OS News Archive

Anyone knows of really cheap but good (==stable) server hosting with about 100 MB of web space and at least 25 GB of bandwidth allowance per month? Please let us know, as we are completely out of bandwidth for the month (this is why screenshots for older articles do not work anymore, our mirrors for images are disabled). Because of the way our mirroring system works, the server should support direct linking to files (not to require to load images together with ads or via web page instead of direct linking), while SSH support is surely preferrable but not required. If you are a hosting provider and you would like to sponsor us for an exchange of a linked logo/button on our site, we are open for discussing the possiblity. We do not need fancy features (eg. mysql, php), just LOTS of bandwith for cheap!

"This project started with a simple dual boot between Windows 98 and 2000. Then I added some Linux distributions and BeOS. Somewhere along the line, adding operating systems became an obsession. I wanted to see exactly how many I could stuff in one box. It also became a project to prove people wrong. Many people told me that what I achieved could not be done." Read the original article at TechTV and the interview with the OS geek, Richard Robbins, at MaximumPC.

Justin Armstrong wrote JaysOS, a "toy OS" that runs on the Gameboy Advance. It provides preemptive threads, semaphores, condition variables, and message queues. As of 0.2, it also includes a port of the Waba VM for Java bytecodes. Waba comes with a few interesting demo applets you can try out. The OS apps interact with the world using the "UI Manager". Screenshots and more information available.

"In early 1986, a team in Apple's Advanced Technology Group began a research project that was code-named Pink, with the goal to create an operating system for the next generation of computers. In 1990, the project became TalOS—the property of Taligent—a joint venture between Apple and IBM. In 1994, Pink's OS dreams died as Taligent redirected its efforts toward CommonPoint, a non-OS application environment which would exist as a layer on other operating systems (as an API)." Old, but good read. More information about the OS who's heart stopped beating around 1997 can be found here.

"The Hurd currently runs only on the Mach microkernel, but there is work to port it to the newer L4 microkernel. This article has the details about the current status of the Hurd/L4 port. It is primarily written for people familiar with Hurd/Mach, but who do not know L4." KernelTrap has the details.

Let's face it, the most important, truly alternative, hobby operating systems that are somewhat usable today are three: MenuetOS, SkyOS and AtheOS. All three are hobby, open source OSes, written from people who enjoy coding low level programming. Read more about the differences between these OSes and which one you might want to try out.