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AtheOS 0.3.5 Released
JigSaw writes "AtheOS 0.3.5 has just been released. Lots of changes to the core of the OS, but the most important upgrade is the port of the Konqueror web browser (the author had to wrap around X/KDE/QT calls in order to port it). AtheOS is a modern OS, written from scratch using OOP and C++, it features a 64-bit journaled/attributed filesystem and (surprise) it doesn't use X, but rather its native GUI system (screenshots). Changelog is here, while you can download it here (only around 23 MB for the basic installation). There is already a number of posix software ports and third party native software available."
The Lord's wrath will come upon you.
Of course, the HURD still lives on as long as someone has interest in it. That's how Free Software works. But there's no GNU vs. Linux or RMS vs. Linus competition going on. For the foreseeable future HURD is an experimental system, of interest mostly to OS developers. At one point Linux was in a similar position. Many OSes have never gone past that. So it goes.
GTK+ lets you define a UI using libxml. Perhaps that's a start?
Lucifux anyone ? ;)
Putting the toolkit into the system and you are frozen into a design that may seem modern right now, but may seem massively outdated and obsolete just a few years from now. The best example is why we are even able to use X now when it was designed in 1983? If X had had the toolkit as part of it it would have an Athena-style toolkit, and MicroSoft could have quite rightly laughed us off the planet.
The overhead of X is due to stupid graphics primitives, not the fact that graphics primitives are used. There is no reason a round trip is needed to select a color or a font. Unfortunately the interface to widgets can easily become much more complex than the graphics needed to draw them, obvious examples are X window managers.
And I certainly do want a dozen different toolkits on top! GUI diversity is a good thing, it might mean, dare I say it, "innovation" could happen!
Also everybody says users are "confused by different toolkits". I think this is a myth, I have worked with a lot of users and have seen no sign of this. People recognize buttons and scrollbars and menus with an enormous variety of appearances, and put up with keys not doing any thing with remarkable ease. Otherwise computer game designers could never get away with the designs they do.
It is true that huge differences cause problems, for instance Athena scrollbars were a stupid design. But these are solved quickly by competition between the toolkits. For example all the Unix toolkits quickly migrated to a Windows-style of key bindings, this would have been impossible if Unix had an enforced toolkit.
The "confused user" is a figment of the imagination of the people who are trying to force these toolkits down our throats. These people should get out of their theoretical ivory towers and examine exactly what the real programmers and users use and expect from their computers.
I do want to check out AtheOS, though. I suspect the necessary lower levels are there, because implementing a toolkit like they describe is impossible without them.
It does sound like AtheOS, although it implements the GUI as part of the system, implementes it as another task in user space using the microkernel=like communication mechanism. This sounds like an ok approach.
Although I do find the fact that there are "scrollbars" and "text edit" things in the interface (see the change log) indicates that he has made the GUI interface way too high level. I would much rather see an interface that reliably and quickly does "draw a rectangle here" and "format this UTF-8 text here" would be more powerful, as it would allow variation in the GUI design.
I still need to study the design and try it out to really get an opinion, though.
I am disappointed by the lack of X,
Heh. I think that's the coolest thing about AtheOS:
they're doing something NEW, not just cloning UNIX.
C-X C-S
Don't forget Benelux, and Electrolux, and ...
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"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
> Obviously, AtheOS can't compare to Linux, BSD and even Win2k in terms of "what it does and how reliably it does it". But then again, neither could Linux in 1992.
Yes, I didn't intend to dis AtheOS for immaturity. It is, after all, version 0.3.5. When I mention features, I mean things like "what is its security model?", "what kind of system calls does it support?", etc.
> It has a very modular design (microkernel based?), allowing new components to be added without core modifications.
Yes, that's a legitimate OS design feature. But notice that it doesn't have anything to do with the choice of language.
> Perhaps the most important quality of any new OS is how easy it is to develop and extend and the quality of the core system design. I haven't looked at the source yet, but it seems to score very well on both those fronts. It's done in C++, which I personally find much more pleasing and useful than C.
Yes, if I had other reasons to create a new OS, then I would consider my choice of language very carefully. But to push an OS to users on the grounds that it's written in $LANGUAGE is, IMO, just silly.
Also, I trust your comment has to do with the ease of maintaining the OS. Please, please, please don't tell me that AtheOS requires you to program applications in C++. An general purpose OS should be agnostic about what language an application is written in.
BTW, I'm not trying to dis C++. FWIW, in circles where my favorite language is discussed, the suggestion comes up about once a quarter, "Why don't we write an OS in $LANGUAGE?" My response there is just the same: "What a stupid reason to write a new OS!" I certainly wouldn't switch to a new OS if the only thing it had to offer was that it was written in my favorite language.
If someone wants to push an OS, let them push it on the basis of what it is, not what language it's written in.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
> Think about it: Linux would no longer have to try to be both a server OS and a desktop OS (and an embedded OS too, now, it would seem), but could concentrate on being the best server OS out there.
Why does Linux need to concetrate on an application? An operating system is just that: an operating system. It needs to provide services and referee access to resources. It shouldn't care what is layered on top of it.
I haven't got anything against the Mac, but with the Mac Apple introduced an evil paradigm: the UI is part of the OS. Microsoft picked up on that paradigm and actively worked hard to weed out the underlying OS (or at least to hide it). That's a move in the wrong direction.
The reason Linux is doing well everywhere from mainframes to superclusters to servers to desktops to embedded devices, is that it doesn't try to be anything other than an operating system. It provides some basic services. Other people decide what to do with those services.
Lots of other OSes have done the same in the past. Let's don't rush to give up the good ideas.
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Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
From what little research I've done, AtheOS looks to be the most promising up-and-comer thus far (the *BSDs have been around, IIRC, longer than Linux, and thus don't qualify). It has some very nice features. A GTK+ port would not be out of place; neither would a full Qt port. If it has POSIX emulation (which ISTR it does nto yet) and can run those two toolkits, it can run GNOME and KDE, which is the sine qua non of a modern OS, unfortunately.
It's good to see coverage like this. Perhaps this will help attract developers.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/atheos/
1. It really isnt a UNIX like OS. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but I like UNIX.
>>>>>>>
Neither is Linux. Of course, they're both POSIX complient.
2. No text console.
>>>>>>>>>>
Didn't you see the terminal in the screenshot?
3. Everything in the kernel, particularly video drivers and GUI. That's a bad design. PC video hardware is too crappy to stake your OSes reliability on them or the video drivers.
>>>>>>>>>>
Did you bother to read the documentation?!! The thing is a hybrid-type kernel, and has an app_server that does the GUI bit. If the low level architecture is anything like BeOS's (it doesn't say exactly) then it should run the bulk of the video driver in the context of the app_server, and then use a kernel driver to bang interrupts and registers and whatnot.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
No, "illiterate" means not being able to spell "multifaceted."
PS> No offense, of course.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
True, but these things will fall into place. I have a serious doubt that they won't for BeOS. I would like nothing more than to slap BeOS back on my drive and then see if the Windows CD melts quickly, or slowly. But I don't see that happening too soon.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Archaic != bad. 90% of human DNA is more than a billion years old. If it works it works.
PS> Don't think that I am defending X in any way. For a desktop user, almost every GUI system out there is better than X. For a network user, QNX Photon is quite a leg up on X. The only thing that X has is support, and that can be said of Windows as well...
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
AtheOS seems to have a lot of potential. The code looks nice and clean, but drivers are iffy. Even basic things like the IDE driver is fairly immature, and vid card support is almost non-existant. So if you have some development time, instead of coding another abstraction on top of X, please contribute to this worthy project.
PS> Why do windowing system designers never use the X11 driver API as their standard, so drivers can be ported easily? It's not *that* bad!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
it works very well under vmware, even at high resolution :)
Think about it: Linux would no longer have to try to be both a server OS and a desktop OS (and an embedded OS too, now, it would seem), but could concentrate on being the best server OS out there. AtheOS, meanwhile, would become the best client. Where it makes sense, you share the source. (Heck, we've already got Konquerer running on AtheOS; if that's doable, then moving other stuff shouldn't be hard at all.) But we'd suddenly move from having just a single product that competes pretty well with Windows 2000 Server and kind of well with Windows 2000 Professional, and end up with two products: one which clobbers the Server (Linux), one which clobbers the Professional (AtheOS).
Maybe this isn't necessary just yet. I'm almost certain that, eventually, Linux can become just as easy, possibly easier, than Windows (though what sacrifices in power may be necessary to finally truly achieve that goal I don't know). But I still think this is something we should really look at.
AtheOS is designed to be a desktop OS. Linux, BSD and Win2k are "ORIGINALLY" designed to be a server OS. Win2k is the only one designed with the desktop in mind, with the others its more of an afterthought. Maybe a better comparison of AtheOS would be to WFW3.11 since its a gui desktop OS in its adolescence stage.
i heard that cx stands for christmas island. what that is i have no idea though...
It runs under vmware, however the PCNET network card isn't supported yet. There is a HOWTO on the subject, as it takes a trick or two to get it to work under vmware. Drivers for Nvidia and 3dfx cards are being worked on, but it runs under vmware with the vesa 2.0 driver.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
There is a guy working on the ide driver with the end goal being cd-rom support. NE2000 and RTL139 network cards work out of the box, and there is a 3com driver available. Nvidia, Matrox, and 3dfx cards either have drivers, or are very close to having drivers. Almost all recent video cards will work with the vesa 2.0 mode driver. Kurt is doing a great job with the core os, and he has left the driver development to the people who want it most. In my experience he has been very responsive to any requests for help in coding.
-- the computer doesn't want any beer, no matter how much you think it does. NEVER, EVER feed your computer beer.
I guess all those watchdog boards that my next office neighbour sold in 1992-1994 for Linux systems were actually unnecessary.
I'll bet chmod won't accept read+write permissions for owner, group and everyone else in decimal mode:
chmod 666 *
The Evil Files contain the Mark of the Beast!
J
...panic for a microsecond when you saw the ".cx" domain?
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Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
yeah they should have had that red code worm attack goatse.cx instead of the white house heh heh
Got friends?
Wrong... Computers are too hard for the average user to understand. Windows included (remember Linus's comment about no one understanding NT? I think that you mean that it is too hard for the average user to use.
I disagree here too. My parents, both in their fifties, use Red Hat Linux (and are even asking me to migrate their other Windows system to Linux ;). They use their system more and ask me for help less than when they were using Windows for most of their work. Oh, and they are pretty computer illiterite as well...
OTOH, I have met sub-average users who could not use it. One comes to mind. This is a fellow who really liked Windows 3.11 because after 8 hears, he was able to do things like save a file (something he struggled with on Windows 95 and Linux). Bear in mind, this person bought a mousepad for his trackball... But this sort of thing aside, most people can use it quiclky and easily, as long as someone else handles the really technical stuff...
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
For those without religious studies, Phillipians is unlikely to be a book in the bible ;)
Sig: Tell all your friends NOT to download the Advanced Ebook Processor:
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I am all for this, its even better then BeOS from a tech standpoint. I hope this project gets better and better.
The Lottery:
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
can go to safeweb.com and use their cached version of the site.
The Lottery:
"Not my manner of thinking but the manner of thinking of others has been the source of my unhappiness." - M
That is the real bummer.
I might try it, but it has very low chance of recognizing my hardware, so I can't event try.
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Two witches watched two watches.
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Two witches watched two watches.
Which witch watched which watch?
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
You might spend a lot of money there, but did you know that Apple's latest campaign is that there is more to a processor than MHz? Benchmarks using 500MHz and better G4's are similar to 1 GHz Intel chips. And those benchmarks are in common uses, not just Photoshop and such. The 867 MHz single chip G4 leaves the 1.7 P4 breathing for air, while the 800MHz dual chip smokes it. You pay a lot, but you get something useful in return for that investment: results.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
You can install Linux on a Power Mac. Other OS's have been ported too.
And for open-source fans, what if you want to customize your OS?
With OS-X being FreeBSD based, the source for it is included. I don't know of anyone actually making changes to this and having it work, but I suspect it's possible to make some changes to the non-proprietary portions of the OS.
As for hardware, who says a company cant stock up on spares? You can buy hardware components from Apple. Power supplies, CD ROM/RWs, video, audio, etc. You can buy that stuff from them just as easily as any other vendor or architecture.
I do agree that being tied to Apple hardware sucks, but I find the OS-X I use at work very useful. My co-workers also do. We have 3 Macs with OS-X on them in our lab. And one guy uses Mac hardware with Linux OS.
Like I said earlier, you pay a lot, but you get results. With some x86 hardware, the line "You get what you pay for" often applies. You don't see many Mac people saying that.
For software, many companies (MS included) are porting softare apps over to OS-X. Just about any GNU tool will also port, thanks to a FreeBSD base. Someone mentioned problems for guis. QT is developing a library for OS-X that will allow porting of apps written for other platforms over to OS-X. Bottom line is that there is plenty of software available for OS-X.
As for those benchmarks, see the keynotes from the MacWorld Expo from a few weeks ago. MacWorld Expo should have them.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
it's always fun to read the latest articles on slashdot, so I can see the pages that I will actually be able to load 6-24 hours from now ;)
If you're reading this, please update to SourceForge! you're .CX server is utterly bogged by the slashdot effect. I would love to try it out, I have a box just rarin' to go, but we'll never get at it while this is on the front page of slashdot, unless you post something like an ISO somewhere fat.
At least it's better than Be's "close it up and then abandon it" approach to replacing X.
I think you're confusing that with Be's "we're trying to make some money and survive, so kiss our ass" approach.
But I could be wrong.
"And like that
Sever timed out while trying to access www.atheos.cx.
Sorry, AtheOS, we just zeroed your uptime counter.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
this agnostic OS, has not accepted jesux as his savior OS!
Several reasons:
1) AtheOS is being actively developed, BeOS is not.
2) AtheOS is opens source (see (1) for results).
3) AtheOS has better POSIX complience.
4) AtheOS has better development tools (more modern GCC).
Of course, BeOS is still technalogically more mature, but given 1-4, and Be's lack of lifesigns it won't be for long.
No, the irony of this post is not lost on me.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Mirrored screenshot of the Konqueror port to AtheOS
One impressive factor is SMP support: already! OpenBSD still doesn't support SMP and NetBSD just added it recently (not a flame of the BSD folks -- obviously, they're focusing on different goals. But I still think it's an impressive feature to have this early in its development).
What about Mac OS-X?
What about it? Apple has released their BSD core OS, but the GUI, which most users consider the computer, is still strictly proprietary. How many times do we have to trot this old dog out before we realize it's the same old dog that's been given a shearing and a flea-dip?
I, for one, don't feel like spending $1500-2000 for the same bang-per-buck I already have in my Athlon-based PC for under $500 just to use MacOS.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
Ok, the site has loaded (finally), the actual changelog is at: http://www.atheos.cx/download/0.3.5/base/changes.t xt
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
AtheOS is not a microkernel. It's a strange hybrid design in which most drivers live inside a monolithic kernel but drivers not needing to service interrupts (and maybe other kernel-only features I'm not aware of) can work in userland. Also, the kernel is not programmed in object oriented C++, like the rest of the system - it's 100% C.
AtheOS and HURD also had very different goals. HURD was designed to be a scalable, clusterable microkernel-based OS with lots of advanced features, while AtheOS was designed to be something that works, here and now. Albeit heavily inspired by BeOS's "multimedia OS" idea.
I do admire Kurt for getting so much done, almost all on his own, but I wonder if AtheOS is ambitious enough to survive in the future, or whether adding new features will be like flogging a dead horse.
The best part about AtheOS is that it is everything that the HURD tried to be but hasn't become yet. AtheOS is an object-oriented microkernel OS that is already up and running - something that the HURD should have been about six years ago. RMS is stuck playing catch-up to the newcomer now, and it's anyone's guess as to whether he bows out of the race or starts making good on the HURD's promises. Only time will tell.
-vort3x
(posting anonymously to preserve my precious karma)
Surely it's time for HURD to stop being vapourware and actually get something working.
The HURD is certainly far from "finished" but it is by no means vaporware. Nowadays development is happened under the Debian HURD project. It does boot, it has networking, it's got X11, it's got install disks (Linux based at this time). The last month has seen the first PPP support.
At present there are over 1000 hurd-compiled packages - 25% of the Debian archive. (a full list of packages with statuses here (big page))
For more information, check the afore mentioned Debian HURD pages, Kernel Cousin Debian Hurd (mailing list summaries) and the HURD Documentation Project.
New version. There has been a long time since the last release of AtheOS but finally V0.3.5 is ready for release. There is several reasons for the long delay like the fact that I have been rather busy at work lately and that we have had a great summer here in Oslo so AtheOS have not always been at the top of my priority list. Also quite a lot of work have gone into this release and quite a lot of new features and improvements have been made.
Many of the changes are additions and modifications to the various API's and toolkits but also a few user-visible aspects are improved in this release. Many bugs are fixed in the text editor and list-view widgets. The scrollbar have got a totally new look and a few new features like "paging" (jump one page when clicking beside the knob) and small arrow buttons that can be used to move the know.
Some crash-bugs have been fixed and the general robustness of the application server has been improved. Also several kernel crash-bugs have been fixed so the general stability of AtheOS have improved quite a bit. The uptime on my heavily stressed developer machine is 34 days when I write this (the time since the last HW upgrade).
This version also have two new keymaps (German and Sweedish) and support for a wide range of nVidia graphics adaptors.
The main focus for V0.3.5 however has been on the KHTML based web browser. I have ported the HTML parser/renderer used in the Konqueror web browser (KHTML) to AtheOS. KHTML is a very capabel HTML parser and renderer that support both CSS and javascript and so does the AtheOS web browser. Finally a high-quality web browser for AtheOS! The browser is part of the 0.3.5 base install and the 0.3.4->0.3.5 upgrade archive. Take a look at the changes list for a more detailed list of changes since V0.3.4.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.