Minoca OS is a leading-edge, highly customizable, general purpose operating system. It features application level functionality such as virtual memory, networking, and POSIX compatibility, but at a significantly reduced image and memory footprint. Unique development, debugging, and real-time profiling tools make getting to the bottom of issues straightforward and easy. Direct support from the development team behind Minoca OS simplifies the process of creating OS images tailored to your application, saving on engineering resources and development time. Minoca OS is a one-stop shop for systems-level design.
Since this will be the main question: no, it is not open source (count the buzzwords). There’s a free version that’s free to use in non-commercial settings, and a pro version that isn’t free, but does come with source access. So no, not open source – but not everything has to be. It’s not like open source operating system folks are starved for entertainment in that department.
If people want an OS with a relatively small footprint that is being constantly improved, they should check out Minix. It now has a NetBSD userland and is finding a niche in embedded and IoT scenarios.
I read their website (home page only) and it sounds like they are selling a Monolithic version of QNX. What do others think?
The website just states everything an OS kernel does, but with buzzwords..
Isn’t that what every kernel in the world does? Abstract the hardware?
I’m finding it hard to get excited about this new project. For all I know, they could have taken the NetBSD kernel and added proprietary bits to it and their message wouldn’t have changed. I’m not bashing their efforts, by the way. It’s just that we finally have a new OS on the market but it’s just a proprietary version of something we can already get for free (beer and freedom). An L4se-based OS would have been much more exciting, in my opinion.
The design is more similar to Windows NT than QNX, in fact I can’t see any similarities to the QNX design (microkernel optimized for POSIX compatibility) other than being an OS.
I don’t know what they meant about the removal of complications but it is likely they have a driver model similar enough to that of Windows that porting is easy. Hard to say with the available level of documentation.
From their website:
Though Minoca OS supports POSIX applications and therefore many Unix-style constructs, the kernel was written entirely from scratch and contains no code from Unix, Linux, or any other *nix variant.
“So no, not open source – but not everything has to be.”
Not everything has to be, but they need to do a good job to prevail among all opensource alternatives that exists.
Just having a “fancy debbuger” and a “leading-edge, highly customizable, general purpose operating system” will not save you.
And for the market they are aiming there is eCos and that is opensource.
“Write Once, Run Anywhere”
Finally!
Just wait until Oracle sues them… This phrase is part of “Java API” as their lawyers say. lol