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.
Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
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Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
(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.
GPL is by nature limited. All viral licenses are.
Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
#33I 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.
QNX is 30+ years old, and is effectively defunct except in a few niche markets after being acquired by Blackberry (and was losing market share to Linux for decades before that). QNX is not an example of a new and successful proprietary kernel competitor to Linux, despite being well-regarded and pretty neat technology.
Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
#34I 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.
And is about 35 years old... GP mentioned 'last decade'
Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In the software world I'd consider anything less than BSD/MIT licensed source code limited. Or GPL. Any free license would be acceptable.
GPL is by nature limited. All viral licenses are.
You're not limited as a user. As a developer, the only "limitation" is that you have to provide the code with the binaries.
Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
#36I 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…
There may be another exception: very specialized OSes in critical environments like planes or satellites.
These environments generally need a real time OS with a small footprint (for auditability, or even prove a part of the code).
Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
#37I 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.
It was. And it's heavily on the decline, since it's substituted for Linux in a lot of new projects. This underlines SwellJoes assumptions that new operating systems have it very hard.
Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
#38I 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…
There may be another exception: very specialized OSes in critical environments like planes or satellites. These environments generally need a real time OS with a small footprint (for auditability, or even prove a part of the code).
Yeah, but you need to design an OS from scratch to supported these hard realtime and safety requirements. There are a few ones out there (VxWorks, Integrity, ...). But the linked OS seems more to focus on the general purpose OS role.
Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
#39That page is really missing a description who is maintaining it (who is the team, how big is it, where is it located?), especially if it is marketed as a commercial offer. I don't think anybody will download binaries from some unknown individual and build a commercial product on top of it. In Germany you could even get sued for a page like this.
Re: Show HN: Minoca OS – A new lightweight kernel, completely from scratch
#40I 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 purpo…
The problem is that as long as the kernel is proprietary, people have no reason to trust it to run that kind of hardware.