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.

Comments

Windows apps?

[JohnTheFisherman]

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.

Now what?

[baptiste]

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?

Re:Now what?

[dr_labrat]

What did linus say when he created linux??

I think he hasically created it cause he wanted to..

Why climb that mountain? yadda yadda..

Other developers

[rppp01]

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.

Re:Other developers

[Anonymous Coward]

The IntelliMouse patch is the execption rather than the rule, really.

It's cool that he has accepted the patch, but you shouldn't assume that you can go mucking about with the kernel or libatheos/appserver and expect Kurt to accept the patch with open arms. Honestly.

Re:Other developers

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem fairly clued up on AtheOS so I assume you're on the Mailing List as well. If thats the case, then I'm sure you've seen the various posts by Kurt saying he won't accept large patches to the kernel or the appserver/libatheos

Hell there are some things I'd like to change about os::Menu, but Kurt would more likely than not reject my patch, so I'd be wasting my time.

I'm just happy with coding my own applications though, and learning AtheOS.

OO emphasis and other things

[dmelomed]

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?

Has anyone attempted to port X to AtheOS?

[J. J. Ramsey]

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?

AtheOS and GPL

[Midnight Ryder]

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.)

PPC

[mcc]

Some minor questions.

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 :) :shrugs: oh well. thanks.)

how long

[Lord Omlette]

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?

CD-Rom support

[timothy]

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

Design an OS with C++

[JWhitlock]

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?

Two questions

[gabbarsingh]

Kurt,

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 /. 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.

You're doing a great job! Good luck and keep it up!

Where did the name come from?

[Tim Macinta]

Does your operating system not believe in Jesux?

Atheos as the perfect Unix client

[Anonymous Coward]

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!

AtheOS as a desktop OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:License Freedom?

[kurt.skauen]

Can you please show me one single statement anywhere where I threaten to close-source AtheOS? You couldn't find it? Ok, then how did you conclude that I have often threatened to make AtheOS closed source? I have never threatened to do so and I will not threaten to do so in the future.

I have said that I'm might going to change the lisense to a more liberal one in case the GPL would cause problems for non-GPL drivers, apps, or other "third-party" components somehow. How you managed to twist that into "often threathened to close-source" is beyond me.

Kurt Skauen

Not just gaming (was Re:Windows apps?

[algae]

A directX emulation layer would be very useful not just for gaming, but for a variety of real-time sound synthesis applications. Software synths frequently use DirectX to get a low-latency connection with the audio card, so that you can make realtime changes without a lot of lag between the time you twist a knob, and hear the results.

Besides, not needing windows to run Reason would truly rule!

Embedded devices?

[proxima]

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.

Re:unfortunate name, perhaps ...

[Pyrosz]

In case you couldn't read the faq due to /. effect. He states that he didn't know that atheos was even a word. He picked it as a short form of Athena (iirc) and OS = AtheOS.

How does Atheos handle Binary Compatibility?

[MeowMeow Jones]

(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?

Application framework & Development

[absurd_spork]

Two questions, actually:

• I think that not having X on board is a good idea, actually, because if you had X on AtheOS, everybody would start porting over X applications and then you'd have a lot of applications with an entirely different look & feel, which would spoil the integration that AtheOS currently offers. However, for the future, there's going to be need for a well-documented application framework in order to facilitate application development (for options such as component development and so on); since you already ported part of Qt to the native AtheOS system, what would you think about porting as much of KDE over to AtheOS as possible without including X, so that not too much of the native system's advantages would be lost, yet you could use the portability of KDE to ensure a broad supply of end-user applications?
  
• I realize that you do very much of the actual development yourself, at the moment. What would you think of partially delegating development, such as putting up a list of "what is needed" to-do's, discussing the actual implementation with some developers, but letting them do more of the actual work? Because you've come really far with the OS, but I presume it's at a critical point at the moment where it needs to gain momentum. You could assume some sort of "benevolent dictatorship", we have at least one case in operating system development history where it worked out fine :-)
  

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater?

[Picass0]

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?