Guest post by Version 0.4.2 of the little-known microkernel-based multiserver operating system HelenOS has been released. See their official release notes to find out what other bleeding-edge features besides an experimental and highly modular networking stack this release brings.
Just to give readers a little more information about this OS that was a total surprise to me:
HelenOS uses its own microkernel written from scratch and supports SMP, multitasking and multithreading on both 32-bit and 64-bit, little-endian and big-endian processor architectures, among which are AMD64/EM64T (x86-64), ARM, IA-32, IA-64 (Itanium), 32-bit MIPS, 32-bit PowerPC and SPARC V9. Thanks to the relatively high number of supported architectures and suitable design, HelenOS is very portable. On top of the microkernel, HelenOS provides services such as file systems, networking, device drivers and user interface. Most of these services are composed of multiple independent server processes, which makes HelenOS one of the most modular operating systems.
And it is BSD licensed. Sounds interesting.
The micro-kernel / server concept of HelenOS sounds surprisingly similar to the infamous Hurd. Other than the license and non-Unix orientation. And HelenOS making rapid progress.
You have a floppy?
Edited 2010-03-12 15:50 UTC
I have 5 floppies. The modular stack of HelenOs seems attractive. Genode or even Hurd can take advantage of it. Maybe it can incorporate Blutetooth as long as it runs on the user space.
This is one of the OS’s i have had my eye on for a while. Loads of potential. Will be interesting to see how it plays out over time. I am hoping that the Genode OS Framework has a look at it, could be a stellar combination. http://genode.org/
The most interesting think in this Os is his independent . Developers want try to create something new non-based on unix , rtos etc . It’s hard work but in future this system will found a niche where will be standard uses
Like Rtos’es . Maybe in future developers will add possibility to runs unix programs or posix compilant ? And we will see this system on embeed devices ?
Can you boot it off a floppy?