The latest version of Whitix, V0.1, has been released for download. “Whitix is a simple open-source operating system for your PC. It offers a range of applications, so you can do what you want without worrying about instability or poor performance. How often have you wondered why modern software is too complicated, too buggy or just too unclear? Whitix is a return to the ideal of simple software that works the way you want it to. Although the software itself is still in its early days, our vision is well established.”In just under a month, a complete desktop and graphical user interface (Xynth) has been ported to the platform, along with the scripting language Lua. See the changelog or visit the Freshmeat page for more information.
I especially love the system requirements page. “486+ x86 CPU. Above 2Mhz. ATA hard disk, CD drive or floppy drive. PS/2 keyboard.”
“It offers a range of applications, so you can do what you want without worrying about instability or poor performance. How often have you wondered why modern software is too complicated, too buggy or just too unclear?”
Hi, can i use my fav. development environments eg. Eclipse, etc. with this stable and high performance OS?
Well, Xynth includes a port of GTK, and a quick look suggests Eclipse has a GTK port. Perhaps you could have a go at porting it? It would be great to have the time to port all these applications, but at the moment, I’m (and most of the work is just me) working on improving the core system.
What apps does it have?
Documentation on the website is scarce and maybe a bit disorganised, but it states that it has a text editor, the Tiny C Compiler, Python, nasm and probably Lua.
It looks very lightweight (in the positive sense) but I can’t make out whether it is supposed to be console based or whether Xynth is intended to be an intergral part. The presence of Xynth illustrates some visual capability but I’m not sure about sound or networking.
It looks pretty good for a 0.3 release and I wish them well. A bit more information (and organisation) on the website might encourage more people to try it out and attract developers. As it is, by the time I’d finished looking for information I’d lost interest.
Xynth will eventually become a part of the core system (I should make that clearer), but since this is an alpha release, I’m wary of making slightly untested software the default environment for users. I’ve been coding at such a frantic pace recently that I haven’t had too much time to improve the core website; however, I’ll be able to improve the documentation and navigation. I do agree it’s a little awkward.
Not to come down hard on the guy, but I do not think this is going to be more than a hobby. Linux took off because it fulfilled a specific need at the time (i.e. a free Unix like OS). It’s quite hard to see what niche Whitix is trying to fill. Free *nix clone? Take a pick from any Linux or BSD distribution. User friendly OS with a Unix backend? Ubuntu or OS X is there, with the former being free.
Everyone is entitled to their hobby, but it’s hard to see this taking off.
Your comments are fair enough. Essentially, Whitix is a modern operating system for the desktop for the *average person*, based on Unix. It’ll include support for Windows applications and games, *NIX development applications and Whitix-specific programs with an emphasis on simplicity; average people I’ve spoken to need these kind of features. Building on UNIX means building on a great base with regards to security.
The average person isn’t going to switch to OS/X; the hardware itself is quite a lot of money, and a lot of people have a PC that works for them. I don’t think many people will switch to Linux as people tend to think; it’s much too fragmented in terms of a single brand (I tried to explain to a friend of mine that there was more than one Linux; essentially, the different distributions are in competition). The average Joe won’t install *BSD, as it’s not aimed at them anyway; it’s aimed at the more technical user.
I can see it taking off. The amount it has progressed in just two months (Xynth includes a port of GTK and other graphical toolkits, so modern graphical Linux applications can be ported) is quite astounding. Imagine what a team of people with a single vision could achieve, with the help of open source software and drivers?
Nevermind the years of development and research put into usable systems like Linux-based desktop. Let’s start from scratch, treading the same path many other OS have treaded with varying degrees of success. That way, we can do what every other person did already and we’ll only have to think about the problems we were meant to solve when (and if) we get to them (convenient, isn’t it?).
Don’t take me wrong, I’m an OS development enthusiast. But such bold statements (“we’ll be able to run Windows apps and games”, “our interface will be better than the currently available interfaces”) are ridiculous, at best. How are you going to achieve those goals? How are you going to do a better job that what we have at the moment? What makes your project any better than whatever we have at our disposal at the moment?
I’m sick of this attitude. Stop underestimating modern real operating systems. What projects like this do is to criticize other operating systems for some specific reasons, and instead of solving the real causes of those issues, they attempt to reimplement a whole OS from scratch. Then they suddenly realize they could not do a better job than all the thousands of bright minds behind real operating systems (d’uh), and the project dies.
Either use your OSdev skills for something useful or stop bitching about what you do not want to (or can not) fix. It’s not 1993 anymore. Creating an OS like that might be fun, but it’s no longer rocket science or even a great achievement. Really.
Most of the time (there are a few exceptions), Linux is a technically-minded operating system aimed at technically-minded people. I don’t want to bash existing operating systems, but some of them don’t fufil what desktop users need. I agree that “We’ll be able to run Windows apps and games” is a bold statement, but if we port wine and include it in the download, it makes running Windows applications possible. (For example, Ubuntu doesn’t include wine by default, and the average Joe isn’t going to set it up easily in my opinion).
To be honest, I wasn’t bitching at the existing operating systems available; I was just explaining the target market for Whitix (which does involve pointing out some of the flaws of existing operating systems unfortunately). I’m not underestimating modern operating systems, which I think are great. I honestly think the Whitix.org team can do a better job at some aspects of an operating system. (Open-source applications can help us otherwise)
What we’ll do is totally aim our project at the average desktop user and see what happens. If we don’t succeed, we’ll have a lot of fun and gain experience while doing it. (Who can argue with that?
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Edited 2008-04-28 22:53 UTC
Don’t let the negative comments discourage you. I think your vision is very worthwhile, and your rate of progress is impressive.
I will be keeping an eye on this project. Keep up the good work!
Hey, so am I. I am really, really tired of naysayers.
Really. Where’s your OS?
Imagine what a team of people with a single vision could achieve, with the help of open source software and drivers?
Indeed: http://www.haiku-os.org
I feel everyone should be free to do what they will, and I am sure plenty of people would tell me not to waste my time developing Haiku. But your goals seem very similar to the goals of Haiku, Syllable and other such systems. So it is hard for me not to see some waste in it.
But again, saying that makes me probably a bit hypocritical.
This is the sort of stuff I like to see on OSNews, and strongly encourage more of it. It sounds like an interesting operating system, but agree with other posters on here that the website does not do it justice
“It offers a range of applications, so you can do what you want without worrying about instability or poor performance.”
The above statement on the website seem a bit premature given version 0.1 release, but hey I’ve not tried the OS so could be wrong.
It just seems from further reading that there isn’t a wide range of applications that would allow me to do what I would want.
I am no GNU/Linux fan-boy, but at least with GNU/Linux there really is a wide range of applications for Linux and I don’t have to worry about instability or poor performance.
Perhaps. It’s more of a vision at the moment, but I may change it soon (it was a summary I quickly wrote up).
I think what you are doing is excellent, and strongly encourage you to keep going with it. I once attempted to write my own OS, but didn’t get that far beyond the boot loader so truly appreciate how difficult a task it is.
Keep up the good work
I tried 0.1 under QEMU, and Xynth seemed a bit unstable. Otherwise, I was very impressed. Of course, I wish NASM and tcc were included by default (49 MB .ISO and it doesn’t even have it?? Doh!).
Kudos so far! 🙂
Sorry about not including nasm and tcc in the default installation. An oversight on my part unfortunately. The reason the ISO is so big is because of all the Python code (take a look at /Applications/Python!). In the next release, I’ll probably cull most of those unnecessary .py files (to get a smaller download).
I’ll probably release a 0.1a version with Xynth fixes (there’s a few issues with stability in Xynth, which I’ll get around to fixing) and tcc and nasm included. I’m working on a 2D Nvidia driver as well for Xynth, so I’ll probably include that.
To the Whitix developers-
Keep at it. Either your faith and energy will overcome the negative comments, apathy, and barriers or they won’t…but the efforts are worth it…as Linux says, the evolution of various OSes is a good things…
Oh, and the creation of a web site called, wow…OSNews!! shows many others are interested as well.
I love it when people create a new OS. I have partitions and harddrives set aside just to try every new one that catches my fancy.
To the naysayers:
<sarcasm>Nice. Meow. Meow.</sarcasm>
It is so easy to criticize others. Write your own OS. Do it. Go ahead. Oh, you don’t have time/
can’t do it for (insert excuse here)? Didn’t think so.
A little snippet for both groups:
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt
“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910
I don’t care if they hit their lofty goals or not. They are trying, and d@mnit I will watch to see if they hit some of their goals. (Personally, if I can use Scribus, OpenOffice, and develop Ruby (not Rails) apps, I don’t care what OS I use.)
There are few heroes (of which I classify the Whitix folks and anyone who strives for an ambitious goal) left in the world that keep trying in the face of apathy and negativity. I refuse to give in to that negativity and hope the Whitix person/people keep going and refuse to give up as well. It is the negativity and apathy that makes humanity just a collection of people and is leading to the fall of America and human society in general. If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem!
Thanks for your encouraging words! In the end, I want to create a neat desktop operating system, and if the naysayers don’t like it, it doesn’t make it any less of one.
First, I wish you the best with your project. This is no bashing, just a sincere question. I’m sure there must be some aspects of current operating systems that you don’t like and you want to implement differently. It would help if the project website gave more details about how Whitix will be different, where you think there are too many layers of complexity, and so on.
Also, I think it would be good for you to take a look at other projects like Haiku and Syllable, and maybe take some ideas from them, or comment why you have decided to do things differently from them.
Also, you can explain your design decisions at length in the project’s blog, and then whenever you change your mind, explain why. For instance, what kind of modularity do you have in mind for the kernel? What’s your stance in the Torvalds-Tanenbaum debate about microkernels? Have you considered using a type-safe language instead of C ? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language-based_system
Using the blog to explain technical decisions and educate people is something I’m looking into actually. I think I’ll take a while to update documentation and explain a lot of things before I embark on my next release.