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

How about OS's that should be brought back?

[sphealey]

There's an old adage that every mistake that has ever been made with computers has been made three times. It originally referred to the mainframe, minicomputer, and PC eras. That could probably be extended to at least five times today by adding "client/server" and "web" environments. One of the strange aspects of computing is that everything has to be started from scratch and nobody seems willing to even consider the lessons learned in the past.

Given this, I would prefer to see a list of operating systems in which things were done RIGHT, but which are no longer in use or from which lessons are not being learned. Multics, TOPS-10, and TOPS-20 come to mind. Any others?

sPh

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

[Sloppy]

A rather obvious answer to that would be AmigaOS.

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

[Malcontent]

Yea it's called NT now.

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

[ajs]

Apollo's (then HP/Apollo, then HP) Domain/OS (originally Aegis) was the world's first network-based workstation operating system. By this I mean that it was developed to be a seamless part of a network of clients, servers and devices. It was a vaguely UNIX-like OS (which had UNIX emulation packages to layer on top of it) which was tied to the Apollo hardware.

Up until the RISC revolution, Apollo's hardware was not very exciting, but the Prism architecture in their DN10000 line made their OS really shine as an accedemic and scientific computing platform. Also, their DSEE (forunner of and superior to ClearCase) source control and versioning environment made it a powerfully compelling environment for large teams of programmers who needed to work collaberatively.

A great platform, gone forever because their marketting sucked and HP had no vision. :-(

BeOS...?

[joestar]

I knew BeOS long time before Linux. So if after years of existence BeOS is not yet a mainstream OS, I don't see why I shouldn't call it a "niche OS"! AtheOS on the other part, is likely to become a mainstream. If only it could come with many more supported videocards...

Niche - and quixotic

[kingdon]

My vote for the most obscure goes to FreeVMS. Warning: very little code got written and there hasn't been activity in years. But the way in which it failed was interesting: no one wanted to do anything unless it had the blessing of Digital ^W Compaq ^W Hewlett Paqard. The biggest leverage of the proprietary OS was over the minds of the users/enthusiasts/etc. One could argue about whether the legal issues were real, but the free unices managed to get around legal issues with Unix including the setuid patent.

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:Different types of niche operating systems

[ReelOddeeo]

niche operating systems for PCs, ...can be divided into two categories

They can be divided into one category: illegal operating systems.

SSSCA

Re:Different types of niche operating systems

[Earlybird]

You left another important category:

• "Wannabe" systems that are written by idealistic, hopeful and often naïve developers, often trying to emulate the success of Linux. Some of these are clearly over-ambitious. But it all has to start somewhere (apparently Finland works for some people).

Re:Different types of niche operating systems

[woggo]

Your request implies that some well-spoken, photogenic hacker exists. That may be the big problem to solve first.

How about this for a niche OS

[Tim Macinta]

When I first looked at the title I mis-read "niche" and thought somebody had created a "Nietzsche" operating system. Now that would be a niche OS. What would such an OS do? I supposed it could complain about Jesux users.

Re:How about this for a niche OS

[gowen]

I suppose it could complain about Jesux users.

Jesux's webpage hasn't been updated for two years, so it looks like development may have stopped. I wouldn't rule out the whole distribution suddenly rising from the dead though...

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.

Another resource

[Z4rd0Z]

FreeOS is another good place to find out about these kind of operating systems.

it's all well and good...

[hajmola]

but an OS is nothing without applications - and only until there are applications for an OS, can its usability and robustness be truly measured.
-raj

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

new OS announcement ;-)

[McFly777]

I am thinking of developing a new OS with the aim of making everybody happy.

I think I will call it CheeriOS.

Hmmm... you don't think General Mills will mind do you?

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.

Interesting OSes

[DGolden]

EROS is a very promising O.S. - orthogonally persistent, cool security.

An "interesting" OS is AROS - it's AmigaOS, but open-source on x86, complete with Amiga-style:

pre-emptive multitasking.

total lack of memory protection, except for "cooperative" m.p. via semaphore locking.

blazingly fast IPC by by-reference message passing

on-the-fly shared library function patching

user-space device drivers (though, without any memory protection, user space is a pretty abstract concept :-).

integrated GUI + unix-like shell.

Also has a fun "soft-pseudo-reboot in a fraction of a second" feature, based on just freeing all memory except the kernel + vectoring to the kernel entry point - whcih means, you may crash due to lack of memory protection, but you'll be back up,very,very quickly :-).

Hey...

[seanmeister]

They left out emacs!!!

(ducks and runs...)

Freedows

[alumshubby]

Maybe this is unhealthy nostalgia on my part, but remember the Freedows operating system? Apart from at least one personality involved, it sounded like an interesting idea. I wonder if it's still percolating in somebody's basement or if it'll ever get dusted off and looked at afresh. The Alliance OS project was going to use the same cache-kernel technology, but it apparently hasn't budged either.