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Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

blog.minocacorp.com

81–90 of 196 posts

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#81
post #78
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's lack of confidence. It's just a realistic acknowledgement that it's a small start and in fact was unlikely to be useful. But he wanted feedback on how to make it useful. I think Linus is just a practical person who is good at assessing reality. He doesn't get caught up in grand visions without action. I don't think he is holier than thou now either. He's just busy and forcefully trying to get contr…

Good at assessing reality?? The same Linus that fundementally did not believe in source code management for what 20? Years because it made developers "soft"!?

He (a) changed his mind, (b) wrote git.

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#83

I'm very excited about this! Minoca is an interesting system, and I applaud any attempt to make driver-writing less inherently horrible. Minoca OS has been around for a while, but the news is that they're GPLv3. I think that's a great thing! The MIT license is good for software that wants to permeate through everything , but for building a community, the GPL is a good idea. It seems that for any operating system to b…

> It seems that for any operating system to be successful, it has to carry around POSIX compatibility like an extremely expensive entry pass.

Curious - what are your main objections with POSIX? Is there another system you prefer?

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#84

I have to say... the code is beautiful: Full English descriptive variable names and nearly every function is documented. As AngularJS has shown, cleaner, consistent code and architecture style = more contributors. Take a look here for example: https://github.com/minoca/os/blob/master/kernel/io/iobase.c#...

Why the initial capital on local variable names? I don't think I've ever seen that in C code. (Usually types and exported functions are capitalized.)

It kind of makes the code look like Pascal. Nothing wrong with that, really.

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#85
post #83

I'm very excited about this! Minoca is an interesting system, and I applaud any attempt to make driver-writing less inherently horrible. Minoca OS has been around for a while, but the news is that they're GPLv3. I think that's a great thing! The MIT license is good for software that wants to permeate through everything , but for building a community, the GPL is a good idea. It seems that for any operating system to b…

> It seems that for any operating system to be successful, it has to carry around POSIX compatibility like an extremely expensive entry pass. Curious - what are your main objections with POSIX? Is there another system you prefer?

I mean, it sounds like his objection is that an operating system that doesn't have POSIX compatibility is dismissed out of hand.

If we think of POSIX compatibility as something which is required in order for an operating system to be viable at any level, it means that there's a lot of energy in pioneering a new OS devoted to building up this compatibility simply so it can get some exposure.

If we really want to encourage a fresh approach and disseminate new ideas, we need to move away from criterion like this and look more specifically at the principles and work being put forth and whether or not those are objectively successful or have merit. That's a much better way to move forward.

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#86
post #67

I ran `cloc` on the minoca/os repository, here are the results: github.com/AlDanial/cloc v 1.70 T=22.43 s (84.3 files/s, 63498.9 lines/s) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Language files blank comment code ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 1023 296251 262652 530443 C/C++ Header 438 93833 117592 69529 Assembly 95 9588…

Shameless plug of `loc`, a rust implementation of `cloc` that is 100+ times faster: https://github.com/cgag/loc

... in Rust!

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#87

I have to say... the code is beautiful: Full English descriptive variable names and nearly every function is documented. As AngularJS has shown, cleaner, consistent code and architecture style = more contributors. Take a look here for example: https://github.com/minoca/os/blob/master/kernel/io/iobase.c#...

Tcl has some nice code done in a similar style:

https://github.com/tcltk/tcl/blob/master/generic/tclEvent.c

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#89

I'm very excited about this! Minoca is an interesting system, and I applaud any attempt to make driver-writing less inherently horrible. Minoca OS has been around for a while, but the news is that they're GPLv3. I think that's a great thing! The MIT license is good for software that wants to permeate through everything , but for building a community, the GPL is a good idea. It seems that for any operating system to b…

Seems to me like POSIX compatibility is actually a cheap pass that gives you access to a huge software environment. Right on the homepage they mention already having packages for Python, Ruby, Git, Lua, and Node... would that, and thousands of other packages, be feasible without a workable POSIX layer?

Re: Minoca OS: A new open source operating system

#90
post #84

I have to say... the code is beautiful: Full English descriptive variable names and nearly every function is documented. As AngularJS has shown, cleaner, consistent code and architecture style = more contributors. Take a look here for example: https://github.com/minoca/os/blob/master/kernel/io/iobase.c#...

Why the initial capital on local variable names? I don't think I've ever seen that in C code. (Usually types and exported functions are capitalized.) It kind of makes the code look like Pascal. Nothing wrong with that, really.

This looks like the NT kernel coding style, especially with the pointless typedefs for things like PVOID and the PascalCased function names with prefixes like `IopPerformIoOperation`. I looked up the Minoca founders on Linked In and, behold, they both worked as engineers on the Windows NT team. :)
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