OS News Archive
As some of you may have noticed, we’ve been having some issues with captchas. The powers that be – which isn’t me, I don’t know anything about web development – are looking into it, and once we’ve pinpointed the problem we’ll get it fixed. It’s annoying us too, so we want this resolved as quickly as possible. OSNews readers just trying to visit the site to read some tech stuff should not be subjected to selecting squares with buses or crosswalks. Our apologies for the annoyance, and I’ll update this post once the issue’s been resolved.
With FreeDOS being, well, DOS, you’d think there wasn’t much point in putting out major releases and making big changes, and you’d mostly be right. However, being a DOS clone doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement within the confines of the various parts and tools that make up DOS, and that’s exactly where FreeDOS focuses its attention. FreeDOS 1.4 comes about three years after 1.3. This version includes an updated FreeCOM, Install program, and HTML Help system. This also includes improvements to many of the utilities including FDISK, JEMM, 7Zip, FORMAT, FASM, MORE, RUNTIME, and more! ↫ FreeDOS website If you’re using FreeDOS, you’re most likely doing so for a highly specialised task, and racing to upgrade isn’t exactly high on your list of priorities. Still, it’s great to see FreeDOS moving forward and improving where it can.
This question was asked during my Boot Camp presentation last fall in Boston, and over the past 35 years dozens of times people have asked, how big is VMS? That translates into “how many lines of code are in VMS”? I thought it was time to at least make a stab at pursuing some insight into the answer. I wrote some command procedures to count the number of source lines in .B32, .B64, .C, .MAR, .M64, and .S files. Not counted are blank lines and lines beginning with the standard comment characters and miscellaneous directives for the particular language. ↫ Clair Grant As always with the ‘lines of code’ metric, there’s some real arbitrariness going on, and in this case that means things like excluding networking, which to me seems like a core part of an operating system, but alas, choices need to be made. The final tally for lines of code, as per the definition used in the article, in the most recent version of OpenVMS, version 9.2-3, is almost 1.9 million. Do with that information as you please. What’s really fascinating, though, are the deltas between the versions investigated in this article: V6.2 (May 1995, port to Alpha), V7.2 (February 1999, kernel threads, 64-bit APIs, Galaxy, and more), V8.2 (February 2005, port to Itanium), V9.2-3 (december 2024, port to x86). Going from one version to the next, roughly 400000 lines of code were added each time – the article doesn’t theorise about the consistency of this number, and I suspect it’s mostly just a fun coincidence, but it does jump out.
This whitepaper provides an introduction to and overview of seL4. We explain what seL4 is (and is not) and explore its defining features. We explain what makes seL4 uniquely qualified as the operating-system kernel of choice for security- and safety-critical systems, and generally embedded and cyber-physical systems. In particular, we explain seL4’s assurance story, its security- and safety-relevant features, and its benchmark-setting performance. We also discuss typical usage scenarios, including incremental cyber retrofit of legacy systems. ↫ Gernot Heiser Some light reading for Monday.
As of the 18th of February, OpenVMS, known for its stability and high-availability, 47 years old and ported to 4 different CPU architecture, has a package manager! This article shows you how to use the package manager and talks about a few of its quirks. It’s an early beta version, and you do notice that when using it. A small list of things I noticed, coming from a Linux (apt/yum/dnf) background: There seems to be no automatic dependency resolution and the dependencies it does list are incomplete. No update management yet, no removal of packages and no support for your own package repository, only the VSI official one. Service startup or login script changes are not done automatically. Packages with multiple installer files fail and require manual intervention. It does correctly identify the architectures, has search support and makes it way easier to install software. The time saved by downloading, manually copying and starting installation is huge, so even this early beta is a very welcome addition to OpenVMS. ↫ Remy van Elst Obviously, a way to install software packages without having to manually download them is a huge step forward for OpenVMS. The listed shortcomings might raise some eyebrows considering most of us are used to package management on Linux/BSD, which is far more advanced. Bear in mind, however, that this is a beta product, and it’s quite obvious these missing essential features will be added over time. Luckily it at least lists dependencies, so let’s hope actually automating installing them is in the works and will be available soon. I actually have an OpenVMS virtual machine set up and running, but I find using it incredibly difficult – but only because of my own lack of experience with and knowledge about OpenVMS, of course. Any experience of knowledge rooted in UNIX-based and Windows operating systems is useless here, even for the most basic of CLI tasks. If I find the time, I’d love to spend more time with it and get more acquainted with the way it works, including this new package manager.
It’s been a while, but there’s a new release of Ironclad, the formally verified, hard real-time capable kernel written in SPARK and Ada. Aside from the usual bugfixes, this release moves Ironclad from multiboot to Limine, adds x86_64 ACPI support for poweroff and reboot, improvements to PTY support, the VFS layer, and much more. The easiest way to try out Ironclad is to download Gloire, a distribution that uses Ironclad and the GNU tools. It can be installed in both a virtual machine and on real hardware.
JotaleaOS is an open source, minimalistic, experimental operating system made by Jotalea, designed for extreme low-resource environments. It does not support external programs or games, as it lacks a standard application execution environment. The system is entirely self-contained, running only its built-in commands. ↫ JotaleaOS website Exactly what is says on the tin: a tiny operating system created entirely as a learning experience. That’s it.
During a weekend of tidying up – you know, the kind of chore where you’re knee-deep in old boxes before you realize it. Digging through the dusty cables and old, outdated user manuals, I found something that I had long forgotten: an old Plan 9 distribution. Judging by the faded ink and slight warping of the disk sleeve, it had to be from around 1994 or 1995. I couldn’t help but wonder: why had I kept this? Back then, I was curious about Plan 9. It was a forward-thinking OS that never quite reached full potential. Holding that disk, however, it felt more like a time capsule, a real reminder of computing’s advancements and adventurous spirit in the 1990s. ↫ Bill Dyer at It’s FOSS As the article notes, 9front is the way to go if you want to try Plan 9 today. Plan 9/9front appeals to a very specific type of person, but when you dive into the excellent – and incredibly entertaining – documentation, it really seems quite easy to grasp and get started with. There’s definitely things you’ll need to unlearn and some compromises you’ll need to make, but I think you’ll be able to get a lot more work done than you might think. Also, if you start adding software to 9front, you get to use the best GitHub alternative of all time: shithub. That alone makes it worth it to try 9front.
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Snowdrop OS was born of my childhood curiosity around what happens when a PC is turned on, the mysteries of bootable disks, and the hidden aspects of operating systems. It is a 16-bit real mode operating system for the IBM PC architecture. I designed and developed this homebrew OS from scratch, using only x86 assembly language. I have created and included a number of utilities, including a file manager, text editor, graphical applications, BASIC interpreter, x86 assembler and debugger. I also ported one of my DOS games to it. After all, what kind of an operating system doesn’t have games? ↫ Snowdrop OS’ website It seems like every talented programmer will, at some point, think to themselves: I should write my own operating system. Most of these efforts strand pretty quickly – and that’s fine! – but Sebastian Mihai’s effort did not, and it has grown into a very capable operating system, especially given the constraints stemming from the chosen architecture – 16bit realmode x86 – and programming language – x86 assembly. Snowdrop OS is an incredibly impressive labour of love, and comes with a unique extra I haven’t seen before: a daily development log covering over 600 days of development. No, this won’t take over the world, but I love that is exists. More of this, please.
The operating system I’m not cool enough to run has pushed out a new release: 9front “THIS TIME DEFINITELY” is now available. 9front is a fork of plan9, created after plan9 languished at Bell Labs. This release enables gefs, the new file system, in the installer, “ip/ipconfig now support dhcpv6 dynamic allocations and handles prefix expirations”, and it comes with some smaller changes, too, of course. Despite every piece of evidence to the contrary, I am simply not cool enough to run 9front. Maybe one day they’ll notice me, and I get invited to the cool table where the Puffs eat lunch. Who doesn’t want to ring a bell in the headmaster’s office at midnight?
When someone says you’re biased against them because you object to their stated goal of removing you from society, they’re not actually asking for fairness — they’re demanding complicity. It’s the political equivalent of asking why the gazelle seems to have such a negative view of lions. Think about the underlying logic here: I’m biased because I don’t give equal weight to both sides of a debate about my fundamental rights. I’m biased because I notice patterns in political movements that explicitly state their intentions regarding people like me. I’m biased because I take them at their word when they tell me what they plan to do. ↫ Joan Westenberg OSNews and I will always stand for the right of transgender people to exist, and to enjoy the exact same rights and privileges as any other member of society. This is non-negotiable.
Many moons ago, around the time when Andreas formally resigned from being Serenity’s BDFL, I decided that I want to get involved in the project more seriously. Looking at it from a perspective of “what do I not like about this (codebase)”, the first thing that came to mind was that it runs HERE points at QEMU and not THERE points at real hardware. Obvious oversight, let’s fix it. ↫ sdomi There’s no way for me to summarise this cursed saga, so just follow the lovely link and read it. It’s a meandering story of complexity, but eventually, a corrupted graphical session appeared. Now the real work starts.
IncludeOS is an includable, minimal unikernel operating system for C++ services running in the cloud and on real HW. Starting a program with #include <os> will literally include a tiny operating system into your service during link-time. ↫ IncludeOS GitHub page IncludeOS isn’t exactly the only one of its kind, but I’ve always been slightly mystified by what, exactly, unikernels are for. The gist is, as far as I understand it, that if you build an application using a unikernel, it will find out at compile time exactly what it needs from the operating system to run, and then everything it needs from the operating system to run will be linked inside the resulting application. This can then be booted directly by a hypervisor. The advantages are clear: you don’t have to deal with an entire operating system just to run that one application or service you need to provide, and footprint is kept to a minimum because only the exact dependencies the application needs from the operating system are linked to it during compilation. The downsides are obvious too – you’re not running an operating system so it’s far less flexible, and if issues are found in the unikernel you’re going to have to recompile the application and the operating system bits inside of it just to fix it (at least, I think that’s the case – don’t quote me on it). IncludeOS is under heavy development, so take that under advisement if you intend to use it for something serious. The last full release dates back to 2019, but it’s still under development as indicated by the GitHub activity. I hope it’ll push out a new release soon.
I’ve been dropping a lot of hints about my journey to rid myself of Google’s Android on my Pixel 8 Pro lately, a quest which grew in scope until it covered everything from moving to GrapheneOS to dropping Gmail, from moving to open source “stock” Android application replacements to reconsidering my use of Google Photos, from dropping my dependency on Google Keep to setting up Home Assistant, and much, much more. You get the idea: this has turned into a very complex process where I evaluated my every remaining use of big tech, replacing them with alternatives where possible, leaving only a few cases where I’m sticking with what I was using. And yes, this whole process will turn into an article detailing my quest, because I think recent events have made remocing big tech from your life a lot more important than it already was. Anyway, one of the few things I couldn’t find an alternative for was Google Pay’s tap-to-pay functionality in stores. I don’t like using cash – I haven’t held paper money in my hands in like 15 years – and I’d rather keep my bank cards, credit card, and other important documents at home instead of carrying them around and losing them (or worse). As such, I had completely embraced the tap-to-pay lifestyle, with my phone and my Pixel Watch II. Sadly, Google Pay tap-to-pay NFC payments are simply not possible on GrapheneOS (or other de-Googled ROMS, for that matter), because of Google’s stringent certification requirements. Some banks do offer NFC payments through their own applications, but mine does not. I thought this is where the story ended, but as it turns out, there is actually a way to get tap-to-pay NFC payments in stores back: Garmin Pay. Garmin offers this functionality on a number of its watches, and it pretty much works wherever Google Pay or Apple Pay is accepted, too. And best of all: it works just fine on de-Googled Android ROMs. Peope have been asking me to check this out and make it part of my quest, and ever the people-pleaser, I would love to oblige. Sadly, it does require owning a supported Garmin watch, which I don’t have. To guage interest in me testing this, I’ve set up a Ko-Fi goal of €400 you can contribute to. Obviously, this is by no means a must, but if you’re interested in finding out if you can ditch big tech, but keep enjoying the convenience of tap-to-pay NFC payments – this is your chance.
This is my hobby operating system written in C++. Currently supports x86_64 and i686 architectures. ↫ Banan-OS git page A hobby operating system as a learning experience, but for once not written in Rust, which in and of itself makes it more unique than you’d think. Despite being mostly a one-person hobby project, it’s ticked quite a few boxes already: SMP, network stack, copy-on-write memory, ELF loading, NVME and ATA support, PS/2 and USB peripheral support, a basic GUI, and a lot more. Contributions are welcomed, too.
VEKOS is an experimental operating system written in Rust that focuses on verification and security at its core. This is the first alpha release (v0.0.1) that demonstrates the basic architecture and key features of the system. ↫ VEKOS GitHub page Hobby and experimental operating systems written in Rust are not exactly a novel concept, but that doesn’t mean each new one that comes up isn’t cool. This one is still in its very early stages, but focuses on something quite interesting: every filesystem and memory operation is cryptographically verified using a proof system. It’s already got basic file system operations, signal handling and a scheduler, a shell, and more. Contributions are welcomed.
Today is “Black Friday”, which is the day where a lot of retailers, both online and offline, pretend to have massive discounts on things they either raised the prices for a few weeks ago, or for useless garbage they bought in bulk that’ll end up in a landfill within a year. Technology media happily partakes in this event, going full-mask off posting an endless stream of “stories” promoting these discounts. They’re writing ads for fake discounts, often for products from the very companies they’re supposed to report on, and dress them up as normal articles. It’s sad and revealing, highlighting just how much of the technology media landscape is owned by giant media conglomerates. OSNews does not partake. We’re independent, answer to nobody, and are mostly funded directly by you, our readers. If you want to keep it this way, and keep OSNews free from the tripe you see on every other technology site around this time, consider supporting us through Patreon, making a one-time donation through Ko-Fi, or buying some merch. That’s it. That’s our extra special discount bonanza extravaganza Black Friday super coverage.
Every now and then, news from the club I’m too cool to join, the plan9/9front community, pierces the veil of coolness and enters our normal world. This time, someone accidentally made a package manager for 9front. I’ve been growing tired of manually handling random software, so I decided to find a simple way to automate the process and ended up making a sort of “package manager” for 9front¹. It’s really just a set of shell scripts that act as a frontend for git and keep a simple database of package names and URLs. Running the pkginit script will ask for a location to store the source files for installed packages (/sys/pkg by default) which will then be created if non-existent. And that’s it! No, really. Now you can provide a URL for a git repository to pkg/add. ↫ Kelly “bubstance” Glenn As I somehow expected from 9front, it’s quite a simple and elegant system. I’m not sure how well it would handle more complex package operations, but I doubt many 9front systems are complex to begin with, so this may just be enough to take some of the tedium out of managing software on 9front, as the author originally intended. One day I will be cool enough to use 9front. I just have to stay cool.
VMS Software, the company migrating OpenVMS to x86 (well, virtualised x86, at least) has announced the release of OpenVMS 9.2-3, which brings with a number of new features and changes. It won’t surprise you to hear that many of the changes are about virtualisation and enterprise networking stuff, like adding passthrough support for fibre channel when running OpenVMS in VMware, a new VGA/keyboard-based guest console, automatic configuration of TCP/IP and OpenSSH during installation, improved performance for virtualised network interfaces on VMware and KVM, and much more. Gaining access to OpenVMS requires requesting a community license, after which OpenVMs will be delivered in the form of a preinstalled virtual disk image, complete with a number of development tools.
