Free Operating Systems That Aren't Linux

[tomleem]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/sof ... &cid=nl_IW_daily_html
"We look beyond the traditional open source OS of choice to other free options such BSD, OpenSolaris, HaikuOS, ReactOS, and PureDarwin."

It is neat that they mention ReactOS. 8)

[Ubuntu]

It is neat that they mention ReactOS. 8)

Yep, but the review sounds negative. They make it sound more negative than even HaikuOS which is ridiculous.

Why do people waste their time coding operating systems like HaikuOS? Code Linux or better yet code ReactOS! There is so much open-source ability it's too bad it's not co-ordinated toward something beneficial. They spend hours/days/years for some software that 10 people are going to use.

[Z98]

People are free to spend time on whatever it is they wish. We don't make any particular judgments on it and this project has collaborated with Haiku before. As such, please refrain from making any snide remarks about them.

[Haos]

@Ubuntu

We hear exactly the same opinions like you present, about ReactOS. It is both unjust and hurting. Everyone is a keeper of his own time and may dedicate it towards any project. Questioning this, like you just did, is questioning the philosophie of free, opensource software, and shows that you do not understand this philosophie.

[forart]

Why do people waste their time coding operating systems like HaikuOS? Code Linux or better yet code ReactOS! There is so much open-source ability it's too bad it's not co-ordinated toward something beneficial. They spend hours/days/years for some software that 10 people are going to use.

...and think about those who works on KolibriOS or DynatOS: are they mad ?

No they aren't. BTW more close collaboration between projects (as HaikuOS and ReactOS seems to have) - even if they're completely different - could benefit the whole community knowledge. IMHO.

[deniseweird]

Yep, but the review sounds negative. They make it sound more negative than even HaikuOS which is ridiculous.

Why do people waste their time coding operating systems like HaikuOS? Code Linux or better yet code ReactOS! There is so much open-source ability it's too bad it's not co-ordinated toward something beneficial. They spend hours/days/years for some software that 10 people are going to use.

Whatever cool potential you may see in Linux and Reactos, they are, like all OS's, far from perfect, and there are people like me who can see problems with them on a whole different level than what is "fixable". At least that's what I feel about Linux. Some crap can't be fixed, it just needs to be replaced. And I personally do not want to be stuck with X.org-and-ALSA-infected Linux (And believe me, Linux won't be saved from that crap anytime soon). If you like Linux though, good for you, but you do not need to tell everyone to stay away from all the alternatives just cuz you have found the holy grail. And if recreating Windows is useful, why can't recreating BeOS (Like what the Haiku people are doing) be? BeOS was a great system, and Haiku is just as promising as ReactOS to me.

[shjacks45]

Minnix sort of started it all. Gave Linus the idea. Yet both are based on 'Lion's Commentary' .(Linux even has the v6 bugs.)

Useful is more important than free. Seems that some think free is only GPL, are all those OS's gpl'ed?

[GoBusto]

Seems that some think free is only GPL, are all those OS's gpl'ed?

PureDarwin is licensed under the Apple Public Source License.
OpenSolaris is licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License.
BSD is licensed under the BSD license.
Haiku is licensed under the MIT license.

ReactOS is actually the only one of those licensed under the GPL.

[shjacks45]

minix and minix3 are BSD type license to Netherlands University.
coherent unix is abandonware (MWC)

QNX is not free, but try their graphical browser on a 1.44 floppy demo.
The executive for qnx can reside in 8K L1 cache of a 486.

Or minix3 with 8000 line kernel, and drivers all in user mode.

The point is that there are some interesting structural changes that may be harbringers of more effcient operating environs, as well as the plethora of Linux distributions with slightly different shells.

We praise apple for fearlessly abusing its user base by changing OS paradigms and processors whenever something better comes along. We curse Microsoft and Intel slavishness to compatibility and 20 year old programs that creates a bloatware slug .

Do we have to boot to bios that was designed to load 8-bit compatible code (DOS << cp/m) on an 8088; even micro cell phone processors boot to protected mode. Windows NT was originally designed with the code named "N-Ten" i860 processor (128 bit internal, 64 bit external) in mind. Lack of availability caused development to shift to MIPS platform, then i386 when those became available. NT became portable, running on MIPS, PowerPC, Alpha, and Intel platforms. (And RAM was slow and expensive.) The downside of being frozen in that era is user/supervisor mode only and using fatal exception errors to task switch (because swapping GDTs et al to RAM was too slow.) Today, the Windows NT boot process that David Cutler, Rick Rashid (MACH developer), et al developed can be done better. It should be done better in ReactOS.

[tomleem]

http://www.informationweek.com/news/sof ... daily_html
"We look beyond the traditional open source OS of choice to other free options such BSD, Open Solaris, Haiku OS, ReactOS, and Pure Darwin."

The ReactOS part.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/sof ... t=&isPrev=
ReactOS; Open Source Win Clone

It seems that I posted it twice. I thought it was a different article till some one pointed it out that it is the same one. I apologize for doing so.

[b4dc0d3r]

I actually have wanted to try BeOS/Haiku for a while, even downloaded Haiku, but never got interested enough to run it. It looked very promising, and probably just needed a new hardware environment to catch on. Sort of like Linux and netbooks, where you kind of expect the interface to be different. By that I mean when you get a fancy phone, even if it is Windows, you expect it to work and look a bit different from your desktop OS. Therefore easier to get people to try new OS. People can use iPhones without having used Mac OS before, or whatever, and they don't expect it to be exactly the same.

BeOS just needed some new device to get in on the ground level - but since it was designed to be multimedia and fairly processing-intensive, a netbook would not have worked*. BeOS never really had a chance, in hindsight. It would have made a killer Vista replacement, with just a multimedia powerhouse like Amarok showing off the multimedia facets, a web browser (with flash plugin, good luck with that), some chat/messaging clients, and a few other misc. apps. It just didn't have a company investing money on advertising and OEM deals to push it.

* (Or maybe it would have been more efficient usage of netbook resources, so even a better choice for netbooks, who knows?)