Phantom OS

Phantom OS is an operating system (OS) made by mostly Russian programmers (with help of some Uzbeks). It is based on a concept of persistent virtual memory, and uses a virtual machine, managed code, and bytecodes. It is one of a few OSes not based on classic concepts of Unix-like systems. Its primary goal is to achieve simplicity and effectiveness in both the operating system and application software at the same time. It is free and open-source software (FOSS) released under a GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL).

Phantom OS
OS Phantom screenshot for 17 October 2019
DeveloperDigital Zone
Written inC, Phantom, Java
OS familyRTOS
Working stateActive
Source modelFOSS
Latest releaselatest / October 17, 2019 (2019-10-17)
Repositorygithub.com/dzavalishin/phantomuserland
Available inRussian, English
PlatformsIA-32
Kernel typeMicrokernel
LicenseLGPL
Official websitephantomos.org

Phantom is based on the principle that "Everything is an object", in contrast to the Unix-like approach of "Everything is a file".

Basics

Managed code – Memory protection on object level, rather than process level; absence of pointer arithmetic in managed code avoids many problems that exist and occur in unmanaged code.

Global address space – Very effective and inexpensive inter-process communication (IPC). Single (flat) address space allows transfer of objects from one process (application) to another by transferring links to that object. Security is achieved via absence of pointer arithmetic and the inability of an application to get linked to an object other than by calling a public method.

Persistence – Application code does not see OS restarts and could live forever—this makes the concept of a file obsolete and any variable or data structure could be stored forever and at the same time be available directly through a pointer. Differently from hibernation that is done in other OSs, persistence lies in the very core principles of the Phantom OS core. It is done transparently for applications; in most cases it requires no reprogramming of an application. Persistence stays even if the computer crashes.

Compatibility

Two ways to migrate code are offered:

Status

As of October 2019, the system exists in alpha version for x86 IA-32 processors. Porting to ARM architecture is underway (currently being tested, not yet ready for use) and porting to MIPS and x86-64 (AMD64) has begun. Kernel operation has been demonstrated at the biggest Russian IT-conferences RIT 2011, ADD 2010,[1] CC 2010,[2] and 2009.

The project is open for contributors to join.

See also

Notes
  1. Dmitry Zavalishin reports on ADD 2010 Archived 2012-07-07 at archive.today
  2. Dmitry Zavalishin reports on Chaos Constructions’2010 (Saint-Petersburg, Russia) Archived 2012-03-23 at the Wayback Machine

References
  • Dziuba, Ted (3 February 2009). "Russian rides Phantom to OS immortality". The Register. Retrieved 27 April 2011. The iPhone that never dies
  • "Source codes of Phantom OS". Digital Zone. 2009. Retrieved 27 April 2011.
  • "Phantom OS Internals book". 2019.
  • "Phantom OS on OpenHUB". 2019.
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.