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You would be surprised by how konq could be multi-platform.

Well, not konq, per se, but khtml, the html renderer. Kurt Skauen, the guy who is writing Atheos ported khtml to atheos in a matter of hours. ( http://www.atheos.cx/abrowse1.png) for a screenie)

Keep in mind that Atheos uses its own GUI toolkit, built into the OS. The point is that khtml is clean code, and can easily be ported.
-- Thrakkerzog

NCR then sued the students for not asking permission down the chain of command while using their Palms, following the students claim of Invasion of Privacy by guards who glimpsed (unauthorized) at their screens to determine that the students indeed were playing Quake. Pending is the reaction from IDSoftware who's latest filings show the students had not sought permission to port Q3 to the AtheOS operating system.

Shakespeare in dub

AtheOS (http://www.atheos.cx for the paranoid) is an open-source OS which seems to fit your requirements. While it is still under heavy development, it already supports preemptive multithreading, symetric multiprocessing, protected memory, and, most importantly for you, a band-new, fully integrated GUI with a companion BeOS-like C++ toolkit. It's hardly ready for prime time, but if you've got the skills, check it out and see what you can do to help.

Also, consider QNX if you are looking for embedded technology or real-time operating systems. (it's FAST!) Try their 1.44 MB floppy---it boots up, presents a GUI, a modem-detector, a webbrowser with Java, and a few games!

If you're looking for an OS to tinker with, consider playing with Atheos, which is similar to BeOS in design (C++ object-oriented desktop operating system). I'm interested in supporting this project myself at some point when I have free time again.

As for myself, I run BeOS, FreeBSD and sometimes QNX on my personal box, with an OpenBSD server/firewall right next to it. I find that OpenBSD puts the network first all the time; Linux-using friends of mine commented once that they tried to burden it and found that it was serving X windows applications faster than their computer could keep up. This is a Pentium 233 w/ 128 MB ram and a 27.2 GB hard drive we're talking about, not the Athlon 750s with 256 MB of RAM my friends are using. And that's in addition to serving Samba, Squid (1GB!), FTP and SSH all at once. OpenBSD's in-fucking-credible. Mad props to Theo, the man is my God.

For my desktop though I'm mainly running BeOS because it pretty much does everything I need in a box that's not quite as network-aware as I would like (smb's manual still, X isn't supported in a real way yet). But it's a snappy interface that can multitask like you wouldn't believe, incredibly efficient and beautifully designed. Coding for it is fun too. It's all you could ask for, except for improved networking which is in the works and perhaps some UNIX odds and ends, like X support or serving. It's not a server OS. It's a desktop.

QNX would be fun if they would supply more packages with it. Lots of UNIX doesn't seem to compile right under it though; I'm not sure what the problem is, because QNX is considered a UNIX more so than BeOS and it has more problems compiling POSIX code. All I know is, QNX is the fastest UNIX on the planet, it feels like it's got to be at least 95% assembly to be so damn fast! And it has a fairly rich API for the GUI (Photon), though it is C-based.

OS's are somewhat of a hobby of mine; I'm downloading Solaris 8 Intel as we speak to try it out. I would say that the worst thing you can do is get stuck in a rut, unwilling to try anything out. I was a Linux-Mandrake devotee for a long time before last year; since then I just got sick of seeing the same screen all the time. More knowledge is necessarily better; I have complete config files for blackbox, AfterStep, and FVWM2, also used Sawfish/GNOME for a bit. Always try new things; the OS world is richer now than it has been in years thanks to the free software movement. Don't become a zealot if you can help it; it stops you from being open-minded.

Daniel

Not to be confused with AtheOS, which has already been discussed. It also started as an AmigaOS clone.
Is anybody else confused? I am.

Oh look, another chance for me to plug AtheOS;)

Come on, more kernel/device driver coders needed. IDE, ISO9660 & PPP support would be nice if anyone who has the knowledge & time would be willing ;)

I've always wanted to write my own OS, starting from the WinNT or MacOS perspective...think simple. Maybe its time I put more effort into it...

Why Sir, may i suggest AtheOS It's like Linux but without all the bagage (Including no X! Yay!). Honestly, check it out.

• It's Open Source. Shares that in common with Linux, so neither has that advantage over the other
• It also has a 64 Bit Journaled Filesystem, and will have file Attributes. Exactly the same as BeOS (Although it is not BFS, natch)
• It is actually fairly small. Certainly smaller than Linux, BeOS etc. Can't compare it to BeAI though, they're two diferent things
• It has great potential as a "Media OS" as well. It doesn't use X for a start, which is always a good thing if you want to do things like video...
• It's just cool.

As someone has just pointed out on the Mailing List, Atheos' journaling filesystem is called AFS too. Now people are wondering what to call it to avoid confusion....

Consider me a nobody then. People have made some of the kind of comments about Linux too but times have changed. Can't crack it if you can't find an install to crack. Most of the Unices have similar security methods and can be locked down to similar levels depending on what is installed. The real complaint should be what is installed and what doors are left open. It wouldn't do you much good to install the latest patched up ftp server and then put the root at / with write access. If we were talking about how Atheos hasn't been cracked then maybe your comment would be a little more valid.

You can not port it (according to readme that comes with sources) to another platform, be it win32, beos, mac, or future systems like berlin.

No... In fact, AtheOS has a port.

I would like to see them port to Atheos OS. It is Unixish without using X. I'd like to see what kind of performance is possible or if the whiners of X are just that(whiners).

The best-known competitor is Red Hat, but others - notably TurboLinux and Mission Critical Linux
Hands up - how many of you never heard of Mission Critical Linux until this? How many of you have never heard of Debian, Caldera or SuSE? And TurboLinux is major?

Linux is arguably the worst operating-system product in history, and Microsoft's the best
I don't think that there's one vulnerability in there for BeOS. I doubt there are any for AtheOS. Therefore, they're even better than Microsoft's platforms.

This boast[linux isn't vulnerable to worms/viruses] has been easy to make, since until 1999 Linux was too much of a fringe product to stand up to the kind of abuse more widely used systems endure.
Actually, it's because Linux is a true multi-user operating system, something not even NT can claim. Solaris is also immune to those kinds of things. If I try to delete every file on my system right now (I'm on Solaris) I will fail, except for wiping out some of my own data. The backups will remain. The system will still boot. Other users will be unaffected.

There's Berlin (Still kind of slow and buggy right now). You could always just replace the Kernel with Atheos which comes with its own GUI. or even port the GUI bit to Linux. there's probably a smattering of others too. Developing a GUI isn't a problem. Its getting others to support it.

Has anyone checked Linux's reliablity when being dropped down two stories? I'm especially looking for comparisons to BSD.

I've heard that OpenBSD won't even let you throw it off a building.

1. Palm OS (not x86)
2. Psion Epoc (not x86)
3. Acorn RiscOS (not x86)
4. MS-DOS
5. QNX
6. BeOS 4
7. AtheOS
8. standalone Linux (with a few services up and without starting X)
9. Windows 9x
10. Windows NT
11. NeXTstep (x86)

Linux is a great OS. How will other GPLed desktop OSes like AtheOS keep up with these developments. Are there projects to port these drivers to other GPLed OSes?

BeOS is damned innovative in comparison to Win/Mac/Linux. Be should GPL it, and make their money by selling T-shirts.

What about Atheos, which was featured on Slashdot a few weeks ago? It's written by some BeOS hax0rs so it shares a lot of commonalities. I'm really impressed by it.

Has anyone taken a look at the FS in AtheOS? (featured on /. recently)

The feature list makes it sound a lot like the BFS used in BeOS which is absolutely fantastic.

And it is GPLed, for all you linux fanatics. Of course I have no idea it it could possibly be integrated into a unix...

- flip -

Has anyone taken a look at the FS in AtheOS? (featured on /. recently)

The feature list makes it sound a lot like the BFS used in BeOS which is absolutely fantastic.

And it is GPLed, for all you linux fanatics. Of course I have no idea it it could possibly be integrated into a unix...

- flip -

From Atheos screenshots page (http://www.atheos.cx/screenshots.php3)

More mirrored screenshots:

mutated.png and tabview.png

All screenshots as crappy jpegs

mutated.jpg, tabview.jpg, shot1.jpg, shot2.jpg, shot3.jpg and shot4.jpg

Is AtheOS POSIX compliant?

AtheOS is not ment to be a new UNIX, and I don't want AtheOS to be tied on hands and feets to fit within the boundaries of UNIX and POSIX. Nevertheless AtheOS does support large part's of the POSIX standard, and are therefor capable of running a wide range of the command line tools you normaly finds on a UNIX system. Some functionality is not there cause I have not have any need for it yet, or I have not had the time to implement it. Yet some other features are ommitted cause they are to incompatible with other features in AtheOS.

I also might mention that I do not have the POSIX standard, so most of it is implemented after linux/irix MAN pages :) Consequently not all the POSIX like function's are 100% conforming, but again they work well enough to make most utils I have attacked to compile.

From Atheos page (http://www.atheos.cx)

Mirrored screenshots:

Shot 1, Shot 2, Shot 3 and Shot 4

What is AtheOS?

AtheOS is a free operating system for the Intel architecture released under the GPL license. I have seen quite a few anouncements of "promising" OSes with "great potential" during the development of AtheOS. The problem is that when I follow the links I normally find a description of the concept, a floppy-bootloader written in assembly, and not much else. AtheOS is a bit more mature, and is already running quite a lot of software. As a "proof" I can tell that the server you currently are browsing is running the AtheOS operating system. AtheOS is not ment to be a new Unix clone (like Linux and *BSD) but a new clean desktop OS. It does not run X-windows, but has it's own heavy multithreaded GUI system. Not using X has its ups and downs. The big down is ofcourse the lack of application's that can be easily ported to the OS. Another down is that the current GUI does not support remote display, even though implementing it should not be hard at all. The up's is that the GUI interface is much more high-level, and is much better at defining how a GUI should work. This leads to better consistency between applications. Drag and drop, clippboard, and other forms of high-level communucation between apps are defined by the OS. This will hopefully lead to applications that work well together and that give the user an impression of a compleat system with consistency between applications. I belive this consistency is important so the user dosen't have to start from scratch each time she learns a new program to know.

The AtheOS GUI consists of two main components: An application server and a dll providing a C++ interface between the server and the application. The GUI is therfore programmed through a C++ API providing windows containing a hierarchy of widgets that all have their own graphical environment.

The kernel was written from scratch. It supports SMP (Symmetric Multi Processing), has a built-in network TCP/IP stack. It supports loadable device-drivers and file-systems. It provides threads and processes with several powerful communication systems that makes it easy, efficient and safe to create server/client implementations where both the server and the client run on the same machine. Threads can communicate through message ports (most common), shared memory, posix signals, semaphores, pipes, pty's, TCP/IP, and propably a few other method's as well.

If you have any questions or comments you can reach me at kurt@atheos.cx

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: When trying to boot AtheOS the screen flicker for a while and then everything is dead. Why?

A: It might be due to missing fonts in the atheos/sys/fonts directory (see INSTALL). If that is not the case check the boot.ini. Make sure the memory and boot-device settings ar ok. You might also try to disable some features by uncommenting any of the DISABLE_* entries in boot.ini If possible, taking a look at the kernel output from the seraial port as configured in boot.ini can often geve a clue to what when wrong.

Q: Why does my serial-mouse dont work?

A: Propably cause it is in COM2, currently only COM1 is scanned for a mouse. If you use a serial-mouse you MUST set the DEBUG_PORT to 2 (in boot.ini) even if you dont have a serial cable attached for the kernel-debugger.

Q: I have run AtheOS from the native FS for a while, and now I installed a new kernel, but it seems like it still boot with the old one. Why?

A: Since the bootloader don't know how to load the kernel from AFS you must also install it on your FAT partition (in atheos/sys).

Q: AtheOS boots, and the GUI seems to be working, but there is a problem with the mouse-pointer, it leaves a trail of pixels when moved, what's up?

A: The problem is most likely that you have selected a 15-bit screen-mode. Both the Matrox driver and the Vesa20 driver is broken in that they list's more screen-modes than the render-module supports. Only 16 and 32 bit are fully supported by now.

Q: What kind of architecture is the kernel built around? Monolitic, micro-kernel, nano-kernel?

A: I often ask myself that question to :) The kernel is very modular and the it have a well defined interface between the kernel and it's device-drivers and file-systems. So given that each component comunicate through a thin defined interface, and don't know much else about each other, it ressembles a micro-kernel. I am not sure if this is the right term though, since all kernel-components lives in kernel-space and is not protected from each other, this is all properties from a monolitic-kernel. I am a bit confused :)

Q: The GUI look very Amigaish, is it an AmigaOS clone?

A: No. In the beginning it was actualy ment to be one, but this days there is nothing resembling the AmigaOS in AtheOS other than the window-borders. This seems to be rather hard for the Amiga-community to grasp though. They still think AtheOS is an Amiga clone :) Hey the Window borders look like on my Amiga! It must be an Amiga clone Right? I find it rather amusing to see that the Amiga-hord think that the single-most important property of an OS is the window-borders :) BTW: You can replace the border-look by writing a plugin to the appserver so I guess the Amiga look will go away quite soon.

Q: Is it a BeOS clone?

A: No, AtheOS is not meant to be a BeOS clone. I have never run BeOS myself, but I have read a lot about it, and I realy like the high-level API's and the GUI. The AtheOS GUI is very inspired by BeOS, but it is not meant to be a clone. Even though many of the general concepts is similar, there is also many differences in the API details.

Hmm... that means there are 4 Amiga-Like systems available today - two closed source and 2 open source:

Closed source:

AmigaOS itself: closed source operating system, now severely outdated, but groundbreaking for its time - soon to be replaced by a completely different OS from Tao, which is rather cool in itself, being a VM a bit like a Java VM, but without the language dependency (it includes a gcc/g++ port...)

BeOS - what most people think of as the AmigaOS done right. While it has been market mostly to Mac-like media people, in fact it attracted a load of ex-amiga people, particularly developers too. It's OS structure is undeniably similar to a refined AmigaOS.

Open Source:

AROS, the Amiga Research OS. An Open-source clone of Amiga OS 3.x, ported to architectures including x86. Many Amiga os-legal apps work with just a recompile. Not finished. Work progressing slowly due to legal complications - the OS depends on Amiga-copyrighted system include files and infringes on several Amiga patents. However, the current amiga intellectual property owners seem to look quite favourably upon AROS, and it looks increasingly likely it will get their blessing, since the Amiga is now going to be based on a completely different OS from Tao, and does not use any old AmigaOS code, so AROS is a good option for keeping the "classic" amiga alive and up-to-date. There's already Quake and Doom ports, so they've got the important stuff going. :-)

Atheos The new kid, the subject of this discussion. People have noted its UI similarity to the AmigaOS UI already on this thread, but architecturally it is also very similar to AmigaOS and BeOS. But it's open source, unlike AmigaOS and BeOS.