Review of Other Operating Systems
This page is under constant construction.
Please help me enrich it,
by sending annotations to existing pointers,
new pointers,
and the usual feedback.
Please tell me about any other interesting
pointer you know, that may relate somehow (anyhow) to the Tunes project...
Original OS Projects
- Tunes,
the very project hosting this page,
encompasses an OS project, mind you,
even if it goes far beyond a mere conventional operating system.
- Jecel's
Merlin
project of a SELF-based OS
(and here
a paper about it).
- Aegis is
an OS based upon the idea of an "ExoKernel" (much like the NoKernel
idea behind Tunes: there is no more kernel in the OS, which yields
up to 10000% performance gain).
- The irish Tigger
project is developing a framework for the construction of a family
of distributed object-support platforms.
- The BatOS
project from the Czech Republic.
- Sony CSL's
Apertos,
the Reflective OO OS
- Grasshopper,
the orthogonally persistent distributed OS from Australia
- Papers about Andy Tanenbaum's
Amoeba
distributed OS,
and related
Orca
programming language
- Apple's
Newton
Operating System
and
NewtonScript
language
- SPIN
OS from University of Washington
- The PUMA
project from New Mexico.
Unix akins and likes
- Plan9 OS, or what Unix should have been
(by AT&T from where Unix came).
It's a commercial OS, but free for academic use.
- Andy Valencia's
VSTa
fine plan9 inspired but free open-developped
microkernel-based OS; its
mailing list archive and its
distribution
(also a french mirror
here).
- Linus Torvalds'
Linux
free POSIX.1 compliant Unix clone for 32 bit intel PCs, and more:
Sparc, ALPHA, M68K, MIPS (PowerPC ?) ports are on the way...
Also check out the
linux.org or
sunsite.
Manual pages here.
Linux on Mach project.
- Mach
is a free microkernel upon which many unix clones are built.
As an example
LITES
is a 4.4BSD Lites based Mach server providing binary compatibility with
4.4BSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD, 386BSD, UX, and Linux, while
- GNUStep
is a project to implement a free clone of NeXTStep
(a FAQ
here)
- Flexmach,
a project for objects above Mach in C++ (yuck)
and the related
OMOS
model and implementation over plain unix.
- NachOS
is an instructional
OS developped at Berkeley by Tom Anderson, Wayne Christofer,
Stephen Procter and others.
- Sun's
Spring
System (also here)
OS Related Pointers
The comp.os.research
newsgroup, its
FAQ,
and its
archive
Indexes about OSes and related subjects:
Here are pointers to packages for distributed/parallel computing:
- Arjuna
from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (England),
is allegedly THE programming system
for reliable distributed computing,
but is built as a set of C++ classes.
- OZ++ is also a freely available object package to allow
world-wide upgradable modular distributed computing.
- Chant: A Talking Threads Package.
It's a package that extends existing threads package
(well, pthreads) with inter-thread communication support,
even if threads run on distinct processes or computers.
That is, a low-level package for parallel computing.
Here are pointers to threads packages:
- David Keppel's minimalistic
QuickThreads package
(a portable abstraction of just the machine-dependent parts
of a threads package, for many architectures),
and accompanying
tech report.
- Chris Provenzano's
pthreads implementation of the POSIX 1003.4a pthreads
package.
Chris' homepage includes partial docs for the package.
Complete docs can only be ordered from the IEEE
- the POSIX/ADA Run-Time
(PART) project also has a pthreads implementation,
but only for the Sun 4 architecture (so says the os.faq)
- Stephen Crane's
lwp ("light-weight processes") package.
- Elan Feingold's
ethreads package
Here are some research laboratories interested in
operating systems (send me more addresses):
Other OS-related pages
More netsurfing
The TUNES project that hosts this page may interest you,
or this collection of
FTP addresses.
And remember, the "OS" side is only one side of the medal.
Also look at the "Language" side.
To Do on this page
Actually review these OSes, not merely pointing to them. Gasp.
Talk about the open development model, as used in Linux.
Add pointers to
Sprite and
Choices,
as well as to all pages pointed in various OS indexes...
Send a note to all the pages that do not cite us, as well as to Yahoo.
Add these pointers from the OS FAQ:
Checkpointing,
cstr,
German Bib,
Arizonian Bib,
bibliographies,
Willow,
UFS 93,
Clouds,
Cronus,
Guide,
Horus,
Isis
(also here),
X kernel.
Add pointers and reviews to other, interesting commercial systems,
like
GEOS (also here),
TAOS,
Chorus
(and its,
FAQ),
QNX
(also here),
Taligent.
In Taiwan, this site
has got lots of OS-related docs...
Review major brand X OSes, like
MS-DOS, MacOS, Windows (3.x, NT, '95), UNIX clones, OS/2, etc.
Have a look at locus
Back to the
Review subproject.
Page Maintainer:
Faré
-- rideau@clipper.ens.fr