OS News Archive

Umberto Eco’s Pendulum and Conceptual Software Innovation

Guest post by David Moore 2003-01-22 OS News 38 Comments

I had been trying to find a means to write a new Operating System since 1997 and back then an Mphil/Dphil at the Universities seemed realistic. I had assessed a variety of institutions and made applications were relevant but nothing was doing. It was then that I realised that I had to do it myself so my plan was to quickly develop a standard Kernel to start the business and allow me to focus on innovation.

HP Lines up OpenVMS for Itanium

Submitted by Jeff Boulier 2003-01-22 OS News 11 Comments

The long-awaited port of HP's OpenVMS to Intel's Itanium is set for full release next year, as are plans to move Tru64 Unix features into HP-UX. The announcements came as HP introduced its new Alpha servers, based on the EV7 chip, plus a strategy to migrate Alpha users to Itanium servers over the next three to eight years.Plans are to sell new Alpha systems through 2006 and support them through 2011.

Future of Operating Systems: Simplicity

Eugenia Loli 2003-01-14 OS News 55 Comments

"Today's operating systems are conceptually upside-down. They developed the hard way, gradually struggling upwards from the machinery (processors, memory, disks and displays) toward the user. In the future, operating systems and information management tools will grow top-down." Read the editorial at ComputerWorld by David Gelernter (CS professor at Yale and chief scientist at ScopeWare).

35 Technologies that Shaped the Industry

Submitted by Prognathous 2003-01-06 OS News 17 Comments

"When Computerworld published its first issue in 1967, the private sector was still using vacuum tubes to exchange information. Technology and the world it has shaped have come a long way since then. Here is our list of the 35 products and technologies that have had the greatest impact on enterprise IT since 1967." Read the article.

Linux, Mac and Windows in 2003

Submitted by dabooty 2003-01-01 OS News 114 Comments

As others looked into the past, ExtremeTech is looking forward to 2003, asking: What's in store for desktop operating systems? Will Linux and Mac OS X go the way of OS/2, or is Windows doomed?

Happy New Year

David Adams 2003-01-01 OS News 24 Comments

From all of us at OSNews, we wish our readers a happy and prosperous 2003. 2002 was a great year for OSNews. We saw steady growth in readership, a huge effort by Eugenia to make the site better, and constant support and submissions by OSNews readers that kept the wheels turning. The bad economy didn't seem to dampen the action in the OS Arena, and may have even given Linux a boost as people look for more economical solutions. We hope that the world's economy improves, that the technophiles who read OSNews have and keep good jobs, and that ad rates go up. 2003 will probably see the launch of a sister site to OSNews. Please post with any ideas you have on a tech-oriented topic that's under-covered, and we may launch a site to cover it!

2002: The Year In Skinning

Adam Scheinberg 2002-12-31 OS News 27 Comments

The last few years have seen a rise in "skinability" of applications and even operating systems as a whole. Stardock has taken a look back and reviewed the year in skinning. "2002 was a turning point for skinning. It was the year where millions of people started using skins without even knowing what the heck skinning is." writes author Brad Wardell. Read the rest at stardock.com.

The SPIN Operating System and Modula-3 Language

Adam Scheinberg 2002-12-30 OS News 24 Comments

Gil Bates wrote "SPIN is an operating system that blurs the distinction between kernels and applications. Applications traditionally live in user-level address spaces, separated from kernel resources and services by an expensive protection boundary. With SPIN, applications can specialize the kernel by dynamically linking new code into the running system. Kernel extensions can add new kernel services, replace default policies, or simply migrate application functionality into the kernel address space. Sensitive kernel interfaces are secured via a restricted linker and the type-safe properties of the Modula-3 programming language. The result is a flexible operating system that helps applications run fast but doesn't crash." More can be found on the SPIN homepage. More on Modula-3 can be found here.

Bochs 2.0 Released

Submitted by Igor Shmukler 2002-12-22 OS News 24 Comments

Bochs 2.0 x86 emulator was released today with many new features and support for MMX/SSE/SSE2 and more modern operating systems in graphics mode.

Virtual PC 6 for Mac Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-21 OS News 31 Comments

The new version of Virtual PC has speed improvements up to 25% faster on Mac OS X, Mac OS X Dock integration, enhanced back-up support in Mac OS X, improved USB printing support for increased compatibility, video support for Apple's monitors, including the 23" Cinema Display Self-contained configurations; makes installation on several machines a snap. According to Connectix test, optimal performance requires Mac OS X - version 10.2.3 (Jaguar), L3 cache, NVIDIA Ge Force or ATI Radeon video card.

MenuetOS 0.72 Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-16 OS News 6 Comments

MenuetOS 0.72 released with TCP/IP from Mike Hibbett & demos: OpenGL, 3D Maze, games, GUI appearance setup etc. Additionally, SkyOS has some interesting updates too.

LynxOS Reveals Source Code & MSRP Pricing

Guest post by Kevin Adams 2002-12-11 OS News No Comments

"It's not quite open source, but the makers of the embedded operating system LynxOS have taken a step towards bringing code availablity to their customers. That was the word out of California yesterday afternoon when LynuxWorks announced a new set of pricing packages designed to make LynxOS a more affordable option for those who are considering using the real-time operating system (RTOS) for their embedded projects" Read the full article at All Linux Devices.

TriangleOS 0.0.3 Screenshots Available

Submitted by Wim Cools 2002-12-11 OS News 17 Comments

TriangleOS is a 32-bit Operating System for the x86 platform, written in C and Assembler. Wim Cools posted some screenshots of his OS. On his site, information and images can be found of the latest kernel version which can be booted from floppy.

So You Wanna Create Your Own x86 Operating System?

Eugenia Loli 2002-12-04 OS News 16 Comments

One of the great difficulties a hobbyist programmer faces when trying to start the development of his own OS is finding out where to start. Many books describe in-depth theoretical OS concepts, yet noone seems to take a hobyist programmer by the hand and bring him face to face with these concepts. This is precisely what this article aims at doing.

Introducing the Aurora Operating System

Guest post by Sebastian Herzig 2002-12-01 OS News 18 Comments

There was a very long break in development of this operating system, and people could only download the boot code and a nearly empty file that promised to contain AuroraOS. But this is over now!

Rocklyte Systems Utilizes SciTech SNAP Graphics Technology

Submitted by Andrew Bloo 2002-11-26 OS News 2 Comments

SciTech Software today announced that Rocklyte Systems has licensed the SciTech SNAP Graphics engine for use in its latest release of Athene OS, a consumer operating environment that provides a completely object based and customizable user environment. Read more for the press release.

GNU/Hurd image for Bochs

Submitted by Yama 2002-11-25 OS News 2 Comments

From GNU-Friends: "A new image of GNU (also known as GNU/Hurd) for the Bochs i386 emulator has been available for download since yesterday. It seems to work quite well (as well a Hurd-based system gets). Network, Xfree86 and the new console server are installed and configured, although there are some problems with X. Anyone interested on trying it out should read the included mini-FAQ first."

New Owners of DR-DOS Promise a New Version by Spring 2003

Submitted by Prognathous 2002-11-24 OS News 20 Comments

DeviceLogics said that it bought DR-DOS from the Canopy Group and will upgrade it in Spring 2003 with version 8.0. Read the report at TheInquirer.

Operating System µnOS 0.95 Released

Submitted by Michael Haunreiter 2002-11-22 OS News 18 Comments

miray Software introduces the new version 0.95 of the operating system µnOS with numerous new features today: µnOS is now based on a completely new realtime microkernel, has a graphics server with a software graphic engine and full true color support (VESA) and a window server with a complete GUI component framework and support for arbitrary freeform windows. You can easily try the OS as it fits on a floppy disk (didn't run on my VMWare 3.x though).

Athene Goes Commercial; Drops X11 Back-End

Eugenia Loli 2002-11-20 OS News 42 Comments

The first news report on Athene's upcoming commercial release reveals an all-new accelerated graphics system and a new set of screenshots showing some of the new features of the coming release.