Fun With VirtualBox

In 2002 I switched to Mac. As those of you who have been paying attention know, I was a dyed in the wool NeXT guy, and I had OPENSTEP on my primary workstation from about 1997-2002. I kept an assortment of other machines on my network running FreeBSD, Solaris, various linux distros, and the occasional hobby os like BeOS.

Since my switch to Mac, my home network has diminished to just a couple of machines, and overall, I get more satisfaction from the working environments I use now than the many I used to play with. However, for the last few years with my primary workstation running on Power PC instead of Intel, my hobby os options were limited.

Since I upgraded to an Intel Mac this spring I’ve been playing with operating systems again, thanks to the marvelous virtual machine. Many of you are familiar with VMWare and Parallels. I use Sun’s excellent and free VirtualBox, which is fast catching up to VMWare’s feature set.

Here is the lowdown on a handful of alternative operating systems and desktops, coming from the perspective of a hobbyist who’s been out of the loop for a while.

• Aros Aros is a free Amiga OS clone that’s been around for about as long as I’ve been into operating systems. Until recently, there wasn’t much to show for all those years of effort. This year, Aros received a port of OWB, a webkit-based web browser, and all of a sudden the Aros system is starting to resemble a usable operating system. Like the other Amiga os’es (Amiga OS, Amiga OS 4, MorphOS), Aros boots to a usable desktop in less than 10 seconds. This always makes me smile, and it’s one of the reasons I’ve had Amiga-envy for the last 15 years. I swear to God I will have hardware that will run Amiga OS 4 and MorphOS, someday. Anyway, back to Aros. Aros is not the linux kernel and GNU system running a proprietary GUI. Aros has it’s own kernel, which is both good and bad. Good, in that the world does NOT need another linux distro, and BAD because it slows down development compared to how fast things would proceed if they used linux. Think development community: Aros has a handful of people vs. linux, which has a huge, global development community. Aros is not quite ready to be an everyday desktop, but it’s getting close, and I’m excited. I think Aros is looking good, and once they have the holes filled in, will make both nostalgic Amigans and operating system enthusiasts happy with a fast, responsive, fun to use system. Until the people behind Amiga OS and MorphOS wise up and port to Intel, this is Amiga OS for the rest of us.


Aros

• Haiku Haiku has been around for a while, with nothing to show the world for their efforts. Then recently I saw they had a developer’s Virtual Box image and gave it a try. Haiku is not linux-based, and is an admirable attempt to recreate BeOS from scratch. From what I can see they are doing a fantastic job. I had a usable desktop in 10 seconds, and it looked and behaved exactly how I remembered BeOS. This os is going to be ready for public consumption soon. Playing with it reminded me that BeOS never made me a convert, but I do admire what the Haiku team has accomplished. It was a very pleasant surprise to find Haiku in such a high state of functionality. Now that they’ve recreated BeOS, I definitely want to keep an eye on them to see where they are going to take it.


Haiku

• Syllable I used to play with this back when it was called Atheos. Syllable has it’s own kernel and GUI, which is usually a plus, but I have two knocks against Syllable. One, the newer server version of Syllable uses linux, which signifies to me that they are on the cusp of abandoning their proprietary kernel and become yet another linux distro. Two, the GUI is dull, dull, dull. Please, aspiring os and GUI designers, if you are going to work on os projects, do better than to model your GUI on Win95 and/or Gnome.


Syllable

• OpenSolaris Another disappointment. I used to like Solaris, one, because it represented “real” unix, and two, because CDE made you feel like you weren’t in Kansas anymore. OpenSolaris is indistinguishable from any linux distro. It would have been nice if they would have differentiated themselves by turning Java Desktop into a desktop environment, but instead they use Gnome. Yawn. I’ve seen this before guys. I can use Ubuntu if I want this and have, like, oh, maybe a million more software packages available to me. Solaris is still strong in the market because it’s a platform for a lot of specialized software, but in terms of GUI design Sun went lazy and gave us just another Gnome desktop.


OpenSolaris

• Etoile Ok, Etoile is not an os, but a GNUstep-dependent desktop environment that is much more similar to OS X than it is OPENSTEP. I spent 3 days trying to build Etoile and GNUstep on FreeBSD 7.2, and eventually gave up. I did play with the developer Virtual Box image for a minute or two. Since the last time I looked at Etoile, not much has changed. Perhaps I am pissed at Etoile because it’s near-impossible to compile, or perhaps it’s just the incomplete, barely functioning status it is in. Maybe in another couple of years the Etoile team will have produced something worth reviewing. This could be something cool, if any of it worked. They should keep the lid on this until it’s functional.


Etoile 0.4.1

• GNUstep GNUstep has been around a long time as well. GNUstep is not an os, but a set of frameworks that duplicates the OPENSTEP spec that NeXT made for the NeXT Mach OS, and then Solaris and Yellowbox (OPENSTEP on Windows NT). I include GNUstep, because as a rabid NeXT/OS X advocate, I always hoped the project would bear fruit. I was hoping for better than Etoile delivered at this stage in it’s development, and GNUstep, while it doesn’t act like a NeXT system, at least is starting to look like one. I can’t condone the use of X and Windowmaker to achieve the desktop they have. What they need to do is replicate Display Postscript and ditch X altogther. GNUstep and GDPS is a desktop environment I would get excited about, and hopefully it will happen someday. In the meantime, for those of you who never used a NeXT, it will give you a small glimpse of the great system that was.


GNUstep

• OPENSTEP 4.2 The last version of the NeXT Mach OS released by NeXT prior to being swallowed by Apple. This is the real deal folks. I am happy to announce that if you have the cd and the floppy install images this installs and works great in Virtual Box. In fact, I have been having a blast playing with my all time favorite os, which I haven’t used at all since 2003. This desktop environment was so far ahead of the curve that people are still copying it. If you manage to find a copy and get it running, email me for tips on getting DHCP working. No modern web browser, and unix source code can be painful to compile on this non-posix compliant BSD 4.2 system, but it’s genius through and through. If you’re into os’es you’ll see that and appreciate it.

I can’t explain my fascination with GUIs and operating systems. Perhaps it is just fun to learn a new way to do things, or find a way that is better than what you are used to. Sun’s VirtualBox is free, it works great, and will allow you to play with some alternative desktops without having to add hardware to your space to do so. Incidentally, Windows 7 works just fine in VB, so if you are on a non-Windows machine and need something like Access that is Windows-only, you’re in luck.