SkyOS

SkyOS (short for Sky Operating System) is a not currently maintained operating system for x86 PCs, which was mostly alone developed by Austrian Robert Szeleney. It started as an open source hobby project was temporarily available for free as a closed- source software and should be placed with version 5 as a commercial operating system. As of 2003, published paid beta versions, combined with the promise that buyers would receive free later, the stable, suitable for production use version as soon as she was released. This stage was not reached. In January 2009 Szeleney stated that the development of the software was " temporarily suspended ". Since August 2013, the latest beta version, build 6947 is from 2008, publicly available.

History

Robert Szeleney began development of SkyOS originally in 1996 as a pure bootloader. The first version (0.1 ) of the first written in Assembler 16 -bit operating system was released in December 1997. Version 2 was launched in 1998 and now presented a program written in C 32 -bit system dar. Until again completely rewritten version 3 was SkyOS Open Source. The online magazine OSNews SkyOS recorded in 2003 as Best Hobby OS from. Version 4 was free, but closed source. Version 5 should be commercial, but did not get a paid beta tester program also.

It turned out for the small team of developers as difficult, with current technological developments to keep pace and to provide, for example, drivers for new hardware. Development was therefore officially paused in January 2009. Szelesney said he experimented with to share their own monolithic SkyOS kernel with the Linux kernel or the NetBSD. Finally, he told OSNews.com to look for other ways to continue the development of SkyOS.

Objectives

SkyOS was designed especially for the desktop area, and tried to position itself between Windows and Linux, with the main objective of a simple use of the graphical user interface. Although it had a largely POSIX -compatible programming interface, but understood not as a Unix derivative, otherwise it had no similarities with Unix. So at SkyOS was the graphical user interface SkyGI, unlike Unix usual, an integral part of the system, similar to Windows. This was due to the easier handling of the system by the user.

System

Hardware

The hardware support remained very incomplete in many places, so technologies such as WLAN and Bluetooth are not supported. In contrast, it was possible to operate the printer, CD burner, ACPI and various USB devices such as storage devices, and input devices. Although most graphics chips from Nvidia, ATI and Intel were supported, the driver did not support the 3D functionality.

Desktop concept

The taskbar is located at SkyOS top center and changed their size depending on the number of open programs. The desktop is an exclusive shortcuts to programs and files, no files themselves SkyOS not use workspaces - Programs are changed from the task bar or the keyboard combination Alt Tab. Using a Dock -like program called Subnecto programs can be started. Particularly interesting are the system-wide mouse gestures, with which almost the entire system can be controlled.

Software

SkyOS had a Linux emulation layer and was therefore able to run Linux applications. But there also existed software that was written natively for SkyOS. Most programs are free software porting from other operating systems, mostly from the Unix world:

• Image Editing: GIMP and pixel.
• Internet: Mozilla Firefox ( next to its own browser SkyKruzer ), Mozilla Thunderbird, Nvu, Pidgin, a native FTP client, a BitTorrent client, wget. In addition, a native XMPP client in development.
• Multimedia: The native Media Center supports a variety of codecs, a recent port of VLC is also available.
• Office: AbiWord and a contact manager that uses similar to BeOS attributes to store information.
• Remote Access: Server and Client for VNC and Telnet.
• Games: Quake, Quake II, Quake III Arena, FooBillard, OpenTTD, and ScummVM about 20 smaller games which are mostly based on SDL or Mesa 3D.
• In addition, among other compilers and interpreters for the following languages ​​are available: C, C , C #, D, Pascal, Perl, Python, Ruby. Mono and DotGNU are supported, as well as toolkits such as SDL and GTK are available.

Most existing programs have been included in the standard installation, additional applications could be free to install an update tool called Software Store.

Multimedia

The playback of audio and video files has been incorporated into the Integrated SkyOS Streaming System (ISS ), were able to implement with the programmer to playing an MP3 file with a single line of code. The Media Centre, the default application for playing video and audio files, could also play DVDs. In addition to the Media Center also existed a port of VLC media player. In addition, a proof of concept of a SkyOS Media Station, an application exist similar to Windows Media Center.

Other Services

In addition to the Integrated streaming system about 20 other services working in the background and could be activated via the System Manager. A particular example is the index feeder that created a constantly updated search index. Next launched and configured the Service File and Folder Sharing a Samba server, the service server an HTTP server, the Gesture Executor enabled system-wide mouse gestures, and the Weather Service LUDT down current weather data for a location and showed them in the SkyOS taskbar.

SkyFS

The 64 -bit journaling file system SkyFS based on OpenBFS, the file system of haiku and a reimplementation of the Be File System. It is a 64 -bit journaling file system and supported indexable metadata, which can significantly speed up the search for specific files. Moreover, it was able to manage disks with a size of up to 64 Zettabyte. The maximum file name length was 255 characters. Although SkyFS was due to the numerous changes no longer compatible with BFS, but SkyOS continued to offer support for the mounting of BFS partitions and other file systems such as FAT32.

BranchFS

The BranchFS is a virtual file system and fulfills a number of different tasks:

• Once you have gebrancht a file system, you may at any later go back to the gebranchten file status.
• It allows to read-only file systems, such as ISO 9660 (CDs) to create files or virtual to change - the changes will be saved to the hard disk.
• SkyFS attributes can be written on other file systems and searched and also applied by the Index feeder.

Internationalization

As an operating system that is intended primarily for desktop use, the SkyOS team tried to locate large parts of the operating system. This was based on a system-wide location system. The main parts, such as the installation, have been translated into about 30 languages, including German.

Installation

Similar to the system when you install Ubuntu was booted from the live CD. The desktop was started as a live CD, all programs were available. If one wanted to install, so you clicked on an icon on the desktop, the installer was started. The system, including all programs stand during the installation still available.

Pros and Cons

Trailer of the operating system appreciated the high speed run with the programs, and the simplicity of the system, which is mainly achieved by a single, centralized recruitment program.

Critics complained about the limited hardware support and the conditions of the beta test program in which the testers pay for their work and for the stable version should later receive in return, but never appeared. In many cases, has also been speculated since the closure of the code about possible violations of the GPL and other free licenses, as it is considered unlikely that an individual with comparatively little support such a complex system can be developed.