Niche Operating Systems

Eugenia writes: "So, you think that BeOS or AtheOS are niche Operating Systems? Well, you haven't seen anything yet. OSNews provides a list and short description of the most active and most promising Operating Systems written by individuals or small teams just for the fun of it or because they have a dream of how the perfect OS should be (is there such a thing though?). Some of them, like SkyOS for example, are even quite far down the line in terms of usability and advancements."

Comments

yeah like Vx-works is niche

[johnjones]

wake up vx-works and Itron are some of the most deployed O/S's in the world so what do you call niche ?

ones that the general public uses ?
(ever thought about the O/S in a mobile phone)
or even yourt Set Top Box pluged into your TV

just because it doesnt screem the version and who made it does not make it less of a O/S

regards

john jones

p.s. oh and linux need to sort out threading I found out today (-;

Different types of niche operating systems

[adadun]

In my (somewhat limited) experience with niche operating systems for PCs, they can roughly be divided into two categories:

• "Toy" systems that are written by a few hackers "just because they can". Those are typically written in (x86) assembler and even eary versions can produce a nice looking GUI. (Note that "toy" systems can very rigid and functional, despite their name.)
  
• "Research" systems that are written by researchers to prove a point. The rarely have a GUI (unless the research involve real-time graphics as for Nemesis).

Both kinds are extremely hard to install, only run on a very carefully selected set of hardware, and don't really gain much appreciation other than from a very small group of followers. Followers from both groups often look down on eachother.

Lately, the operating systems research has come to a slowdown, but the operating system hackers (that produce the "toy" systems) are gaining more and more momentum. The latter can most likely be contributed to the success of Linux. Can the former be explained by that operating systems now is a fully explored area?

Re:The more OS's the Better.

[Junks Jerzey]

Standardization kills choice" ... "I have standardized on MS." So, you like to see choice, but you'd rather not use it? Interesting.

_Everyone_ can make a choice. His personal choice is Windows, but he's saying that he wants lots of options available so each person has more to choose from.

Re:How about OS's that should be brought back?

[Sloppy]

A rather obvious answer to that would be AmigaOS.

Thank you Linux/BSD/etc

[MattW]

The fact that there's all this open source driver code helps make other OS's possible, and also helps make them more usable (in case you need a new driver for the niche OS). The contribution of a device driver writer for linux is obvious when you get your linux distro and have the device; but there is a big secondary benefit in the way they help contribute knowledge that can be used by others on other projects.

Re:learning from the past

[cpt kangarooski]

Except of course, that this ignores the lessons regarding Unix's abyssymal UI; ignoring the lesson that OS demands on hardware have to be as minimal as possible (esp. wrt the graphics system); ignoring areas where Unix could stand improvement, e.g. security models, filesystems, etc., etc.....

Unix is not the end all be all of OSes. Reimplementing it means that EXACTLY the mistakes of the past will be made, as opposed to a random assortment of mistakes and successes -- including new ones -- by trying something different

Re:How about OS's that should be brought back?

[yellowstone]

Re: Amiga OS:

Where's the pre-emptive multitasking?

"It's in there" ;-)

• Amiga: pre-emptive multitasking, no virtual memory or memory protection.
• Mac: cooperative multitasking, no virtual memory or memory protection (prior to OS X, anyway)

What the Amiga did have that is noticably missing in current OSs is a simplicity of design (though to be fair, Amiga OS only had to run on a relatively small variety of hardware, and wasn't trying to fit into every niche in sight (embedded, desktop, server, wireless, etc).

The real strenght of the Amiga was that it was targeted to a fairly specific group of graphics artists, gamers, and hackers. It's really too bad the Amiga never had the corporate support it deserved -- with the right backing, it could have been great...

Re:beOS is NOT a niche operating system.

[Malcontent]

MS simply threatened computer manufacturers not to pre-install BeOS. If anybody pre-installed it they would lose the legal right to install windows. Just your typical mafioso tactic from MS.