OS News Archive

Introducing the TriangleOS and Sartoris

Submitted by Wim Cools & S. Bazerque 2002-05-11 OS News 20 Comments

OSNews reader and OS developer Wim Cools writes: "I'm writing a hobby OS (TriangleOS) and I've just released the second version of it. The OS isn't very big yet, but I've managed to begin with a GUI and have applications running inside the windows. Anyway, here's my site. There are a few screenshots of the GUI in an early stage but I haven't been able to create any up to date screenshots yet, with the shell and applications running but there's a floppy image available for everyone to check it out."
Another interesting new OS is Sartoris. Santiago Bazerque is part of the Sartoris team and he writes: "Me and my friends from the Univeridad de Buenos Aires are working on an experimental microkernel. We are now finishing our second release. We are not OS gurus, just a few students (our Computer Organization professor looked at us in a quite funny way when we told her we wanted to build an operative system, but hey, we did it!). The webpage is here, in case you feel like taking a look."
Note: Before everyone starts again "what does that OS do and why do we need it?" please let me clarify that these hobby/small OSes are built with the purpose of gaining knowledge. They were never meant to create userbases or user communities or markets. They are solely of developer-only interest, users can try them, but they won't directly benefit.

GeOS Lives through Breadbox Ensemble

Submitted by AlexZop 2002-05-10 OS News 18 Comments

"Breadbox Computer Company LLC has completed and released to company distributors, its new flagship desktop software suite, Breadbox Ensemble. Ensemble offers a full productivity and internet suite, including Web Browser and Email. Other essential programs such as word processing, spreadsheet, flat file database and graphics applications are integrated into this easy-to-use package". Read the rest of the news over at BreadBox .

Review: VMWare Workstation 3.1 vs Virtual PC 4.3.2 vs Bochs 1.4

Eugenia Loli 2002-05-08 OS News 51 Comments

The open source Bochs, VMware Workstation by VMware, Inc. and VirtualPC from Connectix are applications that virtualize or emulate the x86 hardware, allowing you to run multiple operating systems on top of a "host" operating system that these three applications run upon. This means that you will be able to run Linux or FreeBSD or other supported "guest" OSes under Windows, Linux (or Macintosh), inside a window or fullscreen. But which one delivers the best performance for the money? And what about the free Bochs?

Bell Labs Releases New Version of Plan 9

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-29 OS News 14 Comments

The fourth release of the Plan 9 operating system from Bell Labs packages a major overhaul of the system at every level. From the underlying file system protocol, 9P, through the kernel, libraries, and applications, almost everything has been modified and, in many cases, redesigned or rewritten. The most significant change is that 9P has been redesigned to address a number of shortcomings, most important, its previous inability to handle long file names.

News from Around the Web

Eugenia Loli 2002-04-20 OS News 8 Comments

We will first start with the 1.0 release of the free word processor, AbiWord, for many different platforms, including Linux, FreeBSD, Win32, MacOS and QNX. Mozilla RC-1 was released also a few days ago and its developers appreciate any bugs people can submit before the final 1.0 release. OSNews reader "Number9" submitted the news about the world's fastest computer, at NYTimes (free registration required). The computer is about 5 times faster than IBMs (previous world fastest) computer at a national lab. Another very interesting article can be found at PCMag. Given the hullabaloo around the Tablet PC, PC Magazine roundups six new tablet PCs from ACer, Fujitsu, HP, and others while it also investigates the past of such devices. The Menuet OS project released a new version and a new screenshot. Also, KlipFolio 1.0 for Windows is now released (more platforms are coming soon) and the OSNews news klip is installed by default! Thank you Serence!

Seal DOS GUI Version 2.00.11 Released

Submitted by Phil Harper 2002-04-15 OS News 31 Comments

Everyone's favourite opensource DOS GUI is back and better than ever in the new release, skinning support has been improved to allow better themeing, rather than just buttons skins, the Multimedia API(SFA) has been expanded to support more Audio Formats, the Disk Imager has been ported and many other improvements have been made, and still in just a 1.39MB download. Get your copy or take a look at a couple of screenshots: shot1 & shot2. Bad Desktop is also available as a separate download here.

Miray Software Releases version 0.93 of µnOS

Submitted by Marcus Hufgard 2002-04-09 OS News 9 Comments

Today Miray Software officially introduced the version 0.93 of the operating system µnOS. The company also announced a new version of the underlying realtime microkernel, which will be available as a stand-alone product in the future. Read more for the rest of the press release and download locations of this interesting graphical OS.

Rocklyte Athene 1.3 Released

Submitted by Paul Manias 2002-04-02 OS News No Comments

A new version of Athene has been released this week for Windows and Linux. New features include an installation standard for package distribution, a fast menu system and pkzip compression is now a supported standard. The DML interpreter included with Athene now works for stand-alone development, so you can write DML programs that will run without the Athene desktop. The Internet plug-in for DML is also in development following this release, so that DML apps can be embedded in web pages. A complete change-log is available. OSNews hosted an interview with Rocklyte a few months ago.

User Level Clicker32 Apps can now Launch Other Clicker32 Apps

Submitted by Sylvain Martin 2002-04-02 OS News No Comments

OSNews reader Sylvain Martin writes: "The Clicker Operating system is moving forward. With last release 0.8.0, the system is now able to start user-level programs from another user-level program! This is a major advance if you consider that versions 0.7.x required the user-level program to be embedded within a system module. A pre-compiled demonstration package of 0.8.0 should be made available in a very soon future."

First Snapshot of Nova Released

Submitted by Johan Rydberg 2002-03-29 OS News 3 Comments

The first source snapshot of Nova, a POSIX server running on top of RTMK, is now available. After just three months of development Nova can now run native applications from a ext2 filesystem mounted on a IDE hard disc. The next thing to do is to get more parts of the GNU C library working, providing Nova with more applications, Johan Rydberg wrote. The sources can be downloaded from savannah.

GNU/Hurd to be Released This Year

Eugenia Loli 2002-03-12 OS News 33 Comments

"A production version of the free GNU operating system is likely to be available by the end of this year, according to the president of the Boston-based Free Software Foundation (FSF). "We actually have the GNU kernel working, and we can now produce the GNU system, as opposed to the GNU/Linux system that people have been using so far," said Richard Stallman, who is in India this week to attend a GNU/Linux Day in Pune." Read the rest of the report about GNU/Hurd at IDG.net.

Many Operating System Articles at InformIT

Eugenia Loli 2002-03-11 OS News 2 Comments

"What’s New in HP-UX 11i?" The new HP-UX 11i sports an 'Internet-centric' focus for end-to-end e-services. Irene Maltzan covers the major new features of the HP-UX 11i operating environment -including better scalability and availability- in this article. "Example File Systems" This chapter excerpt from 'Modern Operating Systems' book discusses several example file systems, ranging from quite simple to highly sophisticated. "Clustering Microsoft Exchange Server 2000" Ensuring reliability and scalability within your email system can be a trying experience. Let author and columnist Joseph M. Lamb guide you through the construction of a clustered Exchange Server utilizing Windows 2000 Advanced Server and Exchange Server 2000. "What is a Microsoft Cluster?" Let author and columnist Joseph M. Lamb guide you through the various cluster types, and how you can implement clusters that best serve the needs of your application using Microsoft's Windows 2000 Advanced Server. "Optimizing Disk Performance in Windows XP Professional" In this second article on getting better performance from Windows XP Professional, Louis Columbus provides step-by-step directions for increasing disk drive performance on your Windows XP system. Read all these articles at InformIT.

LynuxWorks Introduces LynxOS 4.0

Eugenia Loli 2002-03-11 OS News No Comments

"Building upon its expanding success with the most advanced and open embedded operating systems and tools solutions portfolio, LynuxWorks today announced the general availability of its next major revision to its popular LynxOS real time operating system (RTOS). LynxOS 4.0 raises the bar for RTOS vendors by adding Linux binary compatibility and enhancements in networking, porting support, and performance." Read more at LinuxDevices on the release of LynxOS 4 from LynuxWorks.

ROME 2.01 Released

Eugenia Loli 2002-03-09 OS News 9 Comments

ROME is a lightweight, modular, multitasking, embedded operating system which has been developed and used for multiple research projects. ROME was designed to manage high speed data streams within a multimedia environment. The system is highly modular, with functionality split between multiple processes. To ensure a high throughput with minimal overhead ROME provides a zero copy architecture where pointer references to data are passed around instead of data being copied. The goal of this approach is to maximize the utilization of a given hardware configuration. ROME released version 2.01 yesterday.

Pop-up Ad Scourge

David Adams 2002-03-07 OS News 33 Comments

As many people noticed, and quite a few emailed us about, the past couple of days OS News has been displaying a great number of pop-up ads. I'd like to take this opportunity to say that OS News thinks that pop-up ads are generally bad, and that we have stopped using the ad broker that was serving the pop-ups. They made arrangements to not display pop-ups at our request, but didn't follow through on their agreement, so we have yanked them until they do. We're sorry for putting our loyal readers through it, but rest assured that we're trying to balance our need to make a little money and maintaining a good experience for our beloved readers. You may still see the occasional pop-up, but we're determined to keep it to a minimum. By the way, if you'd like to provide support to OSNews, so we don't have to resort to pop-ups and other intrusive advertising, there are two easy ways to do it that won't cost you a cent: First, when you buy something--anything--from Amazon.com, use This Link and OSNews will get a small percentage of your purchase, without costing you more. Also, when you're in the market to buy anything, check OS News' Pricegrabber where we also get a little kick-back.

Genera and Symbolics Lisp Machines

Submitted by Carson Reynolds 2002-03-05 OS News 1 Comment

Carson Reynolds writes: "One of the more memorable architectures and operating systems of recent history were the Symbolics Lisp Machine and Genera Operating System. The systems featured such interesting novelties as 36-bit wide processors, hardware support for LISP interpreters, and open source (circa 1986). Those still pining might consider trying to get their own Symbolics system."

The Internet Spanning Worldwide Computer

Submitted by Oliver Kofoed Pedersen 2002-03-05 OS News 7 Comments

"When Mary gets home from work and goes to her PC to check e-mail, the PC isn't just sitting there. It's working for a biotech company, matching gene sequences to a library of protein molecules. Its DSL connection is busy downloading a block of radio telescope data to be analyzed later. Its disk contains, in addition to Mary's own files, encrypted fragments of thousands of other files. Occasionally one of these fragments is read and transmitted; it's part of a movie that someone is watching in Helsinki. Then Mary moves the mouse, and this activity abruptly stops. Now the PC and its network connection are all hers." Read more about an operating system spanning the Internet that would bring the power of millions of the world's Internet-connected PCs to everyone's fingertips.

NewDealOffice 2000 Available at BreadBox

Submitted by AlexZop 2002-02-28 OS News 16 Comments

Breadbox Inc. has secured a limited number of NewDealOffice 2000 boxes and they are selling them out for $100 USD. Get more info about the GeOS-powered operating system at Breadbox's web pages.

STMicro, Philips to Develop Set-Top OS

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-26 OS News 3 Comments

"Franco-Italian chipmaker STMicroelectronics and Philips Electronics agreed on Tuesday to jointly develop and promote a software system for the next generation of interactive set-top boxes and television sets. Philips said STMicro would back the Multimedia Home Platform software in the emerging fight for the supremacy over the next operating system used by cable operators as they unveil new interactive TV services." Read the rest of the report at ZDNews. Update: Ken writes: "The Multimedia Home Platform (MHP) software is not really an OS, but a set of middleware services that provide basic STB functions. It can sit on top of any OS (like pSoS that Philips currently uses)."

NewOS Now Includes a Network Stack

Eugenia Loli 2002-02-25 OS News 26 Comments

Travis Geiselbrecht, the developer of NewOS, writes in his web site: "Haven't updated this list in a while, but there's a lot of progress being made. Over the last couple of months we've implemented a rudimentary network stack, full dynamic lib support, and work has been started on a real native filesystem. Also a full-fledged IDE driver is in the work. Thanks to all the people that have helped me out." Download the latest version of this young operating system, in a source form here.