So, I hope most of you have read the new interview Jeff Han did with WIRED magazine, if not it was on the front page of NUI Group a couple of days back. And it described how Jeff Han was building a multi touch OS from scratch. But, what coding language would he use to make the OS? This question has been bothering me.

I doubt that it will be in VVVV, Python, Processing or AS3
Maybe C++?
Pure speculation of course.

Hes not writing the whole OS is he?  Just a new UI kinda thing?

From what I understood, they are writing a complete from the floor build up framework.
Jeff has the drive to do that, as well as the resources (cheap interns from NY University).
Who wouldn’t want to work with Jeff, even if it was not or low paid.
If it will be a complete new OS, I don’t know, that will be speculation until something gets announced by Perceptive Pixel, as I am sure the people around him are pretty tied up in Non Disclosure Agreements.
Whatever it will be, it will be interesting.

I don’t think they are building complete OS. Input system is only ~20% of everything.
It is also said in artikel that they have rebuild input system, not the whole OS.

Maybe CUDA?

I hope it is a truly new OS built around MT. That is precisely what is needed for it to go further.
My table sits waiting for sush an OS…

It is 80% not a new OS. It is Linux or Windows with self made Window manager.
It would be really dumb to rebuild complete OS from scratch.

Not necessarily.

Imagine only having two device drivers for the entire system (the webcam and graphics driver), and specialized drivers at that.

Im sure jeff could pull that off in under a month, then use existing file system instructions drivers and stuff for SSD and NTFS (or whatever), everything could be made perfect for the setup at hand.

To put things in perspective, just simply filesize. Most people use daemon tools or alchohol for mounting ISO images, 20 meg here, 50 meg there. The driver I use is 23kb, 27kb total to emulate the safedisks, securrom etc.

Also with specialized drivers, the operation is flawless (once perfected), no blue screen wild eeps.

You have to basically take the xbox to see the whole picture. Played fast motion 3d games, all on a 333 mhz cpu/gpu onboard… If a pc tried to do that, it would blow up.

You can’t strip windows to only 2 drivers. Besides this will change nothing about input system and window manager.

Its not going to be windows, and it will change because hes not remaking windows.. it has to be something different unless he knows and follows the source code for windows =P

No of course it will be more drivers than 2, but im sure it can be kept as minimal as possible.

You would need code to communicate with the webcam, graphics, storage device and a sound card type device. Thats about all you’d need. If he doesn’t use anything else. Of course you would also need code to process data collected and pushed out from/to those devices as well.

If memory serves, theres actually a linux GUI “build it from scratch” version, that lets you include or exclude just about anything you want. You could check the earlier kernel supported and hit compile and your done. Floppy disk distro that cant do anything, but its possible to make =D

Don’t forget about bootsector, boot loader, cpu code (+ optimizations for Intel and AMD separatly), interrupts handling, memory management, virtual memory management, thread management, stack management, multitasking, etc, etc, etc… for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

Daniel D - 12 September 2008 01:27 AM

Don’t forget about bootsector, boot loader, cpu code (+ optimizations for Intel and AMD separatly), interrupts handling, memory management, virtual memory management, thread management, stack management, multitasking, etc, etc, etc… for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system

Nono not all those =\

Boot sector/loader can be taken care of by a rom chip (bios even), cpu code only one type, why make two available if you only need one. (remember, this OS may just be for his own personal machine, which he can use one line of processor if he chooses)

Also, he can use a separate computer to configure the hard drive. (just because we can use the same computer to do that, doesn’t mean we have to)

As far as interrupts, memory, and the rest, thats just OS code, not drivers like i was talking about =\ Most of that stuff can be taken care of in a few MB anyway. He’s not remaking windows remember. The most massive part of the code will likely be the guesturing engine. Guestering for a single mouse is 22MB for my computer, and thats for the “creator” and 3 commands (although I rarely even use these anymore, as they are kinda dumb =\ ), Imagine 10 finger guestures.

Don’t just quote wiki, use that brain power =\ I’ve read the wikis, usually for periodic table elements for atomic weights and atomic structures, but occasionally for other stuff I don’t know much about, fibre channel, infiniband, fddi. Must constantly make computer go faster faster faster…

They are definitely not building a new OS. There is much more to building an OS than the user interface so why reinvent the wheel?

As stated they could be building a new window manager or (more likely) designing an entirely new xserver based GUI (ie: gnome, KDE) for linux.

maybe they develop from minix 3. its a great opensource os with a great reliablity and feature. is there any programmer in the forum has develop touchlib on minix 3?

@Throgors: “Jeff Han was building a multi touch OS from scratch” - so we are speaking about rebuild OS. Not some drivers, like you are saing. Wiki was for you As a professional software developer that uses brain power every day I know what I’m talking about