Article on new MorphOS operating system - your thoughts, please

PC Magazine | John C. Dvorak

[martin_fierro]

Came across this article about a new OS in a PC Magazine a month or so ago.

I can only link to it, as PCMAG.com articles can't be posted.

[martin_fierro]

Has anyone heard of this OS or tried it?

Your thoughts, please.

[martin_fierro]

Tech meta-ping

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Here is a direct link to the developers:

MorphOS - Time for a Change.

I had read what Dvorak had written about it and expected to see more, but nothing between then and your note has shown up in my reading material.

They need to get the cost of a chip that could run it down before much of anything happerns . I would like to try it, if the pprice were down enough and I could use most of my current gear. Something better than Linus and its ancient UNIX base would be welcome.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Retailer of hardware:

www.ultraspec.us

Wonder if this would run on some of the original RS/6000's?
Now that was a dynamite processor.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From:

UnixHQ.com

_____________________________________________________________________________

Available

IBM RS/6000 43p Model 140
- PowerPC 604e CPU @ 332 MHz  w/ 1MB L2 cache
- 256 MB SDRAM (exp. to 768 MB)
- 9GB SCSI Drive (can hold a 2nd internal drive)
- CDROM / Floppy drive
- 10/100baseT Ethernet
- GXT 250P Video (outputs to VGA)
- keyboard / mouse
- IBM AIX 5L for Power V-5.2

CDN$995
USA$755

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

There are other choices..........ROFL

_______________________________________________________________________________

Operating Systems

Operating Systems (OSes) reviewed.

All Microkernel-based OSes.

All Unix OSes.

See also Systems Code Resources.

• 2K - Formerly known as SPINE, is a distributed, reflexive, component-based, adaptable OS
• a-kernel - Was a project to determine if AOP can be used to improve OS modularity, and thereby reduce complexity and fragility associated with system implementation
• AdaOS - A project to create a new fully distributed OS, written mostly in Ada
• Aegis - An exokernel based OS
• Alliance OS - Was a split from Freedows, its goal was to implement an OS based on isolated components, described with the Corba IDL? and communicating through a System ORB?
• AmigaOS - A commercial OS originally developed for the Motorola 68k based Commodore Amiga line of computers - now owned by Amiga, Inc
• Amoeba - Andy Tanenbaum's microkernel OS with multiple servers, allowing parallel (transparent to the user) execution, resource sharing, and more; the reference among distributed OSes
• Apertos - Sony CSL's Apertos, a Reflexive OO OS, also described in Spanish
• Apostle - Apostle OS
• Argon - Alaric B
• AROS - AROS, the Amiga Research OS project, lead by Aaron Digulla is rewriting a free software clone of AmigaOS from scratch, hoping to fix bugs and legal problems with the original OS, and finally port it away from the deceased (until further notice) Amiga hardware platform to the i386 PC (already complete) and other platforms (PPC, Alpha, whatever)
• AtheOS - AtheOS is a heavily multithreaded OS, written from scratch, that supports SMP, TCP/IP, a fast GUI, and most of the useful POSIX functionality
• BeOS - Be, Inc
• BRiX - Brand Huntsman's BRiX OS will be based on modular functions that can be dynamically called by other functions
• BSD - The BSD family used to be the reference for Unix-like OSes
• BugOS - An impressive OS project for a single author
• Cache Kernel - From Kenneth Duda homepage, one of the authors:
• chaOS - chaOS, like OpenBLT is a cleanroom implementation of an OS based on a microkernel (codenamed Storm), announced over the summer; there is both code and documentation available on the site, as well as a downloadable and bootable demo floppy that will let you try your hand at it in no time
• Charm - The Charm Operating System is a nano-kernel OS aimed at the support of Orthogonal Persistence
• Choices - Choices, an OO OS in C++ (yuck!)
• Chorus - A proprietary microkernel OS, rival of Mach and a RTOS, (now acquired by Sun Microsystems) for telecommunication devices (cellphones, etc.) and network appliances (webphones, set top boxes, etc...)
• Contiki - From its home page (see below):
• CP/M - An early OS for microcomputer by Gary Kildall of Digital Research for Intel 8080 and Zilog Z80 based 8-bit computers
• Denali - Denali is a kernel for multiplexing virtual machines
• Dolphin - Samuel A
• DOS - The colloquial name for MS-DOS, an early operating system produced and sold by Microsoft
• DR DOS - DR DOS (or DR-DOS) is an OS, a free-for-non-commercial-use version of DOS; was once released as OpenDOS, but Caldera reverted to the historical name
• DragonFlyBSD - A Unix-like OS of the BSD family
• eCos - eCos from Red Hat (was from Cygnus Solutions), an OS runtime compatible with the japanese norm µITron, with complete source code available, and FREE
• EduOS - Frank Cornelis's EduOS is a small OS that was being written for educational purposes and for the x86 architecture
• EOS - Was an OS specially designed to run games under
• EROS - Extremely Reliable Operating System, is a small, secure (capability-based), real-time OS that provides orthogonal persistence
• EUMEL - Extendable multiUser Microprocessor ELan system, was an OS by Jochen Liedtke, with persistent processes and data spaces, built to offer a standalone environment for the educational programming language ELAN
• Exokernel - A OS project from MIT
• FlexOS - Another little OS designed for developing experience and fun
• Forth OSes - The idea for a modern Forth OS has been kicking around since maybe 1995
• Fox - The Fox project from CMU to write an OS using (an extension to) the programming language Standard ML
• FreeBSD - FreeBSD (a successor of 386BSD) is a Unix-like OS, mostly for the Intel? and Alpha platforms and is most up-to-date among BSDs regarding device drivers
• FreeDOS - FreeDOS is an OS, a free DOS clone, based on Pat Villani's DOS-C kernel
• Freedows - Reece Sellin's Freedows (SourceForge project) is an OS that would be binary-compatible with multiple existing OSes including Windows
• FunOS - A mostly-functional OS, written in Scheme, at http://www.sarg.ryerson.ca/funos/
• Geex! - Fabricio Rocha's Geex! OS, where the philosophy is to make an OS with a very small footprint, working on old computers, and completely free
• Genera - Genera is the OS that runs on Symbolics Lisp Machines; it also runs under hardware emulators for Mac, and under a software emulator on 64-bit Alpha machines
• GEOS - GRAPHIC ENVIRONMENT OPERATING SYSTEM is some very fine OO OS for various kinds of computers (including old 8-bit), that comes with a GUI and various office applications
• GNUStep - A Unix-like OS, a project to implement a free clone of NeXTStep?
• GO! - An OS, by Greg Law, based on the idea of building an entire Operating System from software components (based on CORBA and its ORB) that can be replaced and recycled; it also introduces an x86-specific security model based on segmentation and code scanning (an example of a no-kernel system)
• Grasshopper - Grasshopper is a distributed OS with Orthogonal Persistence
• Hello - Hello is a prototype OS in Standard ML done at University of Hawaii
• hOp - A microkernel OS based on the Run Time System (RTS) of GHC, an Haskell implementation
• HURD - The GNU HURD is the GNU project's replacement for the Unix OS kernel
• Iguana - Iguana from the Coyote project at Dublin Trinity College, an OO, reflexive OS supporting MOPs, distribution, and runtime reconfiguration in order to meet changes in non-functional requirements (ie. dynamic customisation)
• Inferno - A networked OS from Vita Nuova and its Limbo language, successor of Plan9 (from Bell Labs), the system that reinvented scoping for coarse-grained objects
• ITS - ITS (Incompatible Timesharing System) was a famous OS developed by hackers at MIT's AI lab from 1967 to the early 1980's for the DEC PDP-6 and PDP-10 family
• JANOS - JANOS is Java-Oriented Active Network OS
• JeniOS - MIA JeniOS is a project of an OS usable by anyone
• JOS - This project wants to create a free, open OS based on the Java™ technology, ie
• KallistiOS - KallistiOS is pseudo real-time OS for gaming console
• KangaroOS - Redhog's KangaroOS, an OS implementing multitasking by providing a VM to each process; processes can also have subprocesses that they can schedule at their liking
• KeyKOS - A persistent, pure capability OS, generally a nano-kernel design
• KML - Kernel Mode Linux is a Linux OS variant which execute user
• Knewcleus - Ralph Gerlich's Knewcleus is a microkernel-based real-time OS that aims for POSIX compliance; while open sourced, the people behind it intend to make it a commercial venture and release a packaged version that will include additional things not present in the opensource version
• KOS - KOS is a small project of developing an OS being worked on by a few French people
• L4 - A family of OSes originally by Jochen Liedtke are microkernels to demonstrate how optimizing performance requires OS kernels to be completely hardware-dependent, and even CPU-version dependent in a same family of CPUs
• Linux - Linux is a free UNIX™ compliant OS implementation written by Linus Torvalds and lots of people on the Internet
• LispOS - LispOS was a project to revive the still unequalled systems that ran on Lisp Machines of the past (such as the still surviving Genera) this time making it free and running on standard/cheap hardware, instead of proprietary and requiring non-standard/expensive hardware
• Lites - Lites is a Unix-like OS of the BSD family as a "singleserver" over the Mach microkernel
• LittleOS - LittleOS is a small OS experiment being developed by a group of individuals
• LOS - Jonas Berlin's MIA LOS was meant to be another OS for gamers, like EOS
• Mac OS X - MacOS X, the next version of Apple's highly proprietary OS, was not based on the Copland development project, but on a cross with NeXTStep called Rhapsody (which up to Dev release 2 was available for PCs), and is designed to have the friendly MacOS graphical layer over 4
• Mach - Mach is a free microkernel upon which many experimental OSes are built
• MachTen - MachTen is a Unix-like OS, a commercial version of 4
• MacOS - Apple's old proprietary OS for its Macintosh 68k and PowerPC platforms
• MenuetOS - MenuetOS is a tiny OS fully developed in assembly
• Merlin - Jecel's Merlin project of a Self-based OS (and a papers about it)
• MetaOS - An OS model
• Microsoft Windows - Microsoft Windows is a name which refers to a series of OSes from Microsoft
• Milan - Milan the OS
• Minix - Minix is Andy Tanenbaum's famous Unix-like educational OS in 2 versions:
• ML/OS - An experimental OS kernel, developed in the context of The Express project run by Olin Shivers, constructed by porting the SML/NJ implementation of Standard ML to run on a bare PC through the OSKit library for the low-level machine management
• MorphOS - MorphOS OS is a new OS based on the Quark microkernel
• Moscow - Julian R
• Movitz - It is a Common Lisp OS development platform
• Multics - Multics is the "great" OS (written in PL/I) whose design began in the late 60's, co-written by MIT, AT&T Bell Labs and GE, that was meant to become the be-all- end-all of OS technology by having just every (un)imaginable feature, and that was supplanted by Unix, despite the fact that Multics was much better(?) designed, because Unix' simple and stubborn design was much more adapted to the very resource-poor architectures of the time
• Multipop - The Multipop Timesharing System was an OS, first operational in late 1967, which was based on the concurrently developed implemenation of POP-2, a member of the POP family of languages by Robin Popplestone (see Poplog)
• Multiuser DOS - An OS, a commercial DOS clone by Concurrent Controls
• Mungi - Mungi is the OS project that originally proposed a one global distributed shared memory, aka a single address space or SAS (starting with 64-bit virtual address space)
• Möbius - Möbius is an OS
• NASOS - Not Another Scheme OS
• NetBSD - NetBSD is a Unix-like OS of the BSD family which focuses on portability and networking and supports tens of platforms
• NewOs - NewOs is an open source OS with an emphasis on design and portability
• Newton OS - Apple's Newton OS was interesting
• NitrOS-9 - NitrOS-9 is basically a reconstruction of OS-9 for the 6809 Tandy CoCo3, but refined for the Hitachi 6309 compatible CPU
• NOW - NOW (at Berkeley) is
• NTDIOS - NTDIOS Networ Disk OS is a working 32-bit, multitasking, OS for x86-based computers, running in protected mode
• O/OS - Frank Kudermann's O/OS [MIA] introduces a new GUI concept, and aims at architecturing the OS around reusable, replacable components
• Off - Off and its successor Off++ are distributed microkernel OSes that transparently migrate light-weight processes ("shuttles") over the network, communicating by distributed IPC ("Portals"), in a one global distributed shared memory space
• OJOS - OJOS (the Original J Operating System), aka Platypus is an OS which
• OKE - OKE, the Open Kernel Environment, is an extension to the Linux OS which allows users other than root to load native and fully optimised code in the kernel
• Opal - The Opal project, yet another distributed single (wide) address space (SAS) OS with page-level protection, implemented on top of Mach on Alphas
• OpenBLT - Brian J
• OpenBSD - OpenBSD is a Unix-like OS of the BSD family, has split from NetBSD, and focuses on stability and security
• OS-9 - RadiSys's (was Microware) OS-9 is real-time OS (RTOS), widely used, and still in good shape after so many years
• OS161 - OS/161 is an instructional OS produced for an undergraduate introductory operating system concepts at Harvard, by the same group of VINO
• OSKit - A complete modular infrastructure that provides all the "bricks" (resources) needed to easily build an OS, focusing on what interests you, and reusing components for the rest
• OZONE - An object-oriented OS primarily based on VMS? with the use of the GNU toolchain, and Unix-style pipes (also using record-oriented pipes, a VMS feature called a "mailbox")
• Pegasus - Pegasus and Pegasus II, 2 OSes from the University of Cambridge, whose purpose is to support applications requiring a constant quality of service QoS
• PETROS - An OS, it will (would) be a Microsoft Windows clone programmed in a proprietary Object Pascal, by Trumpet Software International (producer of the famous Trumpet Winsock)
• Phantom OS - Balazs Miklos's Phantom OS MIA is a project for an OS for x86 PCs, based on a microkernel, and released under the GNU General Public License
• Plan B - An OS designed to work in distributed environments where the set of available resources (a single abstraction, the box) is different at different points in time
• Plan9 - Plan9 OS, or what Unix should have been (originally by Bell Labs from where Unix came)
• Platform OS - Joel Utting's ("Platform OS" | http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Pines/7674/opsys.html) MIA is an OS wanted to achieve platform-independence through a low-level VM
• Proolix - Prool's Proolix is an OS, yet another Unix clone project for the old 8086 PCs, from former USSR
• PTS-DOS - PTS-DOS is an OS, a (commercial) DOS clone from Russia (fast mirror in USA)
• Puma - Puma OS at Sandia National Laboratories with a distributed memory architectures
• QNX - QNX
• QuickOS - A really-quick-realtime-multitasking OS
• Raven - MIA (Raven | http://www.angelfire.com/az/ravenos/) is another attempt at making an OS for x86 PCs from scratch
• ReactOS - Jason Filby's ReactOS project, aiming to produce a free Windows NT 4
• Real32 - An OS, a commercial DOS clone by Intelligent Micro Software
• Retro - Tom Novelli's original "Retro" was a FORTH-based OS and a prototype low-level infrastructure for the TUNES project
• RISC OS - RISC OS is the nifty OS that runs on (defunct?) Acorn's ARM-based RISC PC (now RiscStation)
• rojan - Was SamOS
• ROM-DOS - An OS, a commercial DOS clone by Datalight
• ROME - Research OS for Multimedia Engineering
• rtmk - A free real-time microkernel OS developed by Johan Rydberg, sharing alot of ideas with Mach
• RxDOS - An OS, a (commercial) DOS clone as described and available in the author's book "Dissecting DOS"
• Sanos - Sanos is an OS kernel for use in PC based server appliances
• schemix - Schemix is an implementation of (a subset of) Scheme that runs inside the Linux Kernel OS, so you can dynamically debug your device-drivers
• Scout - Scout an OS specifically aimed at network appliances (webcams, ip routers..) from the University of Arizona
• ShagOS - Frank Barrus' ShagOS is a (running) OO system based on a message passing kernel
• ShawnOS - Brian Klock's ShawnOS is a small OS, written in 3 months entirely in assembly, that is functional enough to run programs
• Silk - SILK (Scout in Linux Kernel) is a Linux kernel module which transforms a standard Linux OS into Scout
• SkyOS - SkyOS is yet another new OS for x86 PCs
• SLK - SLK, the Safe Language Kernel Project is developing an OS infrastructure for extensible systems
• Sombrero - Sombrero is an OS providing an unique address to objects in a global address space (SAS), much like Mungi
• Space - (lost in) SPACE from University of Santa Barbara, which implements an OS with a protection as multiple layers, rather than the classic kernel-user scheme
• SPIN - SPIN OS from University of Washington, which allows applications to migrate code in kernel space, implementing new functionality or replacing default policies
• Spoon - An OS based on a microkernel
• Sprite - The Sprite distributed OS from UCB (project terminated, but still some useful information there)
• Stella - An OS by Tony Tebby, one of the fathers of modern personal computers whose fame mostly comes from having created the Sinclair? QL? (Quantum Leap) computer and its MC68000-based, multitasking, graphical operating system in the early 80's, even before the Amiga?
• Sting - From its home page:
• SwarmOS - MIA (SwarmOS | http://members.tripod.com/~swarmOS/) is a pretty standard, kernel based OS, but that actually boots and works to some extent
• Symbian - Symbian, formerly known as EPOC32, the OS at the heart of PSION hardware and an increasing number of telephony, telecommunication, PDA, etc
• Synthesis - Henry Massalin's Synthesis kernel, the first of the modern OS that dynamically generated code at runtime
• Synthetix - OGI's Synthetix project of fine-grained incremental partial evaluation in OS kernels, using a combination of highly isolated system components, and dynamic code generation
• Tao OS - An OS
• THix - A deceased project of a Unix OS implementation written from scratch for the purpose of learning
• Tigger - Was a project to develop an OS and framework for the construction of a family of distributed object-oriented platforms
• Topsy - Topsy is an educational OS developed at ETZH
• Torsion - A single address-space (SAS) OS with orthogonal persistence at http://www.torsion.org
• Tripos - An OS
• TrustedBSD - A Unix-like OS of the BSD family which provides a set of trusted operating system extensions to the FreeBSD operating system, targeting the Common Criteria for Information Technology Security Evaluation (CC)
• TSX-32 - TSX-32 is a 32-bit (commercial) OS for PCs with small memory requirements that can also emulate DOS (and run Windows?)
• UCSD P-Code - Was a concrete VM of historical note as an early OS for some microcomputers; it was based on Pascal's operational model, and implemented in UCSD Pascal - which was also the most used language on the platform
• Unix - UNIX © is the worldwide Single UNIX
• Unununium - The Unununium, aka Uuu, "operating engine" is "a highly componentized system, where each component can be dynamically loaded, unloaded, replaced at runtime
• V2_OS - V2_OS by the V2 Lab in Netherlands
• Vapour - A project to build out a Lisp-based OS based on a persistent object store and has quite a few other interesting principles
• VINO - VINO (at Harvard)
• VSTa - Andy Valencia's VSTa
• VxWorks - Wind River's VxWorks and Tornado real-time OS (RTOS), microkernel based, POSIX and ANSI C language compliant
• Xen - Xen is a virtualisation kernel to which Linux has been ported, NetBSD and XP are being ported, such that you can run as many of each of these OSs (and others if they are ported or written) on a single box
• XOberon/PowerPC - From its home page:
• Xok - Xok (developed by MIT LCS Parallel and Distributed OSes group)
• Zot OS - Zot OS is a small free OS with a GUI

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[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

The page above is from:

CLiki for the TUNES project

Some of these I have heard of , most I have not!

[ThePythonicCow]

Sounds like fun for some Amiga, PowerPC and Warp developers.

A closed source (as best as I can tell) processor specific O.S. isn't going to take the world by storm. But as a long list of kernels in a post above shows, there's plenty of room for alternatives.

[ThePythonicCow]

Quoting Dvorak, from the article you linked:

This is much more exciting than the pedantic Linux world, which can't seem to consolidate, let alone compete with Microsoft on the desktop.

He's off his rocker, I say, off his rocker.

Linux is not fragmented. It's big and diverse, with players focusing on everything from embedded apps (TiVo set top bixes, TV remote controllers, palm tops and wristwatches) to the extreme high end (NASA just announced a deal with Intel and SGI for a 10,240 processor system with 500 terabytes of ram - not disk - ram).

One Linux kernel development stream, with its head at Linus, remains, as always the centralizing force behind all this.

Desktops will take a bit longer to dominate ... years not months. Their time will come.

[boris]

Sounds like an operating system designed to put you to sleep.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Hey, you started all of this, any thoughts?

Martin started all of this, I just thought you other guys might be interested.

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

(NASA just announced a deal with Intel and SGI for a 10,240 processor system with 500 terabytes of ram - not disk - ram).

I had not heard about that !

Got a link?

[Petronski]

...a 10,240 processor system with 500 terabytes of ram - not disk - ram).

I bet a computer like that could load "The Sims" in less than two minutes!

[martin_fierro]

You kiddin' me? I haven't a clue. <|:)~

[ThePythonicCow]

From C|Net News.com:

Company or Topic: Silicon Graphics

• SGI turning Ultraviolet   (OSNews)  - Sunday, August 01, 2004
  SGI recently announced plans for a new multi-para...
  
• NASA to build 10,000-processor Linux computer   (InfoWorld)  - Thursday, July 29, 2004
  The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has given the green light to a project that will build the largest ever supercomputer based on Silicon Graphics Inc.'s (SGI) 512-processor Altix computers.
  
• SGI Aims High with NASA Deal   (InternetNews.com)  - Wednesday, July 28, 2004
  SGI's Linux supercomputer powered by Intel chips will lead NASA into the next age of space exploration.
  
• SGI & NASA Plan 10240-Processor Altix Cluster   (Slashdot)  - Wednesday, July 28, 2004
  green pizza writes "NASA has announced plans to cluster twenty 512-processor Silicon Graphics Inc Altix supercomputers connected to a 500-terabyte SGI InfiniteStorage SAN. The Altix uses Itanium2 CPUs running Linux atop an Origin 3000-derrived architecture. NASA and SGI scaled Linux to 512 CPUs late last year. There are also strong hints that SGI plans to bring its clustered ATI graphics to Altix in the near future. Lots of neat big iron project on the horizon!"
  
• NASA splashes out on shiny supercomputer   (The Register)  - Wednesday, July 28, 2004
  Courtesy of SGI and Intel
  
• NASA to use giant SGI Linux Itanium cluster   (the INQUIRER)  - Wednesday, July 28, 2004
  

[ThePythonicCow]

I bet a computer like that could load "The Sims" in less than two minutes!

It won't load "The Sims" any faster than the latest Dell game machine.

Similarly, the entire world-wide fleet of Fedex trucks won't deliver a loaf of bread from Los Angeles to New York any faster than a single Harley.

Now if you want to deliver a hundred thousand tons of bread ...

[Petronski]

Holy cow dude, thanks for the info. I didn't know that. </sarcasm>

[ThePythonicCow]

You're most welcome. </sarcasm>

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

Thanks for all those great Links.
Sandia is getting a new Super Computer also:

Red Storm Rising in New Mexico