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Recommendation for non-DOS/Unix open source OS outside x86/X64

44 points by anta40 ↗ HN
I know some interesting non-DOS/UNIX-based open source OS like HelenOS, MenuetOS, or Kolibri. They are X86/X64 only, though.

Are there similar things say for ARM/RISC/etc ?

51 comments

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486sx33
There is an arm version of pretty much every major Linux distribution now. I’ve used mint, debian, and kali all on arm.

Also, see below

https://distroware.gitlab.io/lists/RunsOnARM/

anta40
My mistake. Guess what I meant is UNIX and UNIX-like.

Nothing personal against Linux, but I'd like to see something new, like TempleOS, for example.

486sx33
There is quite a selection in the link I posted… for example FreeBSD/ARM
p_ing
FreeBSD is a direct descendant of BSD which is UNIX. The BSDs are about as close as you can get to UNIX today.
evanjrowley
Technically you can run Redox-OS on a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ (ARM), but it still works best on x86_64: https://doc.redox-os.org/book/raspi.html

If you decide you miss DOS, then you can also use the DOS emulator available on Redox-OS. It's not Linux but there are some linux-inspired stuff there, including apps from the Cosmic desktop environment. Both announced here: https://www.redox-os.org/news/release-0.9.0/

anta40
"We are not a Linux/BSD clone, or POSIX-compliant..."

and

"It should be able to run most Linux/BSD programs with minimal modifications"

Hmm weird. Will give it a try, anyway.

yann-gael
You could try MorphOS or AROS, which turn your (old) Mac and others into Amigas
Amlal
I'm surprised that nobody has talked about HaikuOS, I used to daily drive for a while before returning to Linux or OS X, depending on what I do.
bohdanqq
HelenOS is multi-platform. Their certificate expired but from their site:

> HelenOS runs on eight different processor architectures

Pretty sure ARM is one of those.

lboc
Are we to assume you want it to run on actual hardware? I imagine there are a number of OSes that qualify if emulation is acceptable. One I like:

http://www.vm370.org/

Full S/370 assembler source included.

rbanffy
Indeed. Very alien to Unix users. Also, the idea of virtual machine is totally different from what we currently use in KVM.
wormius
Plan 9 - one version of which is 9front, which says this:

"Multiple installation media are provided for PC, Raspberry Pi, MNT Reform, and QEMU. For PC, burn an .iso file to CD, or dd it directly to USB media. For Raspberry Pi or MNT Reform, dd an .img file directly to sdcard.

The pi.img file can be used for Raspberry Pi 1, 2, and 3. The pi3.img file can be used for Raspberry Pi 3 and 4.

QEMU images are provided in QCOW2 format."

https://9front.org/releases/

rewgs
OP said non-Unix. I'd say that the successor to Unix is Unix-y enough to not qualify for this thread.
opless
It’s not as unix-y as you think.

Go try it

bandie91
AFAIA plan9 takes the original unix ideas further than Unix or its descendents. in this light, plan9 is more unixy than unix.
opless
In two aspects only

1. Everything is a file. 2. A command does only one thing well

There's no init, fstab, etc etc etc. Very little of your Unix muscle memory will work.

rewgs
I've used it plenty ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's an odd duck and very interesting but the Unix roots are still clear IMO.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
andsoitis
Inferno - https://www.vitanuova.com/inferno/

Description from Wikipedia: “Inferno is a distributed operating system started at Bell Labs and now developed and maintained by Vita Nuova Holdings as free software under the MIT License. Inferno was based on the experience gained with Plan 9 from Bell Labs, and the further research of Bell Labs into operating systems, languages, on-the-fly compilers, graphics, security, networking and portability.”

mycall
Genode is interesting
pajko
RISC-V, ARM in development: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AROS_Research_Operating_System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MorphOS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AmigaOS_4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inferno_(operating_system)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illumos

[dead] 2809
[flagged]
dredmorbius
Explain?
2809
I'm not going to go into it but you can look up most of the information about this dating back 25 years. As someone who was around at the time in that community, and was in certain locations of interest at the time, its best to avoid and use the public projects like AROS etc.
pjmlp
Project Oberon,

https://www.projectoberon.net

The evolution of Oberon based OSes,

Ethos, https://www.research-collection.ethz.ch/handle/20.500.11850/...

Active Oberon which is the Oberon variant I prefer,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_Oberon https://gitlab.inf.ethz.ch/felixf/oberon

Some screenshots at my article, take it while the site still exists,

https://www.progtools.org/article.php?name=oberon&section=co...

SPIN, done in Modula-3

https://www-spin.cs.washington.edu/external/overview.html

Singularity,

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/singularity...

https://github.com/lastweek/source-singularity

Midori,

although no source code, the blog posts, existing talks and internal session at Microsof do provide some nice overview,

https://joeduffyblog.com/2015/11/03/blogging-about-midori/

"The Midori Operating System Overview"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37WgsoZpf3k

"Safe Systems Programming in C# and .NET"

https://www.infoq.com/presentations/csharp-systems-programmi...

"Safe Systems Software and the Future of Computing"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuD7SCqHB7k

Xerox PARC Mesa, used on the Xerox Star OS

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mesa_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Star

https://computerhistory.org/blog/xerox-alto-source-code/

Xerox PARC Cedar, used on Dorado platforms

http://toastytech.com/guis/cedar.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_dt7NG38V4

https://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/xerox/parc/...