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View Full Version : Operating System Kernels


oasmar1
April 13th, 2008, 03:10 PM
Hey, I was recently reading about Operating Systems for my school work and i was reading about how most modern operating systems are based on either Windows or a UNIX/UNIX-Like kernel.
I read about Singularity from Microsoft which seems to be their new direction (currently only for research).
I wanted to know whether there were any new kernels in development which weren't UNIX based. Something that could be an alternative to Windows and UNIX based kernels.
drascus
April 13th, 2008, 03:14 PM
well there is the Gnu hurd which is not technically like a unix or microsoft kernel as far as I know. Unix uses monolithic Kernels and so does Gnu/Linux. check out the project site: http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd.html
swoll1980
April 13th, 2008, 03:45 PM
sky os has a new one. don't know much about it
LaRoza
April 13th, 2008, 03:46 PM
There are many, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_operating_systems
saulgoode
April 13th, 2008, 05:55 PM
One that's not listed on that page (http://www.helenos.eu/) (but is in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HelenOS)).
LaRoza
April 13th, 2008, 05:57 PM
One that's not listed on that page (http://www.helenos.eu/) (but is in Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HelenOS)).

Yes, I saw a few missing from the list.
Tundro Walker
April 13th, 2008, 08:35 PM
Microsoft's Singularity experimental OS is supposedly what Windows could be if they stripped out all the old code that's no longer needed for legacy hardware/application support, and just tweaked the crap out of it for modern & future hardware. Windows has sort of gotten "stuck" in how it can do things due to the foundation it was built on, so Singularity was an experiment to remove that hindrance and build a modern OS from the ground up.
oasmar1
April 13th, 2008, 09:47 PM
Wow, unfortunately none of those look like they will ever compete with UNIX and windows.
SunnyRabbiera
April 13th, 2008, 09:53 PM
Yeh, Gnu/Hurd seems to be going nowhere, and who knows what singularity will do.
I like the concepts behind Gnu/Hurd don't get me wrong, but I don't think it will do anything solid like Linux for some time at this point.
zmjjmz
April 13th, 2008, 10:02 PM
Well, MS-DOS through Windows ME used the DOS kernel. Windows NT used the NT kernel, and so do 2K, XP, and Vista.
And then there's Haiku OS which is based off of BeOS, ReactOS, and then OS/2 which is dead.