Entries tagged 'cat:Operating Systems'

1990s bootloader memories Entry created on 2026-04-17 Authors: steeph (372) Categories: Computers (21) Linux (36) Operating Systems (24) Languages used: en (257) edit

When I was growing up I didn't have a menu to select which OS to boot. I had to use fdisk to change the active partition in order to switch from Unix* to DOS or back. (Or switch boot order in the BIOS when they were installed on separate HDDs. But I was rarely so lucky to be allowed on an expensive computer like that.)

When I first tried Linux I was thrilled by the fact that it came with a boot loader that would let you add other OSs. Dual-booting was so easy. Linux (developers) seemed so thoughtful, considering the possibility that you might want to use other OSs alongside it. And MS just blindly overwrote the MBR without even asking.

GRUB (legacy) was a great improvement over LiLo. But nowadays LiLo's simplicity is kind of attractive compared to the >1000 lines of GRUB 2 config that every distro ships nowadays.

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Web Links Regarding Operating Systems Entry created on 2025-11-30 Authors: steeph (372) Categories: Links (7) Operating Systems (24) edit

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HelenOS Entry created on 2024-11-23 Authors: steeph (372) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computer (78) Operating Systems (24) Software (53) Languages used: en (257) edit

This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

HelenOS

One of those operating systems that is used for operating system research here and there. I think that's also what it was made for. The last releast was earlier this year, which makes it seem one of the more actively developed research OSs. With the release there are also prebuilt ISO for a variety of platforms including the usual, Raspberry Pi, other ARM platforms and older PCs.

There are similarities to UNIX-like systems but it is clearly not a POSIX system. Basic utilities are included as well as some basic console and graphical applications and demos. I didn't look for any additional software, yet. I'm not sure if I will use this os much more. But by booting flawlessly without any changes and effort, this is one of the more usable OSs I've tried. So I might. It has network capabilities, a basic GUI and TUI, window manager and its own shell.

The GUI is optional. Most applications run in the console mode as well, which is a TUI that mimics the GUI with its start menu. Which is good to have because the GUI is really slow to the point that the mouse pointer is lagging behind.

On my desktop PC neither a PS/2 nor a USB mouse worked. But the touchpad in my old latitude worked fine, including the second set of mouse buttons that work in almost no OS. Graphics mode worked with the appropriate resolutions automatically. Above that I haven't tested any hardware.

There are screenshots in the official wiki.

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Alternative Operating System: Haiku OS Entry created on 2022-03-29 (edited 2024-11-15) Authors: steeph (372) Categories: Computer (78) Haiku (2) Operating Systems (24) Software (53) Languages used: en (257) Topics: Software → Alternative Operating Systems (18) edit

This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

Haiku OS

Haiku OS is a BeOS clone. I didn't use BeOS back in the day (although I wish somebody would have showed it to me). So I'm not sure, but Haiku seems to be pretty much the same experience. But Haiku is open source, still actively developed and compatible with newer hardware. It ran relatively well on the Core2Duo PC I've tested it on. Except for the included web browser. That thing crashed. For a lot of people whether a desktop OS is usable is decided on how good of a web browser is available for it. Haiku OS Beta 3 looked promising with its WebPositive using WebKit 612.1.21. But at least on the old PC I've tested it on it wasn't usable. It was slower than imaginable and kept crashing after one or two page loads. (The simple included help pages at that. I didn't even feed it something complex, like YouTube or Google Docs.) But I've heard others hat a pretty good web experience with it. At least as long as nobody asks about security. The rest of the system is snappy enough. It's no KolibriOS, but on any x86 or x86_64 from the last ten years it should be as fast as anyone wishes their OS to be and much older computers run it just fine. There seems to be a not so small community of users and developers. Every new Beta that is released comes closer to a desktop OS that has everything that people ask about/for. (Let's not talk about big games people are familiar with.) And because of the growing community and the fact that the 32 bit version can still run many applications compiled for the original BeOS this is not just a small OS with theoretical goals bigger than its community. It's really usable already and it looks to me that it has good chances of becoming more important in the future. I'm not sure if I'd have said that five years ago. It's moving slowly (compared to Windows and Linux), but consistently towards its goals.

Edit 2024: The have been two new alpha releases since I wrote about Haiku here. It is definitely capable of being an everyday desktop OS even though the release candidate's version labels are modest. The biggest change recently has been that GTK3 has been ported to Haiku, meaning that a large number of graphical applications becomes available or portable. Applications that have been written with other operating systems in mind. This has been demonstrated with Inkskape and GIMP. But many more applications will follow, I'm sure. I suspect that this also means that Firefox or some fork of it will be the web browser most people will use on Haiku. It certainly makes it more usable as ther main OS for many people.

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Alternative Operating System: Essence Entry created on 2022-03-29 (edited 2024-11-15) Authors: steeph (372) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computer (78) Operating Systems (24) Software (53) incomplete (22) Languages used: en (257) Topics: Software → Alternative Operating Systems (18) edit

This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

Essence

This is one I'm continuasly disappointed to not have been able yet to get running on real hardware. I like what I've seen. But I can't get it to boot, as do others. I don't know too much about the internals of Essence. But it seems to be relatively far in develpment. There is a sleek GUI with tabbing windows in the look of early Chromoium browsers, which looks very inviting, if only I could get it to even try to boot on any computer. The focus has not been on making the OS actually boot on real hardware so far. And unfortunately there has been no release since 2022 and no update to the code for over a year. So I stopped hoping that it might be working soon. I was looking forward to getting to know a knew OS that doesn't take a Unix-like approach and has nice tabbing windows.

(tba:screenshots)

Other new OSs not for real hardware

While Essence is what I created this entry for because I really hoped to be able to try this GUI on real hardware, I'll use the spacce left by the lack of an experience report to mention a few other PSs that look promising but aren't (yet) made to run on actual hardware.

Munal OS

An experimental operating system fully written in Rust, with a unikernel design, cooperative scheduling and a security model based on WASM sandboxing.

TacOS

My from-scratch OS with its own kernel written in C and assembly

TacOS is a UNIX-like kernel which is able to run DOOM, among various other smaller userspace programs. It has things like a VFS, scheduler, TempFS, devices, context switching, virtual memory management, physical page frame allocation, and a port of Doom. It runs both on real hardware (tested on my laptop) and in the Qemu emulator.

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Alternative Operating System: Sortix Entry created on 2024-11-03 Authors: steeph (372) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computers (21) Operating Systems (24) Software (53) incomplete (22) Languages used: en (257) Topics: Software → Alternative Operating Systems (18) edit

This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

sortix

Sortiix is one of the more mature hobby OSs. It feels well-rounded in the features that it already has. Stable and relatively bug-free. Sortix is a Unix-like, POSIX compliant OS with it's own kernel, system tools and libraries. It contains packages that have been ported from Debian. But all the most interesting core components are implemented anew.

Sortix has made steady progress over like 15 years. That's probably the biggest difference between it and similar hobby OSs. Version 1.0 was released in 2016. Even in that form it is really usable. It boots without any issues on real hardware. It's stable, comes with all the core unix tools you'd expect, but it didn't have a GUI and network support, yet. It switched to nighly releases after that. Since then, features have been added to the point that not many things separate it from being as useful for daily usage as HaikuOS.

(tba:screenshots)

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Alternative Operating Systems Entry created on 2024-11-03 Authors: steeph (372) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computer (78) Operating Systems (24) Software (53) Languages used: en (257) Topics: Software → Alternative Operating Systems (18) edit

A few years ago I became interested in operating systems that are positioned off the main stream; in other words: That are not Linux, macOS or Windows but still usable as a desktop OS. And since BSD is so well known, I exclude it from the list of systems I will write about here, too. I've started to write about alternative OSs over two years ago. But I didn't find the time and energy to actually look at much and write about it at that time. I've decided to start anew with this entry and put my reviews, tests and introductions of OSs under the topic top:Software:Alternative Operating Systems. You may ignore everything that I've previously written about this topic.

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Alternative Operating System: MikeOS Entry created on 2022-03-29 (edited 2024-11-02) Authors: steeph (372) Categories: #100DaysToOffload (41) Computers (21) MikeOS (2) Operating Systems (24) Software (53) incomplete (22) Languages used: en (257) Topics: Software → Alternative Operating Systems (18) edit

This entry is referencing the entry 'Alternative Operating Systems'.

MikeOS

A very limited and simple operating system written in assembler for 286 computers (and newer compatible architechtures, obviously). Pretty much what I would imagine as a successful outcome if I would write one to see that I can do it. It works, there's a text editor, a game, you can list, edit and execute files. Not much more though at first glance. I didn't look into writing additional software for it myself, yet. There are many forks of MikeOS. Most of them named after the forker and not under active development. It's a project I'd look into if I'd want to learn x86 assembler. Simple, not looking like any other OS I've seen.

MikeOS is neither UNIX-like in any way nor is it similar to CP/M or DOS. It is closer to being a BASIC interpreter with a program menu. But there is a bit more to it. Everything is in the same text mode in VGA resolution. After booting, you get a box with list of menu items in pointing to submenus or executable programs. Among those programs are a BASIC interpreter, some simple games, a text editor and a file browser. That's about the gist of what you get. It's all very simple and fast. Enough to write your own applications or scripts. And it all fits on a single 3.5" HD floppy. There are third-party applications to be found on the internet. But almost all that I stumbled upon were part of MikeOS forks.

Next to the menu there is also a command line with a very small list of commands. To be honest, from a user point of view, I don't know what to do with it.

There are quite a few forks. It seems to be a great hobby project. And because it's all relatively simple it's a project you can actually finish after a while, not like writing your own UNIX clone with system tools, glibc port and modern GUI. MikeOS forks usually come with some additional apps and scripts and some changes in UI. Some add to the few system calls, add their own menu. Some even started to add network support. One MikeOS fork I have to mention is MichalOS because it overhauled the UI to make it more pleasing and added quite a few simple apps and games that all seem to be very stable. It has an image viewer and a music program. TomOS is a fork that adds support for directories. ShoockOS seems to be about simplifying things even more.

On the MikeOS web site there are handbooks, resources for development and links to software projects for MiikeOS. MikeOS is a great help if you want to learn x86 assembly in a practical way without starting from zero. But it is also useful as an OS for embedded applications or simple hobby projects (interacting with Arduino, other serial communication tasks, …). And it could also be considered useful for everyday tasks if you found a home computer from the mid 80s useful.

(tba:screenshots)

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