For a long time now I have been interested in finding the “next” generation of Operating Systems. As much as I do like Linux, it’s just far too… boring for me. The Architecture is old, and is evolving, but it’s not really… new.
I always figured that the next generation of opearting systems would really go back to basics and see what they can come up with. A guiOS for want of a better word. One where the gui is prime.
Microsoft has tried and tried to pull this one off. Though they mostly end up with an operating system that seems to be bloated beyond belief. They use things like “If you want the Eye-Candy, it must take up X amount of space”, and of course, quote their API. I, like some, swallowed this, but for a long, long time I thought that there really must be another way.
So, I thought to myself, what does the internet have to say about it? So I took a look at what people are doing out there. I decided to only look into things that I could use as a practicable replacement for what I was using.
These operating systems are right out there on the far end of Obscure, but lets at least list them here, pending a full review.
The Free Ones:
This is a very cute BeOS-like operating system. It doesn’t do much, as far as I can gather, but it looks very pretty. It’s the kind of thing that could really do with some backing. Some people actually putting some time into making this into a very nice operating system. It seems to be run by one Japanese Guy, but it’s very difficult to work out much about the O/S it’self. It’s small, and free, and well worth giving a spin in VmWare (especially now that it’s free), just so you can see how much work as gone into it.
Doesn’t look as pretty, but does seem to have much better backing, and appears to be written by people that speak English. The screen-shots seem to give a very “gnome” like look and feel to the O/S, but as it’s free, I figured that it was definately worth a download.
A BeOS-alike operating system. Still in development to the extent that there isn’t an installer, but a load of VMWare appliances that you can install for yourself and have a play. It’s not bad, It’s very much like I remember BeOS being, but it doesn’t do enough, but is pretty. Why is this listed if it fails to meet even the requirement of a “Practiable Repacement”? Well, because the author below suggested that it might be, and I went through the trouble of downloading it. I will (hopefully) review it more thoroughly at a later date, though after those that could conceivably be a replacement.
A port of the AmigaOS 3.11, with modernisation. I was initially going to ignore this one, that was until I looked at the website that definitely talks the talk.. IT also seems to be “going places” with a new 64-bit port. As is noted elsewhere, the thing that holds this back is that it needs to be compatible with the original O/S. A strong community seems to be driving the need for this OS to improve, but a lack of developers seems to be holding it back. I’ll add it to the list of ones to look into, see what it can do.
I’ve looked at this one before while trying to get around licence issues for Windows. It definately seems to be a good idea, but it suffers from it’s attempt at true compatibility with Windows. It’s not pretty, and in and of itself not very innovative (though the idea of building a Windows-Comptabile Oprating system does appeal). The problem that I found was that it failed for me due to it’s lack of “Eye-Candy”, which is definately a requirement for me. It might be worth a look for those that need the windows support, or those that have the time to spare helping this project. It does a lot of code-sharing with the WINE project.
This is a blindingly fast operating system with a GUI that runs from a floppy. This produced one of those “no way” moments, when it boots, the fact that the GUI is compleatly usable. If the rest of the site is to be believed, there are also other things there for people to install, programs that just might turn this into a usable operating system.
The idea behind it is that it’s an experiment to proove that it’s still possible to write things in Assembler, and this easily prooves that it is. It’s small, fast, and at first glance very pretty.
The Not-Free Ones:
This looks to be very pretty, and very well developed, though not yet out of Beta. They are taking the rather novel approach of getting people to pay for the Beta version in order to be able to pay for the development of the system. The screen shots look good, and the forum is well attended. As to what it’s actually like? I don’t know, I’ll tell you when I finally get round to installing it and having a play, the moment I can convince myself to part with my hard-earned cash.
Other Round-ups
For those of you that want to take a look at other round-ups out there, here are a few that helped me find the Operating Systems I was going to be interested in: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=768380&seqNum=1
For Programmers
While searching I found a referance to an operating system called “LoseThos“. It describes it’self as a “TreeHouse” for those that want to play with operating systems, and claims to have code readable by the average person. It suggests that it might be a good place to start investigating, or “playing” with an operating system.
That’s it for now. If I find any more, I will post them up.
Thanks,
Black Xanthus
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