There were quite a few non-Unix influenced operating systems that are even more worth learning about, but it seems hardly anyone knows about them or remembers them.
Also worthy of mention are the various mainframe operating systems, particularly MCP (Burroughs) and VME/B (ICL).
These are all quite different to both the present day operating systems, and in many ways they were better. If all people know about are Unix-like systems (and the not too different Microsoft Windows), there will be far fewer ideas for how to improve them, never mind improving upon them.
Modern stuff caught up to quite a few of these. However, we still don't have a platform where (a) entire system from kernel to apps is in same language, (b) apps can use any code in system for their benefit, and (c) any problem anywhere can be debugged by loading up relevant source and current running state. I thought (b) was cool but (c) would be a godsend for troubleshooting.
Brings new (old?) meaning to "full-stack developer." ;)
The political factors that led to the adoption of Linux as a defacto standard are endlessly interesting to me. As programmers we like to think of ourselves as objective to the hilt, but the reality is that at some point the pragmatic choice is to capitulate to a common standard for the sake of higher-level efforts. In many ways this is purely a political decision because we don't yet see the fallout from the tradeoffs made, and by the time we do it's too late to go back and rebuild the foundations.
We can't go back now and replace UNIX because we've too much invested in it and there's work to be done.
Yet the way I see it there is more OS research going on with unikernels and at Microsoft Research labs than with Linux.
Which appears just to be the same old idea of UNIX and mainframes revamped in new package, stuck in C and in a kernel model that has hardly changed.
EDIT: To clarify.
Many use GNU/Linux in the same way as they would be using UNIX SYSTEM V, there is hardly any change.
Add to it that besides new filesystems, adoption of mainframe virtualization and sandboxes concepts, there is hardly anything new happening in OS research in regards to Linux.
What I currently care about is OS research that tries to mimick the Xerox PARC experiences, use of micro-kernels, use of safe systems programming languages and so forth.
What political factors are you referring to? I think Linux took off because it was easily accessible and widely available, and Linus made a lot of pragmatic choices.
I remember in the 90s how awesome it seemed to get a *nix system for free with a book.
The authors worry that the ideas in Plan 9 will be lost if more people don't take it up, but I wonder if that is true if many of the original authors are still alive, creating software and teaching others? Only Dennis Ritchie has left us.
The Plan 9 team was initially led by Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Dave Presotto and Phil Winterbottom, with support from Dennis Ritchie as head of the Computing Techniques Research Department. Over the years, many notable developers have contributed to the project including Brian Kernighan, Tom Duff, Doug McIlroy, Bjarne Stroustrup and Bruce Ellis. [Wikipedia]
Off topic question. I used BeOS for years and it was the platform I learned C++ on. I just checked out the Wikipedia page and it was pretty unclear on what ever happened. Anyone know where the OS ended up, seems like such a loss.
I have the open source knock-off Haiku running in VirtualBox, but that's probably not your question. BeOS proper was sold to Access:
In September 2005, ACCESS acquired PalmSource, the owner of the Palm OS and BeOS. The company has used these assets and expertise to create the Access Linux Platform, an open-source Linux-based platform for smartphones and other mobile devices [Wikipedia]
I remember my jaw dropping seeing their demo of graphical multitasking on a PC that couldn't do a fraction of that under Windows. Came in part due to architectural choices. Here's some of them for those trying to learn from BeOS:
same here. A lot of BeOS lives on in android. Romain Guy was a huge contributor to the kernel (file system, I think) and I notice his name float by in the photo creds for my chromecast. Dianne Hackborn also works for Android, when I first coded in dalvik Java there were definitely concepts that floated in from BeOS inter-process communication.
DonaldFisk already mentioned some good OS's. I'll add a few other examples here with things worth copying plus extend two of his.
CTOS was Plan 9 of mainframe world. Unisys killed it for a reason. Imagine LISP-like macros and debugger at assembler level.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTOS
OpenVMS was so reliable admins sometimes forgot how to reboot it. Cluster uptime up to 17 years. What's cloud uptime again? ;) Fairly future-proof software, too.
http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/20th/vmsbook.pdf
PSOS's layering and abstraction were used in highly-secure systems such as LOCK, GEMSOS, and VAX Security Kernel. Also used object storage to avoid filesystem in TCB.
https://www.acsac.org/2003/papers/classic-neumann.pdf
seL4 is verified down to binary (from GCC compiled C code, for ARMv6 and maybe v7), under active development, and GPLv2 open sourced: https://sel4.systems/
I wouldn't mind a Burroughs on a Chip today given details below
You're looking for the Unisys SCAMP[1] in a Unisys Micro-A. It's a single chip implementation of the A-series mainframe architecture running MCP packaged in a "desktop"(ish) package. Very nifty. These days Unisys will sell you what amounts to an A-series emulator running on a Xeon. For a lot of money.
When I tried it years ago I was put off by the UI, this might be shallow, but if I ha been able to use Gtk and Qt apps ai might have used it looks my enough to appreciate the underlying aspects.
The UX is just quite odd and looks old - making it themeable would certainly have made it more appealing to my younger self.
To be completely honest, the kind of person who cares about UI look & feel above all else isn't likely to get a whole lot out of a research system like Plan 9.
The UI does obscures the best of plan9. There are defenders of it. But, if we assume that the goal of Plan9 was to obsolete unix with something better by the late 90s, the UI is a big part of the failure. It scared people users.
Your alternative doesn't work. Qt in particular is a platform that goes out of its way to obscure the underlying platform. You could probably use GTK in a 9er way. Still, it wouldn't make sense for applications - the apps written on GTK for unix or windows don't stick close to the everything-is-a-file approach. They are monolithic and beige.
Winning users to Plan9 is particularly difficult because part of the vision is about creating a network, rather than a computer. From this, it follows that it doesn't make sense to have sshd run on it. I think the community made a mistake here. If they'd offered a sshd entrypoint, it would have offered a path-to-adoption for new users coming from a unix background. On the path they've taken, there's a high barrier to entry to anyone wanting to do work with it in a non-pure way. If it had ssh, you could sneak it into enterprise. That's not practical for plan9 in its its current form.
[+] [-] DonaldFisk|10 years ago|reply
Worthy of mention are: ITS (http://victor.se/bjorn/its/, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incompatible_Timesharing_Syste...) This was the original hacker system, developed and used at the AI Lab at MIT.
Genera (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_%28operating_system%29) and the other Lisp Machine OSes.
EROS (http://eros-os.org/eros.html), a more modern research system.
Also worthy of mention are the various mainframe operating systems, particularly MCP (Burroughs) and VME/B (ICL).
These are all quite different to both the present day operating systems, and in many ways they were better. If all people know about are Unix-like systems (and the not too different Microsoft Windows), there will be far fewer ideas for how to improve them, never mind improving upon them.
[+] [-] nickpsecurity|10 years ago|reply
http://www.symbolics-dks.com/Genera-why-1.htm
Modern stuff caught up to quite a few of these. However, we still don't have a platform where (a) entire system from kernel to apps is in same language, (b) apps can use any code in system for their benefit, and (c) any problem anywhere can be debugged by loading up relevant source and current running state. I thought (b) was cool but (c) would be a godsend for troubleshooting.
Brings new (old?) meaning to "full-stack developer." ;)
[+] [-] trentnelson|10 years ago|reply
UNIX and Windows (VMS) are fundamentally different on just about every level. (Some more recent notes: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/framework-benchmarks...)
[+] [-] dasil003|10 years ago|reply
We can't go back now and replace UNIX because we've too much invested in it and there's work to be done.
[+] [-] pjmlp|10 years ago|reply
Which appears just to be the same old idea of UNIX and mainframes revamped in new package, stuck in C and in a kernel model that has hardly changed.
EDIT: To clarify.
Many use GNU/Linux in the same way as they would be using UNIX SYSTEM V, there is hardly any change.
Add to it that besides new filesystems, adoption of mainframe virtualization and sandboxes concepts, there is hardly anything new happening in OS research in regards to Linux.
What I currently care about is OS research that tries to mimick the Xerox PARC experiences, use of micro-kernels, use of safe systems programming languages and so forth.
[+] [-] cmbaus|10 years ago|reply
I remember in the 90s how awesome it seemed to get a *nix system for free with a book.
[+] [-] rbanffy|10 years ago|reply
That's being very objective. Technical merits can only get you so far. One should never be too attached to them.
[+] [-] michaelwww|10 years ago|reply
The Plan 9 team was initially led by Rob Pike, Ken Thompson, Dave Presotto and Phil Winterbottom, with support from Dennis Ritchie as head of the Computing Techniques Research Department. Over the years, many notable developers have contributed to the project including Brian Kernighan, Tom Duff, Doug McIlroy, Bjarne Stroustrup and Bruce Ellis. [Wikipedia]
[+] [-] vt240|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] owyn|10 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)
It's linked from the wikipedia BeOS page but not prominently...
[+] [-] michaelwww|10 years ago|reply
In September 2005, ACCESS acquired PalmSource, the owner of the Palm OS and BeOS. The company has used these assets and expertise to create the Access Linux Platform, an open-source Linux-based platform for smartphones and other mobile devices [Wikipedia]
[+] [-] nickpsecurity|10 years ago|reply
https://users.cs.jmu.edu/abzugcx/public/Student-Produced-Ter...
[+] [-] dnautics|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickpsecurity|10 years ago|reply
CTOS was Plan 9 of mainframe world. Unisys killed it for a reason. Imagine LISP-like macros and debugger at assembler level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CTOS
Genode Architecture (very active development) http://genode.org/documentation/general-overview/
Architectural overview of QNX (commercially available) http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~voelker/cse221/papers/qnx-paper92.pd...
MorphOS continues Amiga tradition of being lightweight, ultra-responsive, and beautiful http://www.morphos-team.net/
I wouldn't mind a Burroughs on a Chip today given details below http://www.smecc.org/The%20Architecture%20%20of%20the%20Burr...
IBM's System/38 was way more secure, reliable, future-proof and consistent than UNIX's design. i432 was also radical. https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~levy/capabook/index.html
OpenVMS was so reliable admins sometimes forgot how to reboot it. Cluster uptime up to 17 years. What's cloud uptime again? ;) Fairly future-proof software, too. http://h71000.www7.hp.com/openvms/20th/vmsbook.pdf
Worried about embedded security? Try a highly-assured, real-time, pen-tested Ada runtime. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA340370&Location=U...
Use, debug, and modify the app down to running OS for developer productivity? Sign me up! http://www.symbolics-dks.com/Genera-why-1.htm
PSOS's layering and abstraction were used in highly-secure systems such as LOCK, GEMSOS, and VAX Security Kernel. Also used object storage to avoid filesystem in TCB. https://www.acsac.org/2003/papers/classic-neumann.pdf
Flex Machine had Go-like source code, capability-security, garbage collection, and cross-language VM. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flex_machine
Microsoft's VerveOS mathematically verified down to assembler. Relevant to meme: Nucleus copied/improved General Electric's firmware design. http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/122884/pldi117-yang.pdf
Trying to secure VMM's? Learn from the masters. http://www.cse.psu.edu/~trj1/cse543-f06/papers/vax_vmm.pdf
Trying to secure GUI's in VM's, etc? Learn from the masters. https://www.acsac.org/2005/papers/54.pdf
Trying to do robust networking? Learn from the masters. http://eros-os.org/papers/usenix-net-2004.ps
Trying to have a secure filesystem? Learn from a good one. https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/atc11/tech/slides/weinho...
[+] [-] hga|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kjs3|10 years ago|reply
You're looking for the Unisys SCAMP[1] in a Unisys Micro-A. It's a single chip implementation of the A-series mainframe architecture running MCP packaged in a "desktop"(ish) package. Very nifty. These days Unisys will sell you what amounts to an A-series emulator running on a Xeon. For a lot of money.
[1] Not SC/MP. Different chip.
[+] [-] stuaxo|10 years ago|reply
The UX is just quite odd and looks old - making it themeable would certainly have made it more appealing to my younger self.
[+] [-] nicklaf|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cturner|10 years ago|reply
Your alternative doesn't work. Qt in particular is a platform that goes out of its way to obscure the underlying platform. You could probably use GTK in a 9er way. Still, it wouldn't make sense for applications - the apps written on GTK for unix or windows don't stick close to the everything-is-a-file approach. They are monolithic and beige.
Winning users to Plan9 is particularly difficult because part of the vision is about creating a network, rather than a computer. From this, it follows that it doesn't make sense to have sshd run on it. I think the community made a mistake here. If they'd offered a sshd entrypoint, it would have offered a path-to-adoption for new users coming from a unix background. On the path they've taken, there's a high barrier to entry to anyone wanting to do work with it in a non-pure way. If it had ssh, you could sneak it into enterprise. That's not practical for plan9 in its its current form.