Extremely Alternative OS's.
I might be abit of a sack but i like fucking about with different O/S and i though i post the best hobby ones here.
this one is one of the best:
name: Triangle OS author: Wim Cools link: http://members.chello.nl/w.cools/ picture: download: http://members.chello.nl/w.cools/003/TOS-0.0.3-RELEASE.zip
This one if also very good, it looks better that triangle OS but its not as "secure":
name: menuetos author: Ville M Turjanmaa (founder) link: http://www.meneutos.org/ picture: download: http://ufpr.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/menuet/m078.img
Last but definatetly not least:
name: Liamux author: unknown (if you know tell me ;) ) link: none picture: none download: http://k.domaindlx.com/scankyfrank/liamux.img
The sad thing, is those aren't very alternative. They're all built very heavily on the existing kernels out there, be they Linux, Mac, or BSD. More than anything, the differences in those are the Window Manager. The second looked halfway between XFCE and KDE.
I guess the way to go about alternative OS's is to understand the current OS branching. Basically, you have Windows and early mac, then things split up. The early main competitors were UNIX, (AT&T style, not BSD), BSD, GNU, (closer to Linux), and SunOS. SunOS was pretty much a mix of all of them, and developed into a split, one leading to Solaris, the other dying,. UNIX and BSD are NOT the same. BSD isn't unix, MacOSX isn't unix, and Hey, Linux! GNU/Linux is the proper name, and what does GNU stand for? GNU's Not Unix. Creative!
In short, no OS is ever really going too far from Windows, Nix, or the starting Macs. The earliest difference that matter to users back before GUIs were prevelent was TCP/IP. For Windows, you had to BUY a seperate software bundle for protocols like HTTP. Unix was buillt for sockets from the beginnging. (Realize, this was before P2P, so don't think you could skimp on buying.)
After that it worked its way into a GUI debate, early Mac vs Windows Vs. Nix Motif. After things developed more, SunOS broke out into Solaris, and it became a very nice desktop OS for those accustomed to Nix. Some of you may know of HP-AIX, or something to that effect, basically HP's play on UNIX. True UNIX eventually faded out, leaving us with BSD, AIX, and after Linux Torvald hit us up with hies beautiful Linux kerne, everyone's happy.
Alternative OS's will never be too alternative. You could study sociology for 200 years, and the world is cyclic. If we have 1000 alternatice, independent OSes, something MUST be standardizing. Eventually, after standardization, things cycle inward, clustering. This leads to a standardized OS instead of standards for proccessing, GUIs, HTTP, and software, and so on.
The alternative OS's of our day are basically just readaptations of our current BSD and Linux Kernels, with a different base software packager, installer, or XWindow Manager.
ok, so maybe i should have called the thread hobby os's… because i dont believe anyone would use them for practice things… thats why i put extremely alternative. but the ones i posted are not based on anything they are just os's which were written from scatch aren't mainstream. i posted them so people could see a hobby os if they were interested.
The sad thing, is those aren't very alternative. They're all built very heavily on the existing kernels out there, be they Linux, Mac, or BSD. More than anything, the differences in those are the Window Manager. The second looked halfway between XFCE and KDE.
apparently those os's were written from scratch and were not based on any perticular OS, but i think you might know better that the authors ;). also i use EXTREMELY alternative because no-one would every use it seriously.
After checking in on them, I noticed a few things. Although they at least have some amount of -scratch-age- Menuet or whatever is apparently using PE, which basically means.. stealing from Windows to a point, and reusing code elsewhere such as the Wine projects, (not necessarily from there, but that sort of project, portage of Windows PE binaries)
Implementations of TCP/IP and surrounding protocols, and the entire socket system, are pretty much pulled directly from Nix for the first of the two I paid attention to. The second of the two is more interesting, obviously noting that it claims to be done 100% in ASM. While very probable for the kernel an even smaller applications, its the window manager that intrigues me. I'll have to look into these a little more, but its apparent they are as independent as they say. Guess they were mostly from scratch though. :)