On Sat, Jul 28, 2001 at 08:27:46PM -0700, Zane H. Healy wrote:
> >And while we're at it, there's an Oberon OS distribution for just about
> >>every conveivable platform.
>
> How complete are the Oberon distro's though. Something I read recently
led
> me to believe that you need to buy some high priced addon to get
everything.
Oberon is a family of languages, compilers, and OSs. It started out at the
ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, as one compiler, language, and OS, running on
one workstation (the Ceres, developed at the ETH and using NS320xx CPUs).
Even before it left Zurich it began to diverge. The Ceres became the
Ceres-2 and then the Ceres-3. People did all kinds of research projects,
new compilers, ports to off-the-shelf hardware, etc. In other words, IMHO
it was anarchy and no one was keeping track of all the changes!
Versions 1 and 2 of the system ran on the Ceres (and possibly on a few other
platforms). Version 3 added a new GUI (called Gadgets) and changed its name
to "System 3". Version 4 ignored Gadgets but made some other changes.
System 3 and V4 are both in use today. There are also some commercial
offshoots (Component Pascal, BlackBox Oberon, etc.)
If you want an _environment_ that runs on top of a commercial OS, you have
many choices:
- MacOS, Linux, Windows, UNIX workstations
- 680x0, PowerPC, x86, etc.
- System 3 or Version 4 (maybe Version 2 on the workstations)
- generally, full source code available
If you want a true _operating system_, you have only one choice AFAIK:
- Native Oberon (maintained by ETH Zurich)
- x86
- System 3
- most of the source code available
See
http://www.math.tau.ac.il/~guy/Oberon.html
http://dir.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Programming_Languages/Oberon/
news:comp.lang.oberon
-- Derek
Received on Mon Jul 30 2001 - 00:23:15 BST