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Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

minocacorp.com

21–30 of 44 posts

Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

#21
It would be really awesome if you could provide a quick and easy way to test it. If this is really so small one possibility would be to port to run on one of the many JavaScript machine emulators like:

http://bellard.org/jslinux/

It would let you try the OS in the browser.

Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

#22
post #18

Can it provide any real-time guarantees? The main reason why I would change OS on the Raspberry Pi 3 is to get real-time behavior.

Not at the moment, but our interrupt overhead and number of background tasks is so low it's something we're thinking about. Is there a specific scenario you're trying to enable?

I don't know about the grandparent, but I'd imagine anyone interested in using something QNX (http://www.qnx.com/products/neutrino-rtos/neutrino-rtos.html) would be interested in Minoca, if it became a real alternative for a RTOS.

It'd be interesting to see more information about licensing for Minoca, as I could see it as an interesting alternative for small projects on the RaspberryPI.

Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

#23
I suspect novel proprietary kernels are a very difficult business niche. I'm unaware of any new commercially viable OS kernel that has come along in the past decade...maybe even longer. Linux (and to a lesser degree, BSD) seem to have a very firm lock on the market, from quite small devices on up to very large ones. Certainly, there's still room at the very bottom (devices smaller than RPi) and at the very top (what little big iron remains) that isn't owned completely by free and Open Source systems...but, it's looking like a pretty tight squeeze, to me, for a system that targets the small end of Linux' market, and does so without some dramatic differentiation (the mentioned 5MB size is entirely do-able with Linux, even modern Linux...old Linux kernel versions could fit on a floppy with room to spare for utilities).

It's not that I don't like seeing new kernels and new ideas. I'm just not seeing a path to profitability for something like this (but I thought Dropbox was a bad idea, so I may be stupid).

So, what's the market niche for this that isn't better served by an Open Source platform?

Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

#24
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a quick review of the site - the "Product" page - shows a lite version and a pro. Lite has debugging symbols built in that can't be stripped. It is compiled at a lower optimization level than pro. It says for Access to Source: Lite - Limited, Pro - Unlimited Not sure what that means though, I didn't dig very far. Found the above here: http://www.minocacorp.com/product/ - scroll down a bit to find the product com…

(emphasis mine): > It says for Access to Source: Lite - Limited, Pro - Unlimited In the software world I'd consider anything less than BSD/MIT licensed source code limited.

> In the software world I'd consider anything less than BSD/MIT licensed source code limited.

Or GPL. Any free license would be acceptable.

Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

#26

I suspect novel proprietary kernels are a very difficult business niche. I'm unaware of any new commercially viable OS kernel that has come along in the past decade...maybe even longer. Linux (and to a lesser degree, BSD) seem to have a very firm lock on the market, from quite small devices on up to very large ones. Certainly, there's still room at the very bottom (devices smaller than RPi) and at the very top (what…

Thanks for the feedback. We're optimistic about the idea of focusing on what can be gained by starting from scratch. Specifically by creating a modern API between the core kernel and device drivers, we think we can make interesting advances in areas like system-wide power management, component level servicing/updates, and overall "debuggability". We believe these areas will become even more important as general purpose operating systems are integrated into more embedded devices.

Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

#27
post #11

It looks like this is a closed binary blob. Disappointing, since I'm curious to see what exactly it does differently. I'm also not entirely sure why I would want to use this over Linux, from reading the website.

Better debugging, commercial support, stable/better driver API I would assume. They explicitly state they take away the pain of constantly maintaining patches.

Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

#28

What's the hardware compatibility like? If you're open to it, there is a market for something that will boot with the bare minimum non-specialized generic drivers on all hardware into a shell or some form of UI.

We currently run on x86 PCs and a number of ARM SoCs (the linked page should give you an idea of which ones). Adding support for new SoCs and boards is pretty straighforward. Feel free to reach out to me directly with what you have in mind: evan AT minocacorp.

Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

#29
post #6
post #4

Is this a commercial product? If so, what's your business model? This looks really neat by the way.

We're hoping it can be, but we're also considering open sourcing it.

You could always put it under the AGPL 3 (or later). Your prospective customers would probably still want to buy a less restrictive license from you, because they are irrationally afraid of the GPL, especially GPL3, and even more especially the AGPL 3. But free software would still benefit from the source code being free.

Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch

#30

I suspect novel proprietary kernels are a very difficult business niche. I'm unaware of any new commercially viable OS kernel that has come along in the past decade...maybe even longer. Linux (and to a lesser degree, BSD) seem to have a very firm lock on the market, from quite small devices on up to very large ones. Certainly, there's still room at the very bottom (devices smaller than RPi) and at the very top (what…

QNX is a commercially successful micro-kernel being used in automotive industries.
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