Ask AtheOS Creator Kurt Skauen About His Creature

Developer Kurt Skauen, programming for fun, ended up answering the frequent cries to write a graphical Free OS not tied to the X Window system by doing just that. His AtheOS has been mentioned here a few times before -- it's a Free (as in GPL) Operating System for Intel-and-compatible CPUs with an integrated GUI, a tendency toward POSIX, and more than a hint of BeOS. There are quite a few sites with more information about AtheOS, but you may have trouble just getting past the beautiful screenshots and nearly as beautiful AtheOS FAQ. (There are also ASCII parrots.) Ask Kurt about the past, present, and future of AtheOS here (ask as many questions as you'd like, but please only one per post) and we'll forward the best ones to Kurt for his answers.

Developers

[Adelvillar]

Now that many developers coding for the BeOS were left hung to dry, do you have recived support from them?

Re:Windows apps?

[n3m6]

why not include a DirectX emulation ?? it would be easier on his OS since its not tied to X and input devices are not a seperately controlled.. if he could do that could this be the next gaming platform ?? now that would be serious competition..

Limiting the scope of AtheOS

[brennan73]

It seems to me that it'll be extremely difficult for AtheOS (or any new OS, really) to do everything well; even Linux, which is pretty widely used, isn't a be-all, end-all solution yet (and maybe never will be, or never should be).

So have you considered limiting the scope of AtheOS (possibly severely), and aiming at doing a relatively few things exceptionally well? Here I'm thinking of BeOS, which was usually promoted as a "multimedia OS." It seems to me that this might be a way for alternative OSes now and in the future to stake out some territory: do a few things very very effectively rather than trying to be all things to all people.

Of course, if you're doing this as a fun/interesting thing, you may not care as much about a niche or widespread acceptance. But, still.

-brennan