Opencroquet

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."

Comments

Re:3D OS

[kinnell]

I don't think we decided anything. This is a research project. Developing something new is always good (and I get the impression there's more to it than just a 3D window manager). Even if what you develop is rubbish, at least we learn what path not to follow. Hypothetically, focusing everybody's effort on refining one idea to perfection will result in improvement in the short term for that one idea, but it would be a tremendous waste of creativity.

Re:Flash?

[TulioSerpio]

The site uses Flash for 3 links.

I don't have flash, I cant'navigate.

It's 2003. You don't still drive 30 mph in a '55 Chevy, why would you be so resistent to modern browser plugins?

The fact is you can travel NOW with a Ford T in any street.

Re:Flash?

[dr_dank]

why are people so opposed to Flash on the net?

Ask the blind.

Re:not slow

[karlm]

Squeak's byte code engine is better than Perl's or Python's, and there is a JIT available (although it's nowhere near as good as Sun's JIT for Java).

Better in what way? I'm not trying to be argumentative. For all I know, the Squeak VM allows a 486 DX2 at 66 MHz to pump out 3 teraflops on .2 watts and has been shown to cure cancer in lab rats.

"Better" really doesn't say much. You might as well have made up a word or posted in Linear B.

Are you talking about inherent superiority of the VM spec? Is the design simpler? Is the set of opcodes smaller or more orthogonal without sacrificing speed or functionality? Has it supported non-blocking I/O, continuances, higher order functions, and generics/templates from day 1? (Can you tell I'm a Java programmer that hated not getting java.nio.* until Java 1.4? Now for generics and continuances...) Did Dijkstra, Turing, Ken Thompson, Xavier Leroy, Ross Andersen and Linus spend a year in seclusion atop Mount Araraat inside Noah's Ark designing a VM spec that was pretty-printed by the hand of God Almighty on the one remaining wall of Solomon's temple? Is the set of opcodes inherently faster or does it result in more compact binaries? Is the set of opcodes well chosen to be easily implemented on most architectures? Is the size of an int clearly defined in the spec (as I remember, both Perl and Python say "at least 32 bits", which is a horrible spec if you want your code to run the same across architectures)? Does the set of opcodes lend itself to rapid compilation of efficient bytecode from many source language families? Are the bytecode operations and file formats well suited to JITs? Does the VM design not force a single object model on the code? Does the opcode format offer security benefits such as efficient real-time security checks on untrusted code? Are there other ways in which the design is "cleaner", "leaner", or "more efficient".

Are you refering to the design of the curent VM implementation rather than the spec itself? Is the current VM better documented in both English and Tamil? How about clean interfaces or easy extensibility of the VM?

Are you talking about the implementation of the current bytecode engine? Is the source code for the VM well commented in Englsih and Thai? Is the entire VM and libraary set implememted in 5,000 lines of Objective C? Is the current VM available in C, Java, Scheme, Haskel, and Intercal implementations?

I suspect you mostly meant "the current canonical implementation is very fast". The speed of the current VM is much less important than inherent design limitations. If the current VM is 50% as fast as the fastest Perl VM, but is expected to be 25% faster than the fastest JVM in a year, that's much preferable to a 10% speed lead on Perl right now. If you change your VM spec too much or too often, people start jumping ship, but you could completely gut your VM every 2 years and very few people would take notice. You're stuck with your design.

I'd love to hear an analysis of the Squeak VM. I hear about so many well designed VMs that get little mind share while the unwashed masses rave about CLR/Mono without giving good details about why the CLR is inherently cross-language and high performance.

Re:How can an OS be 3D?

[jpsst34]

"There's no reason that the basest part of an operating system has to be a command line"

Um, the command line is a shell. The shell is not the OS, it is a user interface. You know, the "UI" in "GUI."

An operating system has no concept of 2d, 3d, whatever. There is no direct interaction between human and OS. The human interacts with the UI, the UI interacts with the OS, the OS interacts with the hardware. The OS is not a visual thing.