Are you looking for a new Operating System 274

This isn't a google group; it is a Usenet newsgroup, and has nothing to do with Google. They happen to archive it, just as archive.org archives the Web. Thar doesn't mean that the Web belongs to archive.org.

Building a new operating system that is at all interesting is a very, allows you to use the wide range of existing open source software for Minix and others) and is unlikely to offer users anything radically new. But it's worth pointing out that GNU Hurd has been being developed by a large team of very talented people for getting on for twenty years now, and it still doesn't work well enough for non-hackers to use it.

If you're going to do something interesting you need to do something which is not just a clone of something that's been done before, which means that you can't leverage the hundreds of projects out there which are based on conventional operating system ideas, which means the task gets even bigger.

This doesn't mean it can't be done. There are certainly hundreds, possibly thousands of new operating system projects out there. Most of them have very little working code. Those which have any working code are mostly 'clones' or existing, commercial operating systems and consequently offer nothing very interesting or innovative.

What I suggest you do is look at some of those projects. Ones which I would pick out as genuinely interesting include

Alan Kay (and collaborators)' current work on persistent multi- user virtual spaces, in Smalltalk - the most interesting project I know of currently. Working code, but quite buggy.

The latest from the guys who designed UN*X

HOWEVER, like I say, there are hundreds. A good place to start browsing is

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Wise man with foot in mouth use opportunity to clean toes. ;; the Worlock