OS Ideas

#31 Tue, 8 Mar 2011 - 21:03

If somebody were fairly talented and so inclined, I could see a command line OS (like MS-DOS or CP/M) being thrown together in about a month.

Think about it... that's definately something the mouse-centric Macintosh hasn't seen much of.

#32 Wed, 9 Mar 2011 - 00:38

I'm sorry for resurrecting an older thread, but have you tried MorphOS on your Power Mac G4? It's an exotic, alternative OS for select PPC hardware and it isn't based on Unix/Linux/BSD. You can download the Live CD ISO on the official website, you should be able to burn it to a CD and boot from it to test the OS. If you like it you can install it on your hard drive. Get it here: http://www.morphos-team.net/downloads.html

good looking stuff. I'm going to try it out this weekend :beige:

#33 Sun, 13 Mar 2011 - 06:04

If somebody were fairly talented and so inclined, I could see a command line OS (like MS-DOS or CP/M) being thrown together in about a month.
Think about it... that's definately something the mouse-centric Macintosh hasn't seen much of.

I agree with this! I love many of my Mac programs, but I do not understand the appeal of "The Desktop" in Mac and Windoze... it is like training wheels on a bicycle: once one knows their way around mousing through lots of folders definitely seems like the slow and difficult way to go about things. My root disk is a folder which resides on a desktop, which is in turn really a folder on my actual root drive? How does this make any sense? I have been thinking about this lately and have concluded what is heresy in Mac and Windoze communities alike: that DOS-style console applications are the most productive user interface. Sure, they are classically ugly, but they don't need to be. If I can use my tab and cursor keys, and keyboard shortcuts, then I can fly.

I am not kind of real coder, but here are some other OSs that people have put together. They are x86 but cool just the same:

http://common-lisp.net/project/movitz/movitz.html

http://www.forthos.org/

http://www.returninfinity.com/baremetal.html

#34 Sun, 13 Mar 2011 - 08:18

I've always wanted to write my own OS, but I've found as I've taken my OS and systems programming classes that it's only certain aspects of OS development that appeal to me, and the rest of it I'd rather have someone else write. The parts that particularly interest me are pretty eclectic: VM instruction sets, file system structures, UI design, application programming. Concurrency in particular is one area that scares me.

#35 Sun, 13 Mar 2011 - 21:21

I have much love for my Mac GUI, but think this idea would still be interesting.

The major downside to this is the fact that you'd probably have to write all new applications seeing as most (all?) Mac OS applications rely on things like QuickDraw. Similar to how you can't run Windows apps in DOS.

The good news is that you'd have a super quick command line interface that is as simplistic as MS-DOS, but doesn't have the shortsighted Real Mode limitations of x86 PCs (remember kids: "640K ought to be enough for everybody.")

Oh, and then every Mac user would call you a heathen... but hey...

#36 Sun, 13 Mar 2011 - 21:41

Doesn't anyone remember MacDOS?

#37 Mon, 21 Mar 2011 - 19:02

... no?

#38 Mon, 21 Mar 2011 - 20:25

... no?

Here's a demo if you're too young to remember.