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Opencroquet

Posted by michael on from the thwock-thwock dept.

zymano writes "OSnews has some information about Opencroquet, a 3d operating system worked on by Alan Kay, who also is one of the inventors of Smalltalk, one of the fathers of object oriented programming, conceiver of the laptop computer, inventor of much of the modern windowing GUI. The OS is a 3D environment running through the Squeak environment on top of another operating system. It requires a supported 3D accelerator. Squeak is an interpreted language similar to Smalltalk. Could be ssslooooww. Way cool screenshot."

1 of 369 comments (clear)

  1. Where's the beef? by timeOday · · Score: 2, Flamebait
    Ah, yes, the old.. "operating systems haven't changed enough recently, so let's change them... somehow... anyhow" routine. "The OS doesn't use enough computing resources. Maybe we can figure out a way to make it less efficient. Surely this will help the user somehow... wouldn't it?"

    Of course the phrase "3d Operating System" is a non-sequitur in the first place. But then again, are they developing an OS at all?

    The system should act as a virtual machine on top of any platform. We are not creating just another application that runs on top of Windows, or the Macintosh - we are creating a Croquet Machine that is highly portable and happens to run bit-identical on Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and ultimately on its own hardware... anywhere we have a CPU and a graphics processor.
    OK, so it's not even remotely an OS - just yet another attempt at a useful 3d GUI which could conceivably one day run on specialized hardware.
    There are no boundaries in the system. We are creating an environment where anything can be created; everything can be modified, all in the 3D world. There is no separate development environment, no user environment. It is all be the same thing. We can even change and author the worlds in collaboration with others inside them while they are operating
    Just like a lisp machine (except 3d graphics somehow play into it?) Woohoo! You can hack the OS while you write a letter to grandma!
    There are no boundaries in the system. We are creating an environment where anything can be created; everything can be modified, all in the 3D world.
    No pesky memory protection, no cumbersome file permissions! I'm freeeeee! Hey, stop reading my email!