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WhatIsCyvos

Author: Telcontar

Cy/VOS is a blanket name for several distinct operating systems. This site is concerned with the development of the realtime version of Cy/VOS, which we are intending to become a powerful and highly flexible, multi-purpose operating system suitable for a variety of user types and applications.

Cy/VOS is being developed by Jennifer Elaan (Chani); the project page is www.cyvos.com

Cy/VOS is a hybrid-kernel system, neither fully microkernel nor monolithic; the kernel will be non-blocking, fully preemptable, and priority-enforcing. The primary emphasis with Cy/VOS is extensive modularity: like a microkernel system, very little of the system will be run from the kernel, allowing the user to select how much of the system to use, and whose implementation of each component to use. This will give Cy/VOS considerable flexibility in that it can be tuned for high-performance server use or built into a very capable home user desktop environment.

Cy/VOS will run only a very minimal user interface, only that much required to boot the system and run command line software. Through Universal Interface, the user can select which type of user interface to give the system, if at all, to suit the user and to match the hardware. Likewise, there will be no standard implementation of the graphical interface, allowing the system to be targeted at hardware with radically different graphical interface capabilities. This is known as the LayerGUI.

The minimum hardware specification of Cy/VOS will be a 16 MHz Intel 80386, although this will only be enough to run the basic system components and not for example the Interface PostScript-based graphical interface.

Design goals

The goals for Cy/VOS include:

• Hard real-time operating system
• All processes but the microkernel itself will be hardware-agnostic; the operating system will be able to run on any hardware by simply rewriting the microkernel and recompiling processes
• Process-based drivers for maximum stability; this will prevent (for example) defective video, audio and network drivers causing kernel panics or unnecessarily disturbing running processes
• Fundamental API support for a variety of user interface methods including text, graphical and speech
• A high level of modularity and flexibility for tailoring the machine to hardware needs and the user's desires

Present development status

At the moment, work is being done on developing GDS.CLC?, the Cy/VOS Lib C, as well as design work on system structure and functionality and the nature of all the components involved. As the system design is conceived, it is described here on the wiki: feel free to review our ideas and contribute suggestions to us. You may either contact us directly or edit the wiki pages. In the case of the latter, you will need to contact us for the wiki edit password, which we are enforcing to prevent spammers from abusing the wiki.

Cy/VOS Next Generation

The specific implementation of the system is not all presently defined. Cy/VOS Next Generation is the test bed where new ideas on implementation will be described and trialled, before being accepted for the core developement path or rejected.