Today, at 9h00 in Paris, France, for the first time in its short history, 五OS has been started on a real piece of hardware.
This is an important step for an OS that has been only written using emulators like QEmu and VirtualBox.
During the week, the 五OS project has been resumed. This project is aimed at creating an OS for end-users with a really fast boot by including all vital parts in the kernel.
Also, in order to make easier for the users, there will be no need to deal with things such as shells, etc… to get the OS installed.
I’ve taken over the USB driver developpement, while BombStrike will work on the process scheduler in order to fix a few glitches that were reported.
While this happens, I’m still working on TuxTelecom althrough the service is now owned by Mutum Sigillum LLC. I get to play with the central while real service will be initiated soon.
The final service will of course include regular phone calls, but it will also include ability to send SMS to the world, and maybe to receive those too (in order to receive SMS you’ll need a special plan. Everyone with credit on their accounts will be able to send messages).
Finally, a new non-open source project I’m working on : libthor (threaded torrent library). This cross-platform library will allow anyone to build applications handling torrents (load a torrent, seed it, etc).
Well, that’s basically everything to this week’s news. See you next week !
It’s been a while since it last happened. We’ve been working a lot on 五OS recently, and managed to implement a lot of things. This includes :
And finally, yesterday evening, I was able to write the first 五OS console “emulator”, with 3 commands : help, echo and exit.
Page about 五OS revision 239 (with screenshot)
Some documentation on the modtool utility was also released.
We decided for 五OS (pronounced « Go O.S. ») to start working on the global design of the user interface. As the development of the OS internals is getting closer to be on the User Interface, we decided to let a different team start working on this aspect of the OS.
http://5os.net/wiki/Proof_of_concept
We welcome constructive comments (yeah, we know it looks a lot like vista, we’re working on this aspect, no need to remind that to us). Basically the user interface should be out for febuary 2008, but it may be quite limited (don’t know yet, it’ll depend on when I manage to completly fix multitasking).
By the way, kernel module support has been completed, and the kernel is now able to load additionnal module to provide support for different graphic cards. Kernel seems to be broken on Bochs/VMWare (somewhat manages to start, but crashes before or after enabling graphics mode) but it should be fixed soon.
Here’s some precisions about 五OS (pronounced Go-OS)…
Basically what makes 五OS so specific is the kernel. It manages display (on Linux, the display is managed by a separate server) and many other things. Also it has the ability to modify itself on the fly, allowing for new drivers to be loaded/unloaded at boot time, increasing the global boot process.
Our goal is to make a kernel able to bootup the computer within less than 5 seconds. This is not possible in 100% of the cases (some RAID cards require ~20 seconds to be ready), however it should be possible for 99% of people running standard PC architecture.
The source of the kernel itself is not open. The kernel has some secrets which are not to be shared with anyone; however some modules of the kernel will be opensource, and anyone will be able to create a kernel module.
The idea is to make possible to create binary kernel drivers, and allow companies such as nVidia or ATI to provide binary drivers, which will provide the best possible device support. As the kernel is not under GNU license, it is possible to link anything against it, not only GNU software, and provide pre-compiled stuff (no more need for “glue” like on current linux nvidia drivers).
Even if the kernel is not opensource, some other pieces of software from the opensource world will be provided (with sources), like the glibc. Only the kernel itself (and maybe some other configuration applications, but those should be opensource and under BSD license) will be closed source, and coded internally by us.
Next step in kernel developpement: check the 五OS Roadmap.