk about.

Hewlett-Packard plans to begin selling today the last and most powerful model in the AlphaServer line, a series of servers that stretches back to a very different era in the computing industry. HP plans to announce improvements to Tru64 and OpenVMS today as well.