Visopsys 0.9 Released

General discussion about Visopsys.
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andymc
Posts: 589
Joined: Tue Nov 16, 2010 7:20 pm

Visopsys 0.9 Released

Post by andymc »

Finally! It's been almost finished for so long, but it always seemed like it should have just a few more things :D

https://visopsys.org/download/

Hope you like it.

From the change log (https://visopsys.org/download/change-log/):
Overview: This major release offers a subtly updated look, enhanced networking capabilities and associated programs, Unicode support, a software packaging/download/install/uninstall infrastructure with an online ‘store’, a user space window shell, VMware mouse integration, HTTP, XML, and HTML libraries, some C++ and POSIX threads (pthreads) support, ‘pipes’ for interprocess communication, and additional hashing algorithms.
  • Added TCP networking.
  • Added a DNS client.
  • Networking is now enabled by default at boot time.
  • Network-based programs have moved into separate sub-groupings in the ‘Programs’ and ‘Administration’ windows.
  • Added a Packet Sniffer (‘netsniff’) program, for inspecting incoming and outgoing network packets.
  • Added a Network Connections (‘netstat’) program to show the current network connections and TCP state, if applicable.
  • Added a basic Telnet client program and protocol libarary; mostly for TCP testing and validation, although the protocol has other uses.
  • Added wide-character and multibyte character (UTF-8) support throughout the OS – to the fonts and charsets, the GUI, the C library, etc. It has replaced the ISO-based internationalization schemes. Although some knowledge of ISO codepages was kept, things have been more-or-less entirely switched over to Unicode.
  • Implemented a software packaging/installation scheme.
  • Implemented a software/update store server to run at visopsys.org, with an initial, trivial ‘hello world’ software package available for 0.9.
  • Added a ‘Software’ program to connect to the software store at visopsys.org, which can show lists of available and installed packages, and install and uninstall them.
  • Converted the existing window shell to a user space program, keeping the existing kernel-based one as a thing for ‘basic’ installs. The intention is to create an entirely new window shell in a future release, and have the user be able to choose.
  • Added VMware mouse integration, so that a Visopsys guest coordinates with the host to automatically grab or ungrab the mouse cursor as it enters or leaves the window. Requires the option to be enabled in VMware.
  • Added a basic HTTP library, with URL parsing and HTTP ‘get’, and the header files <sys/url.h> and <sys/http.h>.
  • Added a simple XML parsing library.
  • Added a simple HTML parsing library.
  • Added basic C++ runtime support (no RTTI or exceptions), and partial string, memory, and iostream implementations.
  • Added the beginnings of a POSIX Threads (pthreads) library (libpthread) with some basic wrapper functions around Visopsys kernel threading, for software portability.
  • Added a ‘pipes’ implementation for inter-process communication, as a thin wrapper around the kernel’s generic ‘streams’ functionality, available to user programs.
  • Added a SHA1 hashing implementation to the kernel, and command-line programs sha1pass (hashes string parameters) and sha1sum (hashes files) that use it.
  • Added a SHA256 hashing implementation to the kernel, and upgraded user password hashing from MD5 to SHA256. Also added command-line programs sha256pass (hashes string parameters) and sha256sum (hashes files) that use it.
  • The OS installer now asks the user to choose a physical disk first, and then shows the exising logical disks, offering to change and add partitions, etc.
  • Added a simple ‘wget’ program to test the new HTTP library. For the time being, it only downloads individual files, and not anything referenced by them.
  • Added a ‘host’ program – similar to the Linux/UNIX one, for network name and address lookups. Command-line only for now.
  • Added a computer chip icon, ‘chip.ico’. To start with, the Computer Browser will use it for RAM disks.
  • Added partial implementation of the standard C library function getaddrinfo() and its companions freeaddrinfo() and gai_strerror().
  • Added the wide-character standard C library functions getwchar(), mblen(), mbslen(), putwchar(), wcscmp(), wcscpy(), wcslen(), and wcstombs().
  • Removed the kernelWindowShellTileBackground() and kernelWindowShellCenterBackground() (windowShellTileBackground() and windowShellCenterBackground() in user space, respectively) functions in favour of kernelWindowShellChangeBackground() (windowShellChangeBackground() in user space), which simply notifies the window shell of a change, so that it can go and read the appropriate configuration files.
  • Added COLOR_COPY() and COLOR_ADJUST() macros in <sys/color.h> for doing a quick copy, and copy-brightness-adjusted, respectively, of color structures.
  • Did some tidy-up of the translated .po files – mostly updating c-format strings’ parameters, punctuation, and newlines.
  • Removed the ‘Del’ glyph 127 from the font maps.
  • Updated the api2txt.sh and api2html.sh utils scripts to filter out the _U_ for unused parameters.
  • Added a check-pots.sh utils script for reporting any programs that don’t have .pot translation files.
  • Fixed: The Computer Browser program could show mismatches between disks and icons, if it didn’t have an icon for a particular hardware type (specifically, RAM disks). Made it more robust, with a default icon.
  • Fixed: The Disk Manager’s creation and resize dialogs were full-screen, and looked all messed up.
  • Fixed: The Calendar program was selecting the wrong day of the month in graphics mode, and selecting a day of the month in non-current months and years.
  • Fixed: Several of the programs didn’t have .pot translation files.
User avatar
ronaldlees
Posts: 120
Joined: Tue May 20, 2014 5:19 pm

Re: Visopsys 0.9 Released

Post by ronaldlees »

Wow, Andy!

That is quite a list of added features and updates. Can't wait to download and see them in operation - Thanks!
Liss

Re: Visopsys 0.9 Released

Post by Liss »

Andy, well done. Keep it up! I`m wrote the release announcement on one of the largest Russian Open Source website Linux.org.ru. I'm waiting for confirmation from the moderator.
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