# of OS's

[dh]

*BSD, Linux...

Should more people be writing their own os?

Rephrase:
If everyone uses unix clones like *BSD and Linux, where is the orginality? should people be writing more os's?

[dh]

exellent!

[zloba]

users don't care about originality - they care about usability.

If everyone uses unix clones like *BSD and Linux

not a chance. because of usability and hardware/software vendor support.

should people be writing more os's?

people write OSes for various reasons - education, hobby, addressing shortcomings of existing ones.. not all are meant to become even remotely popular, and among those, few have a chance of success.

whether something that works for the normal people will be created - remains to be seen. i hope it will.

[mystran]

There should be more non-standard OS. It's disgusting to think that everything is either Windows or POSIX masquerading as windows-look-alike.

[Solar]

It's disgusting to think that everything is either Windows or POSIX masquerading as windows-look-alike.

Hear ye, hear ye!

[distantvoices]

The more variety is available the more concurrence might arise and the better the products might become. I say might, for there is no guarantee, that anyone puts development energy in gruntwork rather than in eyecandy to lure the customer.

@solar: H?rt, H?rt *sfg*

[Pype.Clicker]

have you notice how OSes are usually bound to a state of mind ?? like "you don't want to know how it works" for MacOS, "just get .exe click 'accept'" for Windows and "./configure; make all install" for posix systems ??

have you also noticed that OSes tends to attract a sub-category of application more than the rest (sound/multimedia for BeOS, gamerz for Windows, graphists for MacOS and core-programmers for Unix-like ?)

[Solar]

have you notice how OSes are usually bound to a state of mind ??

I most certainly did.

...like "you don't want to know how it works" for MacOS, "just get .exe click 'accept'" for Windows and "./configure; make all install" for posix systems ??

Or "I do understand how it works" for AmigaOS.

Have you also noticed that OSes tends to attract a sub-category of application more than the rest (sound/multimedia for BeOS, gamerz for Windows, graphists for MacOS and core-programmers for Unix-like ?)

It's a matter of tools. Virtually all games are written for Windows today because that's where the market of paying customers is. Unix-alike systems provide the most tools, and most tutorials assume a POSIX-ish environment.

Once you got gamers, developers and productivity workers interested in your OS, you're "there". Prepare to become famous.

[crc]

There should be more non-standard OS. It's disgusting to think that everything is either Windows or POSIX masquerading as windows-look-alike.

I agree! My OS is very non-standard, and I like it that way. When I want/need to use a "normal" OS I'll do so, but the rest of the time I like using mine with all its quirks and oddities.

[dh]

down with standards! well, some.

i'm trying to be nice and orginal with my os design. (some neat ideas i got if i do say so myself )
there are some things that need standards though.. like C. (it would also be nice to see an asm standard )

compatibilty on the other hand. it's nice to be able to run windows PE but doesn't seem efficent to step out of one's way just to make 25% of windows software work. i'm thinking about going with a modified ELF format myself. standards coming back to haunt me again :p.

Quote from: Pype.Clicker
have you notice how OSes are usually bound to a state of mind ??

that is kind of funny. i never really noticed. Mac OS is real hostile to me... but then we used that in elementary (that bomb window was always on at least 2 computers!). other unix clones/breeds are nice though (ahhh. breath of fresh linux).

...like "you don't want to know how it works" for MacOS, "just get .exe click 'accept'" for Windows and "./configure; make all install" for posix systems ??

bla! posix. not worth ones time in my opinion (some are i suppose).

Have you also noticed that OSes tends to attract a sub-category of application more than the rest (sound/multimedia for BeOS, gamerz for Windows, graphists for MacOS and core-programmers for Unix-like ?)

my os design is simply for a hacker os...with some user-friendly options for the others.

[distantvoices]

@Pype: of course, i've noticed that too. Being a c64 fan of olden times, how could I not take notice of what you have mentioned. For graphics, per tradition, apple macintosh is used. For DtP f. ex. too. Mac, because of the ease of use. What needs a graphics lad to fiddle with the system if he only wants to get his picture/plan or layout drawn.

Windows for gamers ... no here I beg for some diversivication: there is win98, whichis definitely the best for gamers. Doesnt get into the way of complicated gaming engines. There is windows xp, which in my opinion is more suited fo home/small offices or offices per se.

And we are forgetting the mainframes. DOn't forget about BS2000 and sorta. They are what makes the ball roll in the big banks and insurance companies.

[Solar]

And we are forgetting the mainframes. DOn't forget about BS2000 and sorta. They are what makes the ball roll in the big banks and insurance companies.

More out of legacy than anything else. The backbones of the bank I am working for are Sun E10k running Solaris.

[mystran]

I think there are reasons beyond mere 'convention' why some operating systems attract some types of programs, and hence of users. And I'd say, much of it comes down to development.

Say, windows... I'd say it attracts game coder because DirectX is THE way to write games. Yeah, I know OpenGL, and I know SDL, but really, DirectX is what most games are written in, because it's a damn good platform for writing games. And since DirectX is (more or less) Windows only, most games are Windows only.

Another thing that Windows is superb for is writing simple GUI programs. There's VisualBasic, and whatever you say, even MFC definitely beats most X Toolkits night and day.

Mac OS X, on the other hand, provides lots of stuff that's really useful for writing high-end graphics stuff. Their rendering architecture is the best on earth, and they support stuff like displaying PostScript in any window natively.

Anyone who's ever tried to write graphical applications for X should understand why so few Unix applications are for X. It's getting better with Gnome and KDE, but Qt is commercial (if you want to write commercial stuff) and Gtk+ is ..well.. lacking. It's simply too expensive (in time and money) to write modern, high-quality graphical applications on top of X.

I'd say that if you want to succeed in bringing a platform for certain types of users, you need to do two things: you want to build a platform that your potential developers want to use, and you want to make APIs that your potential developers want to write for.

I believe that's why Mac OSX has been such a hit: it provides the Unix for the developers, and the APIs for them to write stuff for the artists. I believe Apple couldn't have choosen a strategy much better than what they did. They still keep themselves in a niche though, by not running on commodity hardware.

[aladdin]

personnaly i learned too much things while developing my OS, and i use what i learn in studies to implement some funtionalities and apply my skills.
i think developing an OS is one of the best ways to learn programing .

[Solar]

i think developing an OS is one of the best ways to learn programing .

That's an approach that always gave me headaches, and one deeply rooted in the development of what the average beginner today perceives as "computer".

An OS is about the most complex software you can write at all. Starting with programming an OS will most likely result in you stepping on the nerves of many, many people with your questions.

In "the good ole days", a beginner started with a "hello world", followed up by a "POKE 53280,0" (comp trivia: Now what does that do on a C64?). A simple basic program. A simple assembler program. Oh, jolly, assembler. Now what can we do with this?

When the guys that started coding this way got to the point where they wanted to write something OS-ish (i.e., on their next machine...), they knew what a register is, they knew what a page pointer was and they could juggle bits and bytes without making stupid mistakes.

Today, people start with Visual Basic, then they get their first C compiler, look at the Windows API, chicken out and go for something "simple" like an OS for their first "real" programming project.

And we here then have to explain what a "static" declaration means, why a float variable doesn't make a good loop counter, what a "callback hook" is and why global variables are a bad idea for reentrant code...

::)

Again, no offense intended. But all I have for people who attempt to learn C while writing their kernel (or better yet, learning C++ while writing their bootloader), is a hearty get real.