Operating Systems ZOO

A semi-structured list of significant (for one reason or another) operating systems. The purpose of this list is to have a permanent source of references when doing any type of comparison, related work survey, etc. The fact that an operating system is listed (or is not listed) in this list has no implicit implication for HelenOS and signifies no specific relation.

Monolithic Systems

• ​GNU/​Linux (​GNU @ Wikipedia, ​Linux @ Wikipedia, ​Linux kernel, ​Linux kernel @ Wikipedia)
• ​Solaris (​Solaris @ Wikipedia, hardliners still call the kernel UTS)
  • ​OpenSolaris (​OpenSolaris @ Wikipedia)
  • ​illumos (​illumos @ Wikipedia)
• ​Windows NT (​Windows NT @ Wikipedia)
  • ​ReactOS (​ReactOS @ Wikipedia)
• ​Plan 9 (​Plan 9 @ Wikipedia)
  • see Inferno
• OS/2 (​OS/2 @ Wikipedia)
  • ​eComStation (​eComStation @ Wikipedia)
• ​FreeBSD (​FreeBSD @ Wikipedia)
• ​OpenBSD (​OpenBSD @ Wikipedia)
• ​NetBSD (​NetBSD @ Wikipedia)
  • see rump kernel
• ​MidnightBSD (​MidnightBSD @ Wikipedia)
• ​TrustedBSD
• ​AmigaOS (​AmigaOS @ Wikipedia)
  • ​AtheOS (​AtheOS @ Wikipedia)
    • ​Syllable (​Syllable @ Wikipedia)
• BeOS (​BeOS @ Wikipedia)
  • ​Haiku (​Haiku @ Wikipedia)
• ​SkyOS (​SkyOS @ Wikipedia)

Monolithic Systems (written in assembler)

• ​MenuetOS (​MenuetOS @ Wikipedia)
• ​KolibriOS (​KolibriOS @ Wikipedia)
• see BareMetal

Microkernel Hybrid

• NeXTSTEP (​NeXTSTEP @ Wikipedia)
  • ​OS X (​OS X @ Wikipedia)
    • ​iOS (​iOS @ Wikipedia)
    • ​XNU (​XNU @ Wikipedia)
    • ​Darwin (​Darwin @ Wikipedia)
• ​DragonFly BSD (​DragonFly BSD @ Wikipedia)

Microkernel Multiserver (mostly)

• ​CMU Mach (​CMU Mach @ Wikipedia)
  • academic reference: Rashid R. Julin D., Orr D., Sanzi R., Baron R., Forin A., Golub D., Jones M.: Mach: A System Software Kernel, in the Proceedings of COMPCON Spring, IEEE, 1981
  • Utah Mach
    • ​GNU Mach (​GNU Mach @ Wikipedia)
      • ​GNU Hurd (​GNU Hurd @ Wikipedia)
• Spring (​Spring @ Wikipedia)
• MINIX (​MINIX @ Wikipedia)
  • ​MINIX 3 (​MINIX 3 @ Wikipedia)
• ​QNX (​@ Wikipedia)
  • ​Neutrino
• ​Barrelfish (​Barrelfish @ Wikipedia)
  • academic reference: Baumann A., Barham P., Dagand P.-E., Harris T., Isaacs R., Peter S., Roscoe T., Schüpbach A., Singhania A.: The Multikernel: A new OS architecture for scalable multicore systems, in the Proceedings of the 22nd Symposium on Operating Systems Principles, ACM, 2009

The L4 Family of Microkernels

• ​L3 (​L3 @ Wikipedia)
• ​seL4

Virtual Machine-Based

• ​Inferno (​Inferno @ Wikipedia)
• ​Singularity (​Singularity @ Wikipedia)

Exokernels / Unikernels

• ​Rump kernel (​Rump kernel @ Wikipedia)
• ​BareMetal (​BareMetal @ Wikipedia)
• ​OSv (​OSv @ Wikipedia)

Hypervisors

• ​Xen (​@ Wikipedia)
• ​NOVA
  • academic reference: Steinberg U., Kauer B.: NOVA: A Microhypervisor-Based Secure Virtualization Architecture, in the Proceedings of EuroSys, ACM, 2010

Operating System Frameworks

• ​Genode
  • academic predecessor reference: Feske N., Helmuth C.: Design of the Bastei OS Architecture, technical report, ISSN 1430-211X, TU Dresden, 2006 (​PDF)

Real-Time (single image monolithic)

• ​RTEMS (​RTEMS @ Wikipedia)