OS News Archive

MC emailed us about his own, new, operating system for x86 processors called... BugOS. Latest version is less than one month old, and the OS even has a TCP/IP stack, IDE driver, 64-bit FAT filesystem, a micro-kernel and more. The OS can be booted from a partition, from within DOS, CD-ROM or from two floppies.

Lineo, current holder of the CP/M and DR-DOS intellectual property, decided to open source the two operating systems. CP/M is a legendary operating system of the '70s and '80s, while DR-DOS is a clone of MS-DOS, used by Novell and Caldera at the end of the '80s and in the beginning of the '90s. Get more information at the full story at NewsForge. Update: DR-DOS' source code is only available for a fee.

Interactive Studio has published the QubeOS web site which serves as the developer's web site for Qube application developers. You can also download there the Windows, DOS, and Linux compatible Qube environment and the Windows Qube SDK. An interesting article found on QubeOS web site is about the Object Routing technology, a technology which Michal Stencl has been developing for Qube. OSNews featured an interview with Michal recently. Our Take: A port to FreeBSD would also be desirable.

Niklas Angebrand sent us information regarding the V2 Operating System, an OS written in assembly which was pretty popular 1-2 years ago. "V2_OS is a project which was started by the V2_Labs who wanted a superfast and scalable OS. They then designed a fully modular with its own superfast and supersmall filesystem. This OS got very popular and was soon released under the GPL, and it was even on SlashDot, twice. Now it has come to the point where the old design can no longer be developed further, as it sets many (ridiculous) limits. The new kernel, 0.70, needs coders, and people that know of OS designs. Its goals of design is maximum speed without limits and the tiniest size possible. These design goals are important, but the most iomportant element is the modularity. V2_OS needs you! V2_OS wants you!"

The VMS (Virtual Memory System) operating system is available only on VAX and Alpha processors, and in spite of its undeniable qualities, its future seems uncertain. The FreeVMS project tends to the coding of an operating system under the GPL licence according to the specifications of the VMS systems. This operating system will function at least on i386 architecture, PPC, Sparc and Alpha processors. It is developed using the C language and it consists of a POSIX kernel and a DCL command line interpreter. In other news, MenuetOS 0.61 was released just a couple of days ago.

"The desktop metaphor was a brilliant innovation--30 years ago. Now it's an unmanageable mess, and the search is on for a better way to handle information. If you have ever forgotten what you named a file or which folder you put it in, you probably will agree that it's time for a change. The desktop metaphor is decades old, arising from early-1970s work at Xerox's fabled Palo Alto Research Center, and was never intended to address today's computing needs. TechReview searches for our next computer Interface.

This week, KernelTrap spoke with Neal Walfield of the GNU/Hurd development team. From their project FAQ, "'Hurd', as an acronym, stands for `Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons'. Hird, in turn, stands for `Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth'. The Hurd is a radical departure from UNIX. A unique and interesting approach to solving many of the problems found in current operating systems. While it's not yet production grade, it's evolved enough to be quite usable.

Peter Tattam from Trumpet Software and also the creator of PetrOS wrote in to tell us that " we are exploring the possibility of providing a BeOS layer to PetrOS. This is consistent with our philosophy of providing multiple API support in the OS. I am in discussions with the OpenBeOS group to determine the feasibility of getting OpenBeOS to run in PetrOS. This would involve us writing a BeOS compatible kernel driver, and supporting ELF format executables in addition to the current PE format executables.We will continue our development on the Win32 layer at the same time with a goal of being able to seamlessly run BeOS and Win32 applications on the same desktop." OSNews recently hosted an interview with Peter regarding PetrOS.

Plural OS is a multitasking, microkernel operating system being developed based on the XOpen Single Unix Specifications. The project only started a month ago. Another hobby OS, Clicker, a multitasking open-source operating system project, is based on a modular microkernel and a brand-new architecture. With its new release today, Clicker made a leap, the OS was able to run its first binary application.

A new version of the interesting 100% in x86 assembly operating system, MenuetOS, was released today. The new version brings Voodoo VESA support (which was the most requested feature) and a simple Linux emulation layer. The whole OS (and all of its applications) fits in a 1.44 floppy disk, so there is no need for partitioning your hard drive if you want to try out MenuetOS. Recently, OSNews hosted an exclusive interview with Ville Turjanmaa, the MenuetOS creator.

Adam Klobukowski wrote in to say: "Most of you think that Atari computers are dead. In fact they are, but they are still some survivors. FreeMiNT is an Open Source operating system for 16/32 bit Ataris: ATARI ST/STE/MEGA ST/Mega STE/TT/Falcon 030, and clones: Hades/Medusa/Milan. It is under continuous developent and last stable version (1.15.12) was relased about a month ago. Developers are busy working on 1.16. FreeMiNT offers preempative multitasking, memory protection (on 020+ processors), loadable filesystems (VFAT, Minix, Ext2), shared libraries and easy TCP/IP networking. The main FreeMiNT distribution is called SpareMiNT and is based on RPM. Because over the years FreeMint (formerly known as MiNT) developement was a bit messy it is coverend by few diffrent software linceses, but mainly by GNU GPL. There is also a standard C library implementation (libc) called MiNTLib (and is covered by GNU GPL and LGPL). The main future goals of FreeMINT are: adding better shared library support along with ELF support and virtual memory support."

The good folks over at Debian have released the first alpha CD distribution 'G1' of Debian GNU/Hurd. This release consists of three CDs, but only the first one is necessary to get a usable system running. They have a page with install information that you'll definitely want to read before trying it out. (Hint: Don't forget to run /native-install and reboot, then repeat, or you'll be stuck in single-user mode.) The primary download site at gnu.org is often busy, so try one of the GNU mirrors or this temporary mirror if you have trouble getting in. We had fun installing and playing around with the Hurd on a spare machine. As they warn, this is still very raw and experimental, but this kinder, gentler release finally makes the Hurd more accessible to the non-diehard crowd. See the GNU Hurd main website for more project information and history.

Qube 2p by InteractiveStudio was released on September 19th, and it is the same as Qube but by supporting two platforms this time. There is Qube for Windows and Qube for MS-DOS. Qube for Windows runs under DirectX and all applications or libraries are compatible with DOS version. Michal Stencl, the Qube developer, says that "It took some time for the Windows port, because of some incompatibility of Microsoft Visual C++ with GNUC. But now, Qube for Windows supports Windows2000/NT/98/ME without problems. You need to have already installed DirectX to run Qube for Windows." The SDK for Qube will be released imidiately after the release of the Linux version. Michal has to be sure first of clear out any compatibility problems with all versions so the developers will be free to copy their applications from System to System and run unmodified. Qube 3p will be available for three platforms soon - Linux, Windows and DOS with LAN support, not just modem. You can also refer to our exclusive interivew we held with Michal a month ago regarding this Qube project.

The release of WindowsXP does not seem to discourage the coders around the world to code the operating system of their dreams. Lots of new, simple and complex, embedded and desktop OSes grow like mushrooms very often these days. Not all of the OSes we found by searching the web are active, but we will link to the ones with more activity.