Why are ASM hobby OS more successful than other languages ?

[guyfawkes]

I see alot of posts about how much more maintainable C coded OS's are over ASM OS's.
So why are most of the long team successful hobby OS's, all seem to be coded in ASM ? .

To me hobby means, only a very small team work on it, for fun.

[OSwhatever]

Can you give us a few examples of these successful ASM coded OSes?

[CrypticalCode0]

I can actualy think of one MenuetOS.

But i think guyfawkes is overestimating the percentage of hobby OS's build in ASM

[Nable]

MenuetOS is dead.[/discussion]
May be you mean KolibriOS.
Although, it's also almost dead from the very beginning. Just because it's (imho) only useful for studying purposes.

BareMetalOS looks interesting but looks it is also not very useful..
I'm very pro- ( == `not against' ) asm but _pure_ asm OSes (may be, except OSes for MCUs) are waste of efforts - because you "optimise" many-many parts that are enough simple for compiler to cope with them. "Optimise" - because you produce (very unreadable || non-optimised) code.

OK, imho, topic starter tells us a wrong idea. Maybe he has many proof-facts?

[guyfawkes]

I would include
menuetos
KolibriOS
DexOS
RDOS
MikeOS
BareMetalOS
Solar_OS
OctaOS


They are all long term and are usable.

[rdos]

This thread will soon be locked, but I think that most C based OSes are just poor Unix/Linux clones. I have no idea why, as other solutions would be possible.

Besides, add RDOS to the list of assembler only OSes (although it is doubtful if it still is a hooby-OS, but it started out that way at least).

BTW, the only hobby-OS written in C that impresses me is AtheOS. I don't know what state that project is in now though.

[bontanu]

.

[guyfawkes]

Sorry rdos
I missed your OS, by accident ( i have used it many times)
And i agree with bontanu.

What i was trying to get through, is not that ASM is better than C, but that if you take the number of hobby OS started in both C and ASM.
You will find a higher number of ASM OS end up in a more usable state than C.
Even though they make up a small number of the total hobby OS's made.

[Kevin]

I would include
menuetos
KolibriOS
DexOS
MikeOS
BareMetalOS
Solar_OS
OctaOS

They are all long term and are usable.

Hm, what makes them so usable and "successful"? I just picked a few and downloaded them. MikeOS and BareMetalOS are IMHO not very impressive. SolarOS is nice, but other than a GUI it doesn't really seem to have much functionality either. OctaOS looks like it has at least a bit more programs, but doesn't even boot in qemu.

Kolibri is quite nice, of course, but it seems to be the exception in the list of ASM OSes.

[guyfawkes]

I would include
menuetos
KolibriOS
DexOS
MikeOS
BareMetalOS
Solar_OS
OctaOS

They are all long term and are usable.

Hm, what makes them so usable and "successful"? I just picked a few and downloaded them. MikeOS and BareMetalOS are IMHO not very impressive. SolarOS is nice, but other than a GUI it doesn't really seem to have much functionality either. OctaOS looks like it has at least a bit more programs, but doesn't even boot in qemu.

Kolibri is quite nice, of course, but it seems to be the exception in the list of ASM OSes.

You seem to see useful as in a desktop OS
Useful is more too do with, can it do what the coder design it to do.
Example see here what BareMetalOS is useful for:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEMwSsra1EU

Same with DexOS (NOTE: I think the old ver is better with full tcp stack, but i can only find link to new ver)
http://www.dex-os.com/

Its not just me, see here :
http://royal.pingdom.com/2008/09/26/10- ... he-future/

http://hackaday.com/2011/05/27/64-bit-o ... -assembly/

http://www.techradar.com/news/software/ ... ems-934484

How many hobby OS get on hackaday ?.

[Kevin]

How many hobby OSes even try to get posted there? I for one never announced tyndur releases anywhere but in the Lowlevel forum (and the most recent one also here on osdev.org). I never put much effort in getting it spread, because I just don't care about publicity.

Most of these ASM OSes seems to have one thing in common: They have a few demo programs without much functionality, but usually something with graphics, maybe a game. And that's it. Maybe the difference you're seeing is that C OSes tend to do less of these demos that look nice (for whatever reason)? That doesn't make them less impressive in my opinion. Often they have more functionality, it's just not presented as nice.

[guyfawkes]

Most of these ASM OSes seems to have one thing in common: They have a few demo programs without much functionality, but usually something with graphics, maybe a game. And that's it. Maybe the difference you're seeing is that C OSes tend to do less of these demos that look nice (for whatever reason)? That doesn't make them less impressive in my opinion. Often they have more functionality, it's just not presented as nice.

Most of them have full tcp/ip and usb stacks, gui, cli and can be code and assembly on the OS's them self.

How many hobby C OS's, can be use to code them selfs ?.

[bontanu]

.

[Jezze]

Hehe I used to work for one of the companies you just sent a link from.

Anyway...

To answer this question you must define what is successful because it is a broad term. If you look at the most popular operating system that began it's life as just a hobby operating system it was written in C.

Perhaps you could change the question to: How come all operating systems written in ASM still remains in a hobby state and hasn't reached a wider audience?

[Kevin]

Hm, then the versions I downloaded must be seriously stripped down...

MikeOS: No network, no GUI, basic CLI and menu, BASIC interpreter, no assembler
BareMetal: Network sample programm that claims to have sent a packet, not sure what it's good for; no GUI; basic CLI; neither assembler nor interpreter
DexOS: No network; well, let's call it a basic GUI; basic CLI; seems to actually have an assembler if you use the CLI - but where's the editor?
Solar_OS: Seems to have at least basic network support, can't find any program that uses it; ok, yes, it has a GUI; there's a source editor, but I can't find an assembler

Now I don't follow too many projects here, so I don't know many C ones and I guess things like the BSDs or ReactOS are already too "professional" to count for you. I'll just mention the two that I'm more familiar with, Pedigree and tyndur. Both have network support and actual programs using it (browser, IRC client; tyndur also SVN client), no GUI, but a fairly usable CLI, editors and ported toolchains including assembler and C compiler. I'm sure there are more OSes like these.