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Ask AtheOS Creator Kurt Skauen About His Creature
Developer Kurt Skauen, programming for fun, ended up answering the frequent cries to write a graphical Free OS not tied to the X Window system by doing just that. His AtheOS has been mentioned here a few times before -- it's a Free (as in GPL) Operating System for Intel-and-compatible CPUs with an integrated GUI, a tendency toward POSIX, and more than a hint of BeOS. There are quite a few sites with more information about AtheOS, but you may have trouble just getting past the beautiful screenshots and nearly as beautiful AtheOS FAQ. (There are also ASCII parrots.)
Ask Kurt about the past, present, and future of AtheOS here (ask as many questions as you'd like, but please only one per post) and we'll forward the best ones to Kurt for his answers.
I know a lot of people hate Windows here, but it certainly has the lion's share of apps. Can/will/do you plan to add a windows emulation layer, or some fairly painless way of running Windows apps? Same for X/GTK/etc.
+5:offtopic,but anti-American
everytime anyone links to atheos, the server is crushed. i could not even see the lovely ascii parrots the last time the site got slashdotted.
;ob
mmmm...BeOS
Ummm, Jon, aren't you supposed to be dead...? - Otter(3800)
My question: Sure you did this for fun and it is a beautiful OS. But as it gains attention and user interest, do you have a target audience in mind? Who do you think should use AtheOS - who will derive the most benefit?
Top Most Bizarre/Disturbing Error Messages
I have noticed that you prefer to work on the kernel and UI portions by yourself, leaving apps and drivers to other developers. When do you plan on allowing other developers to begin working on the core of the OS with you? This would speed up development of the OS.
They stuck me in an institution, said it was the only solution, to...protect me from the enemy, myself
Are you scared of religious groups attacking your OS because they believe it's an atheist one?
Je t'aime Stéphanie
Sadly, it appears that the performance of the AtheOS port of a web server is lacking
AtheOS is a wonderful hobbyist OS with a small team working on it over the Internet. Of course, the OS we all know and love was once in a similar position. Do you see some of those same developers, disenchanted with the growing popularity of Linux, moving over to AtheOS and similar projects, with the eventual goal of paralleling the success of Linux and acheiving World Domination?
Even Slashdot wants to hide some things
Who would you recommend Atheos to?
In other words, where could Atheos be a better choice than other open source OSs?
Thanks!
Flavio
You mention the GPL is free, and AtheOS is GPL'd, and while I will forego a rant about nonfree GPL and such, it is important to mention that Kurt (the Theo deRaadt of the GPL world) has often threatened to make AtheOS closed source, and keeps full control over the entire OS (where possible).
Are you thinking about a compatibility layer in there to make it easy to port linux drivers to your OS? Or maybe even emulate the NT/W2K I/O Subsystem and use the M$ driver base? Wouldn't it be cool for me to bring up that graphical interface of yours on my NVIDIA GeForce 2, play whatever startup jingle you have in mind on my SB!Live and print a hardcopy using that cheap Windows GDI Printer I don't really own :-) even though nobody ever had to program a line of driver code for AtheOS?
From what I have read, you have built the entire OS and its components all by yourself.
;-) Be sure can't sure you about it now.
Where would you be if you had a tight group of good developers? Do you plan on persuing this open-source development ideal of this community?
Also, I have noticed that you have been shying away from BeOS comparisons. I think that you should attempt to lure existing BeOS users to your OS by doing these comparisons, especially with technical details like the APIs and file system.
Also, I don't like the name. I think it should be BeOS II
Now that many developers coding for the BeOS were left hung to dry, do you have recived support from them?
"In God we trust, all others must bring data" - W. Edwards Deming
for google's cache
w ww.atheos.cx/screenshots.php3+&hl=en
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:G2Rd3nolquw:
Do you plan to implement a powerful object-oriented desktop model similar to OS/2 (and possibly MacOS) where almost anything is configurable, or adapt a simple model like Windows, BeOS and Gnome?
War is one of the most horrible things a human can be exposed to. And one of the worlds largest industries.
The AtheOS UI strikes me as a bit Amiga-ish.
Was the Amiga UI an influence or inspiration for the design of the AtheOS UI?
And, if so, are there any other aspects of the Amiga platform that influenced your design?
C-X C-S
Keep up the good work!
Do you have any thoughts in particular on GNUStep and/or it being ported to AtheOS? I haven't been paying much attention to AtheOS-- do you *invite* the idea of having a variety of development platforms for your OS, or are you thinking of backward compatibility as something a bit dangerous (because people just port shoddy pre-written crap rather than making something new and clean..)
.. sorry to bother :) )
( I wish i had something more insightful or meaningful to say but i don't. I would love to try out AtheOS if i can get my hands on a x86 box at some point, but have not managed to do this yet. Oh well
Let's look at the numbers. There are ~250,000,000 people in the U.S., and ~2,200,000,000 copies of Windows -- giving them a market penetration of ~ 1100%. For Atheos, the numbers are more like 0.00003%. Obviously people are staying away from this "Toy OS" in droves. The only reasonable conclusion one can draw is that Atheos needs more utilities to support making love to female zebras in heat.
Never complain about a site being slashdotted as long as we have google...
Atheos homepage
the FAQ
Atheos links
Screenshots are here
the parrots
but will there ever be a really strong competitor against windows, stronger than linux is... one that's both opensource and has a integrated GUI. one that can handle the beginners kind of demands and still can handle the demands of others.
:)
One that can run all the damn binary forms so you aren't stuck with emulation layers and so on.
(offtopic:)
a standardization of binary files probably would make applications more platform independent, but what do I know, I'm just a 15 year old nerd
----
"I believe in karma. That means I can do bad things to people and assume they deserve it" - Dogbert
ALHAJI ADAMU SHAGARI.
Lagos, Nigeria
FAX NO: 234 1 7594693
Private Address:alhaji_adamushagari@presidency.com
alhaji_adamushagari@myself.com
ATTN.: THE MANAGING DIRECTOR / C. E. O.
REQUEST FOR URGENT (CONFIDENTIAL USINESS RELATIONSHIP
OF THE TRANSFER OF US$45,560,000.00 (FORTY FIVE MILLION, FIVE HUNDRED AND SIXTY THOUSAND UNITED STATES DOLLARS ONLY).
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We as holders of official positions in various parastatals, were mandated by this new civilian government to scrutinize all payments made to certain foreign contractors by the past Military Government and we discovered that some of the contracts they executed were grossly over-invoiced, either by omission or commission. Also we discovered that the sum of $65,560,000.00 (Sixty-Five Million, Five Hundred and Sixty Thousand United States Dollars Only) was lying in a suspense account, although the foreign contractors were fully paid their entitlements after executing the said contracts. We all agreed that the over-invoiced amount be transferred (for our own use) into a bank account provided by a foreign partner, as the code of conduct of the Federal Civil Service does not allow us to operate foreign accounts.
However, we have succeeded in transferring some of these money, precisely US$20,000,000.00 (Twenty Million United States Dollars Only) into a foreign account in GENEVA (SWITZERLAND). But unfortunately, the provider of the account has severed all forms of contacts with us as he has refused to adhere to our earlier mutual agreement insisting that the total amount be paid into his nominated bank account before disbursement will take effect. If for US$20M (Twenty Million United States Dollars Only) we are not compensated, how can one guarantee full compensation on remittance of the balance of US$45.560M (Forty-Five Million, Five Hundred and Sixty Thousand United States Dollars Only).
We are therefore seeking your assistance based on the balance amount of US$45.560M, which can be speedily processed and fully remitted into your nominated bank account. On successful remittance of the fund into your account, you will be compensated with 25% of the amount for assistance and services and 5% set aside for expenses contingency.
This transaction is closely knitted and in view of our SENSITIVE POSITION we cannot afford a slip, I assure you that this transaction is 100% risk free. We will avail you with our identities as regards our respective offices, when relationship is fully established and smooth operation commences. I am at your disposition to entertain any question(s) from you in respect of this transaction, so contact me immediately through the above and fax number or through my direct email address
alhaji_adamushagari@presidency.com or
alhaji_adamushagari@myself.com for further information on
the requirements and procedure. Please note that the DEAL needs utmost confidentiality and your immediate response will be highly appreciated and we will use our own share of the money to establish a lucrative business in your country.
Please you should contact me mmediately with your private fax and telephone numbers where further details in respect to this transaction would be sent to. Please do not disregard my email for any reason because it was addressed to and from myself, it is for security reason to avoid problem.
Yours truly,
ALHAJI ADAMU SHAGARI.
I've never used AtheOS and before giving it a try I'd like to see information regarding its hardware requirements and performance. For example, how does AtheOS perform as a web/ftp/samba/db server, considering it supports multithreading and SMP?
Do you have any numbers to show us?
Thanks.
Flavio
Why such emphasis on OO paradigm? While building the system, did you have trouble bending some things around OO model (i.e. could some things be only done in straight C)? Do you think many developers will be turned off because objectOriented style of variable and function naming was used in the C parts of the source (as I noticed)? Finally, why do you want this to be a primarily desktop OS? What do you think of the current desktop environment offerings in *nix world?
I know AtheOS has its own GUI, but I imagine that have X on board would make porting most Unix apps easier. Has anyone attempted such a thing?
I didn't see it in the FAQ.
Greetings...
Another poster mentioned the idea that you were considering moving AtheOS to a different license. Is that the case?
Secondly, if you are considering putting it under a different license, why? And, why did you select GPL licensing for AtheOS as opposed to a number of different licensing choices out there? (Reguardless of if you are or aren't moving AtheOS from a GPL license.)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
Some minor questions.
:) :shrugs: oh well. thanks.)
Do you consider it likely that at some point in the near future AtheOS will develop a PPC port?
I realize that the AtheOS developers are very busy with the hard work they are doing and that there is no good reason for them to expend effort on a PPC port. However i was wondering if you think that there is enough interest among extant developers familiar with the ppc/chrp/macintosh platform that someone might feel like cobbling together a port.
That being said, i was checking and trying to figure out: does AtheOS have some kind of flexible arbitrary-server auto-upgrade "package"-style system along the lines of the debian apt-get? if not, are there plans to implement one, or perhaps port apt-get and dselect to atheos?
Please excuse my ignorance.
- mcc
(I am quite curious about AtheOS, and have been meaning for some time to try to check it out (well, or at least check out the screenshots and read the API documentation, since as implied above i do not personally have an x86 machine on which to test the OS..)-- i was thinking about looking over the atheos webpage yesterday morning, actually. I'm looking forward to learning more about this OS in the future.. if only i knew more now, maybe i'd have some better questions
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Since you don't support text-mode console without a full GUI, what are your plans to enable remote logging access to an AtheOS box through Unix-like facilities like telnet, ssh or X-Terminals?
Maybe I don't understand the GPL well enough, but why can't someone retract GPL'ed code? If this lisence protects the authors, why can't they just say "Hey, I don't want this out there anymore".
That's pretty lame if that's the case. That's akin to being in a street gang "4 life" until death.
I find that logic flawed, could someone explain that to me without:
1. Flaming me because of my name.
2. Getting upset...I'd just like an honest reason.
What I don't get is, athough it seems as though it might be a good idea to publish under GPL(GO OPEN SOURCE), but if you desire to close up the source, get a huge offer and sell it, you have to keep stuff out there that you've GPL'ed hence reducing any monetary value your software had to nothing. Someone explain this please...
do you think it'll be before a partition can be installed painlessly side by side Windows? Should be the quickest way to gain mass adoption, right?
[o]_O
It seems to me that it'll be extremely difficult for AtheOS (or any new OS, really) to do everything well; even Linux, which is pretty widely used, isn't a be-all, end-all solution yet (and maybe never will be, or never should be).
So have you considered limiting the scope of AtheOS (possibly severely), and aiming at doing a relatively few things exceptionally well? Here I'm thinking of BeOS, which was usually promoted as a "multimedia OS." It seems to me that this might be a way for alternative OSes now and in the future to stake out some territory: do a few things very very effectively rather than trying to be all things to all people.
Of course, if you're doing this as a fun/interesting thing, you may not care as much about a niche or widespread acceptance. But, still.
-brennan
Kurt:
:)
I much prefer to install software (at least anything over several megs) with a CD than over the net, and there are a lot of old documents that I have converted to CD for storage. I wouldn't want to buy a machine without a CD-ROM drive
Is bootable (or other) CD-ROM support planned? Perhaps many people would be able to sample AtheOS easier if they could (for instance) order a CD from Cheapbytes and install it locally, pass to a friend etc.
Considering the progress on the other aspects of the system, how important do you think this is, or are there technical difficulties (other than time) in getting CD-ROM support to work?
Best,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Well, I'd rather ask him about his creation, AtheOS, since I would think that would be more "news for nerds"-ish, but I'll give the creature angle a try:
So, Kurt: what's up with your creature? Did you find him while vacationing at the Black Lagoon, or was he wandering lost and far from home and you took him in? And - I have a followup question: does he really look better with the 3D glasses on?
Your right to not believe: Americans United for Separation of Church and
Taking a look at the screenshots page, I can say I'm amazed! I mean, true 100% alpha transparency, it looks just like an image placeholder in my web browser.
Or maybe GOOGLE DOESN'T CACHE IMAGES, #%!%!%$^!
-k.
why have you implemeted a custom GUI lib ?
as aposed to implemeting a backend for GTK/QT/X lib which would mean alot more GUI software
regards
john jones
Being of a strong *nix background I didn't have many troubles getting AtheOS installed. But, the fact that the install process is done entirely from a bash prompt it would be quite cumbersome for the average newbie (or even intermidiate *nix geek). Are there any plans to make a more user friendly installation?
"How would this sentence be different if pi equaled 3?"
Let's say I download a copy of AtheOS. It is licensed to me under the GPL.
Let's say a year later Kurt closes it, and no longer distributes it under the GPL. He no longer has to distribute it under GPL, of course.
However, that doesn't at all change the fact that I have a copy, licensed to me under the GPL, and all that implies. I can distribute it myself under the GPL, etc.
GPL is not designed so people can 'close up the code, revoke everything else out there, and start charging for it' might be another way to put it.
If you are really concerned about the monetary value of your code, because you think you can sell it, and you think having a closed license is paramount to getting a sale, then you probably shouldn't publish it under GPL.
about not having some bearded weirdo running after you, crying: 'It's GNU/Atheos, it's GNU/Atheos!'?
b.
...I've been tricked by Slashdot comments so often, I added a *.cx rule to my firewall. ;-)
Why not just modify an existing free OS?
I can see why a free OS not tied to X would be a good thing, but surely that could be done on top of the work already done on Linux / Hurd etc. Why reinvent the wheel?
As a former BeOS tech support person, I have had more than one instance of a power-user complain about memory usage in BeOS. From what I can see of AthOS, it is not much different. The issues here is when the power user assumes that the more memory, the better.... when in fact, the more memory, the longer it takes to boot, if at all. This item has been covered before. However, Can I please have your explanation, as a kernel hacker, as to why this is a problem in both BeOS, and AtheOS. Also, do you have any plans to resolve this via some ace card you have held back. Obviously FreeBSD, or even Linux do not have any such restriction but we are comparing apples to oranges. :)
Thanks in Advance.
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
Do you have plans to develop, or prompt the development of, an application that would make people want to have AtheOS on their hard drives alongside other operating systems? This would lead to more developers starting to work on AtheOS, and eventually, with enough basic apps, some people completely moving to AtheOS.
.cx domain for the website? The image that that domain conjures up at least in me is not exactly pretty. :^)
Also, why oh why did you choose the
[BTW, I think it is exceedingly cool that people still want to create new operating systems from scratch, even though there already are several very good alternatives around.]
I asume you started AtheOS to learn, and expand your understanding of the Intel OP codes, and the various mechanisms inside the Pentium class chips. Have you begun to hack a version of your kernel to other processors, and/or have you started the process of study on these other processors in the wild? I'm sure the RISC folks would like to have new toys to play with in their war chest. On that note, have you received any hardware donations, and if not would you be willing to accept second hand risc machines for your expanded study?
It isn't a lie if you belive it.
According to Bjarne Stroustrup, the core application domain for C++ is systems programming. Having created an OS in C++, what would you say are C++ strengths and weaknesses for your needs? Has the OS evolved along with the evolving standard (the STL, templates, the new type casts, etc.), or have you stuck with the C++ that was around when you started? What features do you depend on, and which do you avoid like the plague? And, of course, if you did it today, would you use another language or make different language choices?
I have noticed that AtheOS is aimed twards the desktop market, but yet the underlying code might make a good server. Have you ever though about making a server version?
Welcome to the Entropy Bar, may I take your order?
Kurt,
/. ers as well), do you see yourself doing AtheOS development fulltime? If yes, then how do you foresee this transformation? In fact, I'm sure there are many people here who once worked for a big/medium company but were good at a certain thing and went solo after a while. I'm curious to find out their journies as well.
I'm sure you developed AtheOS in your free time and then let me ask you what is your day job? How do you find balance between the two especially when you are in that coding bubble that everything seems to be coming together well.
Secondly, (this may be for all
You're doing a great job! Good luck and keep it up!
No, I'm not *the* GN, but m-w.com has no such word "assertation". I think you meant to say accusation.
why not include a DirectX emulation ?? it would be easier on his OS since its not tied to X and input devices are not a seperately controlled.. if he could do that could this be the next gaming platform ?? now that would be serious competition..
I'd love to see that. A nice, tight Gaming OS that's Windows compatable with full DirectX emulation would be friggin' awsome. Probably never happen, unluckly - that's A LOT of bloody work to do to get even enough Windows compatibility to run games. (And, well - I was involved in a project to do something like that once. Long ago... the project in question (Freedows) appears to be dead and gone now...) None of the projects that have set out to do something like that have flopped so far. Doesn't mean it's IMPOSSIBLE, just damned hard.
But if it ever happened - I'd have me an MS free game machine built very quickly :-) (And no, a Linux box doesn't count as an MS free game machine - most of the games I want to play don't have Linux versions :-/ )
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
As development of AtheOS reaches nearer your initial goals for the system, and the userbase increases in size, what is your strategy to attract developers to your platform (or write compatible applications)?
Some (okay many) people consider XWindows a pain to program, Windows is different again, and other small (non-X) GUIs such as QNX's Photon are also different APIs, a new GUI can only clutter and confuse?
Do you think it's necessary to have a degree of Windows compatability to ensure the success of a non-Microsoft operating system?
Racists should be sent back to where they came from
OK, so I use an external drive enclosure to shuffle some stuff in between systems (sneakernet). What I'd like to know is if AtheOS will be able to access filesystems such as FAT16/FAT32. You can't believe the headaches I get when I'm stuck using a Mac and need to access a Word document on a FAT formated disk.
Does your operating system not believe in Jesux?
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
We already burn coal for power, why try to build a gas turbine?
We already have a computer made of vacuum tubes, why try to make transistors on silicon?
Maybe he's working on AtheOS for the same reason why Hillary climbed Everest: "Because it was there." Actually, in Kurt's case it was because it wasn't there. Maybe he feels that existing solutions for a GUI OS are still clunky and have much room for potential. But he'll never know if he doesn't try. Working on an existing framework could limit his capability to expand that potential, so starting from scratch, at least to him, is the only way.
One aspect that the Linux and Unix community often
complains on is that X is not designed for fast graphics,
gaming etc. Also, allowing drivers to write directly to
the hardware to improve performance affects systems
security and reliability.
In other words, the Unix world lacks an alternative
for X, and trying to build a good client - for multimedia
purposes - around X in my opinion is not the best
solution.
If I were in your shoes, I'd try to aim Atheos' development
to do what Linux and other unices still can't do well
(multimedia), and not what they already perform near
perfectly (server and security tasks).
Of course the scenario I'm thinking of is a mixed network:
Unix machines to do firewalling, file serving and network
services, and Atheos machines that could allow great
multimedia performance without caring of security and
other issues.
I'd like to hear your opinion on this.
Thankyou, and keep up the good work!
It's fairly common for even hardcore advocates to point out that Linux is generally more useful as a server OS than a desktop OS, and that Linux has a ways to go before it's ready "for the desktop" Do you plan to concentrate on making AtheOS a purely single-user-at-a-time, desktop OS, or do you eventually want to see it move into fulfilling traditional server-only roles as well?
Are you an idiot?
Anyone have a mirror of the pictures?
We have the best government that money can buy.
Well it is :P
fsckn' humorless pinhead moderators!
Was on topic, guy wanted to see ASCII (ATHEOS) parrots.
I would find "Troll" to be quite acceptable, since what I gave him was a penisbird (still ASCII, and still a parrot, muthafukkas!)
BTW, you can find a mirror of the true ASCII are ATHEOS parrots here.
Is it possible to replace the X window system with your gui? Sorry couldn't read all about it. /.-ed
Feeling a little jealous at the attention this "other" free OS is getting? Come to think of it, I haven't heard anything about xMach lately. Is it dead, or just shagged out after a long squawk?
Spake Timothy: you may have trouble just getting past the beautiful screenshots...
Heck, I have trouble just getting to the screenshots.
Windows is free (as in falling appart) so I don't see what the problem is... :-)
This is only a joke, had it been an literal statement, it would have been followed by flames or angry moderators.
---------
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
Besides AtheOS, what do you do for a living ? Why did you decide to start such a project ?
Men are born ignorant, not stupid; they are made stupid by education. Bertrand Russel
I am curious what sort of user you find showing the most interrest in AtheOS? Also, it looks like the sort of thing that could do quite well in an Information Appliance or other embedded application because it doesn't have as much baggage as UNIX or Windows.
One more thing, were you an Amiga fan?
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
The question I have is: how hard would it be to provide Linux binary compatibility, so that with a minimum of tweaking, people can run Linux apps on it? Something like a VM, or a compartmentized process that will run Linux apps inside, would be just fine too.
If this is possible, I would be happy to try it on my Vaio PictureBook, which is currently running Linux.
BeOS has Dx layer, alowing Dx games to be easly ported to the BeOS.
Ported. That's the problem here - most developers really don't seem to be that interested porting thier games to other operating system (note I said MOST, not all). A nitche operating system designed for multimedia and games already happened - and BeOS didn't get that many developers porting thier games over. Binary compatability, IE - no recompile or porting, would make for a very popular alternative OS for gamers. (but, again, probably won't happen ;-)
Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr - looking for something to read? Check out my three free novels at MidnightRyder.org
I would find it very unpleasant to use a machine or operating system that has a name which means "no god" or "without god".
Some of such names are not too important, of course, and I am not troubled by demons (or zombies) as names for smaller parts of an OS, belonging to the internals of it.
The name of the OS itself to me seems like a different kind of beast, since such names usually are statments, either about what the OS is mainly there for ("DOS"), what machine it is for ("MacOS"), that it sets out to do something new and different ("OS/2")or who wrote the kernel and which other system it is similar too ("linux"). The name, together with the history around it, can also make a political statement ("GNU", anyone?).
My question is: regardless wether you share my opinion that the name of your OS seems to be a statement of some sort, and regardless wether this is intentional or not, would you consider changing it if a sufficiently high number of potential users feels uncomfortable with it?
Ever think of making an X alternative? I love using *nix, but X has a lot of drawbacks. It's unresponsive and slow compared to Windows, MacOS, and BeOS. I hate having a different hotkeys for different apps (c'mon damnit, someone standardize how to copy and paste!).
So couldn't you just make a different windowing server for *nix and let the *nix do most of the hardware work? I mean MacOSX is just a FreeBSD kernel with a nifty GUI on top to replace X.
I guess what I really want is a MacOSX ripoff for Intel machines. It may seem improbable, but ten years ago it probably seemed improbable that a ripoff of *nix would become the most popular *nix type OS.
Hi Kurt -
I've followed the development of AtheOS with occassional interest over the last year or so. Congratulations on what seems to be a very interesting project.
As is often heard (but perhaps seldom understood), an OS in and of itself has only academic interest without meaningful applications. Some might argue "it's the applications, stupid", but I find this thinking somewhat one dimensional. A computing experience is made up of that delicate balance between functionality of available applications, and the ability of the underlying OS to "run" those applications, and run them well. This duality is something I think very few people truly understand (I'm not one of them, I'll quickly add). Word with its rich but admittedly overbloated feature set loses most of its appeal given that most flavours of Windows are unreliable, slow, and crippled by a "single-user-at-the-console" mentality as well as the horror that is the Windows registry.
Although I have a keen interest in the OS that I happen to use, this is not at the expense of any and all applications. Granted, I'd search long and hard for alternatives before I abandon a particular platform, but I'm not (I hope) blindly loyal to any one system.
I can understand that native AtheOS apps might be few and far between. For my purposes, I can probably get by with just gcc and xemacs (although I'd sorely miss kdevelop). Consider me thus a programmer (and not some sad MS Office junkie - bless their blissfully ignorant little souls) and tell me why should I use AtheOS? What can it offer that my current Linux and IRIX boxen don't? Or perhaps, if someone with time on their hands hacks an AtheOS-GUI theme for KDE/Gnome (perhaps this exists already?) why bother with the real thing?
The docs say that the current filesystem is much like a standard Unix filesystem. Given that a lot of AtheOS seems to be inspired by BeOS, is there any intention to have a more BFS-like filesystem, with journaling, extended attributes, MIME file types, 64-bit goodness, and so on?
If you
... shouldn't you have thought about security from the very beginning?
It seems that you are going to create nothing new with the same security hassles plus gratuitous incompatabilities.
I see that the atheos.cx server runs AtheOS. What advantages (if any) does AtheOS provide as a server OS compared to Linux, xBSD, etc., particularly in the areas of security, performance, and ease of administration?
What security apps are available for AtheOS at this time, i.e. firewalls, Snort, Tripwire, etc., and (if you don't mind my asking), what do you use to secure the atheos.cx site?
Do you plan on reusing effort that was put on Linux, avoiding the rewrite of the mythical wheel?
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
Besides, not needing windows to run Reason would truly rule!
Causation can cause correlation
Looks like the Amiga, BE, and Mac along with the rest of the losers that makes up the UI wanker crowd have found another OS (aside from Amiga and BE) to drive into obivilion.......
Any plan to start a distribution and service company soon, a la RH?
How much stress can the AtheOS handle? For example, say something like
Microsoft Windows, in it's various incarnations, is entrenched. It's difficult to have any semblence of "market share" and therefore, you will encounter resistance in terms of getting device drivers, and basic applications across a variety of hardware. Never mind "multimedia" like Apple's Quicktime or RealMedia.
Hell, the Macintosh and Linux barely show up on the radar of some in the industry, and outside of the industry, I find it difficult to find people who've even heard of Linux.
So, my question is: Do you have a plan to overcome inertia, or do you just not care about competeing with Windows? Are you interested in having this OS become mainstream, or are you content to be relegated to 1/1000th of one percent of "the market"?
BeOS had something in the order of one hundred thousand users. And still, Be had trouble getting anyone outside of that small circle to take it seriously.
If I decide that today is the last day I'll ever run MS Windows, and I install your OS, it's very unlikely that I'll be able to do anything meaningful with it, and furthermore, most of my peripherals will not work.
How will you overcome this to the point that the OS is accepted and taken seriously by those outside the small circle who develop for and use it?
Remember that although Linux gained acceptance, Linux was the exception and not the rule. Consider the *BSD market, now overshadowed by Linux, who get zero time in the popular industry press, and yet, their product is just as good.
Remember GeoWorks? (for those of us who had C=64's, it was also called GEOS). I believe it's now called "NewDeal", but it hasn't made any progress against the titan of MS Windows.
So, while a fun concept, how far do you really think this project will go?
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Have you ever considered promoting AtheOS as an OS for GUI-based embedded devices? The competition in that arena now is Windows CE, Palm OS, and Linux - but an OO based GUI built into the OS may be beneficial in terms of performance.
With Linux, a device developer has to get the core Linux kernel working and then build a GUI on top of it (XFree86 or a smaller X server). Palm OS doesn't have multitasking and isn't very scalable to powerful devices. Windows CE requires a royalty. AtheOS could provide a powerful operating system for embedded devices for free.
"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent." --Carl Sagan
Hi,
I've install many OS on my home and work machines for the past few years. My hobby became OS installer and HD reformatter. I even developed a Intallation tunnel syndrom after doing this so many times. Why do I waste my time doing that you may ask?
Mostly because everytime I have been running a freshly installed OS (on the most recent hw), I enjoyed the new ideas very much at first and then became bored of lack of finishing, became aware of unstability and uncompatibility issues and lack of support from the OS current solutions. The DIY approach and OSS weren't the answer since I just wanted to enjoy the higher application level without getting my hands dirty.
The best time I have had using a computer was with BeOS because it was actually fun to use it. Unfortunately, lack of common applications, drivers for my devices and Web applications supports (including Java for my own purpose), moved me away from it. BeOS had the tremendous opportunity to run the best Java on the planet and they walked away from it.
What bought Palm exactly for $11M? The company is worse nothing. What's an OS if you are stock with nothing more than this?
My question is of course: what are your planning in terms of application support, web integration (like running Java), and the stuff that makes an OS worse running?
Thanks for your time and good luck,
LdS
Hi,
If I were to represent a portfolio of private investors and was interested to put some money if your developement, would you be able to tell me 3 reasons to do so, list your competitors and tell me what make you think you will still develop this product in 3 years?
Thanks for your feedback,
PPA
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Sorry for the lame attempt at humor.
you religous assholes deserve to be beaten, you cocksucker.
how dare you come whining & begging for an OS name change.
if you don't like it, then don't fucking use it. nobody will miss you.
better yet, if it's so damn important to you, write your own fucking OS and call it gawdOS.... oh yeah, i forgot, you're too busy sucking the dead dick of jeezez to actually learn how to code. moron.
I first learned of AtheOS on Slashdot, and mentioned it to my boss. He looked at me and asked me what benefits it might offer over other operating systems and I couldn't really give him any good answer. We use mixtures of unices (pretty much every flavor, from Red Hat and Debian to IRIX, Sun, MacOS X, you name it) along with Windows. My boss will pay me to play with fun new technology but I have to justify it. Can you give me something to take to him and say "See, this is a great product that might be useful for this reason."
Allegations of "threats" aside, I'd also like to note that there are any number of perfectly innocuous and sensible reasons, legal and otherwise, for a project leader to keep full control/copyright of their project.
"The Crystal Wind is the Storm, and the Storm is Data, and the Data is Life"
Greetings...
My question is with regard to an instant-on machine. Do you think it would be possible to have AtheOS always running in the background?
In addition, are you planning to implement a GPL-version of VMWare that could run on AtheOS?
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Do you plan to implement any 'non-standard' designs in the OS such as in EROS or Aegis? What's your take on them?
Better start calling it GNU AtheOS or RMS ... ;-)
will be looking for you
a monopoly. That's right, AtheOS has an integrated web browser!! What will you do to maintain healthy competition and innovation in the OS market?
Looks almost as good as Mac OS X's Quartz.
(As I'm sure you know) one of the problems with C++ is that modifying a class changes the binary structure of an object. This then breaks any programs that were dynamically linked against this. This problem has been addressed in several ways (CORBA, COM, staticly linking in the code, or keeping 800 copies of MFC40.dll on your machine, etc, etc)
This seems (to me, at least) the biggest problem with writing an OS in C++. How does AtheOS deal with this problem?
Trolls throughout history:
Jonathan Swift
What ever happened to Freedows? Remember Freedows? The free OS that was supposed to run Windows, Linux, and Mac software natively, have a customizable GUI and be free? What happened to it?
To Kurt:
Why do you contend that AtheOS is in no way based on BeOS (conceptually, or otherwise), despite AtheOS' striking similarity to BeOS in many areas (nearly identical API, ripped-off icons, same feature-sets, etc., etc.).
As someone who is interested in starting my own operating system, simply for the expirience, your OS has been quite an inspiriation with an impressive feature set.
You mention the book Practical File System Design by Dominic Glampalo in your web page (which is an EXCELLENT book), could you reccomend any other OS related design books/references/web pages, that you have found useful or good reading?
-James McTavish
Karma: Abstruse (Mostly as a result of using words nobody understands)
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
Do you consider AtheOS to be born as a curiousity? Or do you consider Linux, BSD, and other growing OSs to be flawed in some fundemental way that only a fresh start could fix? If the latter, what are the biggest strikes against these OSs and how do you plan to overcome them? And what do you think other *nix need to do to match your goals?
Out of curiosity, anyone know what program he used to generate that webpage?
Vermifax
Logout
They got a taste of it and now they're coming back for more. You can trust the government to behave like a government will.
There are projects like 3dwm and E17 for X Windows, but I suspect these are so new because having decent and common 3d hardware support in XFree86 is in itself new.
So what are your plans for AtheOS in this area?
Would you consider AtheOS a portable OS? I mean, with BeOS, it ran on at least three platforms, not including BeIA, and they said it was because 90% of the code was platform-independent. What is your opinion of porting AtheOS to other platforms, such as the PPC, some Amiga-esque hardware :-), the PlayStation 2 or whatever?
There is absolutely no reason to panic.
One of feature of X that is invaluable is the ability to pump an application's display to any arbitrary location (given the authentication). When will the Atheos windowing system be capable of doing this?
get sick of people asking why you aren't making another *NIX clone?
:)
Wiwi
Wiwi
"I trust in my abilities,
but I want more then they offer"
ximian are only validating a bad idea on the part of ms. by buying into the .net fiasco, they are showing support for the pigs in redmond.
Anyway, you are right, I do not code. I could tell you something about the (network-related and not computer-related) work I do, but why bother?
Anything you dont like about me, from your profound knowledge of me as a person and also - your guess was right, even though I do not particularly like your wording - as a christian does not make my question less important. And my question was not "change the name of the OS", as you can easily read above.
By the way, care to show me some of the Open Source code you contibuted recently? - I am sure you can figure out my mail adress.
Hi Kurt,
My question, or perhaps suggestion, relates to application support, and making this easier for developers.
Now that you've got konquerors http-renderer implemented in AtheOS, you've probably made a small compability layer for QT -apps, or atleast hacked konqueror's http-renderer to use AheOS GUI subsystem, would it be possible to make a more complete "GUI-emulator" for easier ports of other QT-apps? or possible make a X-emulator lib for AtheOS? There is a good deal of applications either supporting X directly, QT or GTK around, and making these easily available for AtheOS, would be a nice start for more interrest in AtheOS. Don't misunderstand, I also understand the need for a GUI -API that is not X, especially for a desktop OS wich AtheOS is, but to make the transition easier I mean...
"GNU is not UNIX, and AtheOS is not linux"
And to you others wondering what Kurt's day job is, he is working for a game company called Funcom, maker of Anarchy Online.
Personal regards from an ex- co-worker Kurt, I still wonder how you get time to do all this wonderfull stuff.
H.
Is anybody working on a JRE for AtheOS? Although Java has hardly taken over the desktop (*cough*), there are quite a few useful apps.
Kaffe seems to have been ported to a huge number of platforms, so it may not be too hard to do an AtheOS port as well. The Kaffe homepage has some instructions for people who want to do a new port.
Personally, I think you need to get a grip and not get all hung up over similar sounding words. So what if "AtheOS" sounds a little like the word "atheist"? If you say, "I've got dandruff, some of it itches," with the proper tone, inflection and speed it sounds almost exactly like you're saying "God damn it, son of bitches." (It's really easy to do; try it.[1]) Does that mean you'll never use the former phrase because it's blasphemous?
Of course not. Let's not be silly.
Lighten up, dude. It's no more unfortunate than the existence of any word, real or otherwise, that could be mistakenly heard as any other word you happen to find offensive. Stop whining or stop speaking English. You're going to run up against this problem again and again in your life if you're so sensitive about it.
This isn't meant as a flame, just an honest (perhaps a little brutally so, I admit) opinion about your apparent hypersensitivity to the fact that English words can and often do rhyme.
__
[1] And believe it or not, a Baptist minister taught me that phrase and he is as honestly devout as I've ever seen a person be. He just happens to not be easily offended.
yeah right, aol. bwahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
no email address so RETARDS like *YOU* don't spam me, you asswipe.
My question is: regardless wether you share my opinion that the name of your OS seems to be a statement of some sort, and regardless wether this is intentional or not, would you consider changing it if a sufficiently high number of potential users feels uncomfortable with it?
your question _was_ change the name of the os, as evidenced by the above quote. like ever other xtian, you are one lying sack of shit.
and show you some open source i've written? yes, i do code... but i'm not stupid enough to give you the opportunity to spam me by revealing my identity. as a troll, you suck.
figure out your email "adress" [sic]?
yeah, it's jeezez_ass_licker@no_mind.scum
And where the fuck are apps for AtheOS? Or are we supposed to use it just stare at the screenshots?
Kurt,
What is your opinion about the OpenBeOS project which tries to gradually replace the BeOS with open source counterparts. Could AtheOS serve as a starting base for such an effort?
Secondly, do you thinks it would be possible to cooperate with other open source projects like ErOS, etc.. there are so many fringe operating systems available today, why does everyone have to re-invent the wheel?
I have always thought that lots of people should build their own OS, It is a great way to try new ideas. The thing that stops me from doing it is drivers. I don't want to write a million and one drivers to allow people to use my OS.
Using Vesa for a video driver is ok on a small scale but even the Atheos docs say "This will ofcourse be un-accelerated and *really really* slow!!"
Is there any way to strip drivers from other systems?
If drivers had to be written for hobby OS/s could they be written in a plug-in style so that a driver for the TurboFlarp4 could be developed for Atheos and used under other OS/s (or vice/versa)?
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
Yahoo
Here's some text fodder.