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Need help about KolibriOS

Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2016 1:21 am
by reddollmaiden
Good day everyone. I'm a freshman IT student, and I'm looking for someone from the KolibriOS development team who can help me out...

I have to make a report about KolibriOS. And since I think there is limited literature for KolibriOS on the Internet, I'm having difficulty in getting more information about the OS, particularly with the following:
1. the current status of KolibriOS (as of October to November of this year), as well as some pointers on how to read the details that can be found in Kolibri's SVN
2. how does KolibriOS work out its super-fast functioning
3. how does Kolibri's system, resource & file management work
4. further description of the tools/apps found in Kolibri that a developer can use to make his/her own application, as well as further description of Kolibri's debugger tool
5. security features of KolibriOS
6. and lastly, the specific features/applications of KolibriOS which do not have a similar or equivalent app in Windows, Mac and Linux

I hope someone can give me some pointers in looking for the things mentioned above, or any kind of assistance will be greatly appreciated. And since it's my first time to post here, I apologize if I had posted question/s similar to those that have already been answered in the past. Thank you very much, and I wish you all have a great day ahead.

Re: Need help for school report about KolibriOS

Posted: Thu Nov 17, 2016 6:57 pm
by CleverMouse
There was once a thread where another student asked about the system internals like your question 3: viewtopic.php?f=35&t=1179 . It is in Russian, you can try to make sense of machine translations: https://translate.yandex.ru/translate?u ... lang=ru-en or https://translate.google.com/translate? ... t=&act=url
1 - define what you mean by "current status". The development is going on.
2 - the core functionality is written in assembly, it is small enough - modern high-level-language compilers are quite good at producing fast code, but very bad at producing small code - so we managed to fit many things in a relatively small image that is loaded into the RAM when starting up. After the boot, most things work directly in the memory without any hard disk access.
4 - we have an SDK which is quite outdated but still can be downloaded from our releases page.
5,6 - none.

Re: Need help for school report about KolibriOS

Posted: Fri Nov 18, 2016 10:57 pm
by reddollmaiden
Thanks for the initial answers sir Clevermouse :D . To clarify my first question, what is the latest release version of KolibriOS as of now, and what are the specific features that were updated in the latest version (as compared to the earlier versions)? Also, can you provide me with any links or pages where the detailed description of the SDK's for KolibriOS are provided?

Additionally, can you guys provide any explanation as to why KolibriOS doesn't have a security feature? Would these anti-malware apps/software that we have today work on KolibriOS? And (for the sake of curiosity), are there any instances or attempts of piracy or hacking that was done on KolibriOS?

Re: Need help for school report about KolibriOS

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 3:05 am
by Pathoswithin
There are no versions anymore, just revisions, about every day.

No malware - no need for security. For now everything that was done on KolibriOS is free and open-source.

Re: Need help for school report about KolibriOS

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 7:02 pm
by baggacfreak
Hi,

great to hear that someone else is going to get the word out that there are more oses than linux, mac and windows. Feel free to use one of my youtube videos in your report!

Re: Need help for school report about KolibriOS

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 8:16 pm
by reddollmaiden
Pathoswithin wrote: No malware - no need for security. For now everything that was done on KolibriOS is free and open-source.
Sir, when you say "No malware" does this mean that a user will not experience any malware attack if s/he used Kolibri as his or her computer's OS? Sorry, but I need more explanation on this.

Re: Need help for school report about KolibriOS

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 10:30 pm
by Pathoswithin
No malware yet, no even a target for malware.

Re: Need help for school report about KolibriOS

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 11:23 pm
by baggacfreak
Kolibri OS is not a finished operating system and the programmers are all not paid for doing this. Kolibri OS is a spin off of menuet os which developer startet open source menuet 32 bit to make an own operating system. As time got along he split up with some programmers and also went the road to 64 bit. This is when kolibri os went on with the 32 bit part and development went seperate ways. Main goal is to finish important os function and later on take the tasked like multi user, security and alike. Sometimes newbies thing that the os is farther along because some apps are there which do make it look like more completed. As kolibri os or short kos is not like linux, windows or mac maleware and viruses would have to be adapted to the architecture. So that is not that big of a security issue right now. But as time and apps like web browser get better and more feature rich it might become a problem. Sometimes it also takes a lot longer to make things because of the assembler language approach. On the other side this is why the system is so small feature rich and fast as it is right now. Best way to experience kolibri os (as I think) is to set up a virtual box vm with a hdd and the additional apps. As mentioned I did some youtube videos about the stuff already working. That way I try to get more attention to kos and help bring in more developers or with the kickstarter and google summer project students and money. Feel free to ask here and show us your report beforehand so that we can clear out mistakes. Good luck with it!

Re: Need help for school report about KolibriOS

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 11:26 pm
by reddollmaiden
Thanks for the answer sirs :D . Just a follow-up question, how would a KolibriOS user protect his files saved on his computer from getting destroyed/corrupted by a malware or from getting stolen due to hacking? (since malwares may not necessarily target operating systems, I think) Anyway, sorry for the additional questions 'cause I'll get bombarded with these when I present my report in school.

Re: Need help about KolibriOS

Posted: Sat Nov 19, 2016 11:57 pm
by baggacfreak
You should not use any work in progress for things you want to protect. Any system can be corrupt or be hit by maleware or alike. See the current state of kolibri os as a work in progress with a lot of things already working, but not for everyday useage. You could access the internet or even by using it get your files corrupted because of a new feature not being tested enough. Maleware and viruses might be rare, but best pratice is always better.

Re: Need help about KolibriOS

Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2016 8:35 pm
by art_zh
reddollmaiden
Our system doesn't spy, and doesn't explicitly help your programs to spy on you.
But your hardware does.
If in doubt - buy BESM-6, or IBM series 360/370 - that old-but-good stuff was surely 100% safe.

Re: Need help about KolibriOS

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2016 1:53 am
by reddollmaiden
art_zh wrote:reddollmaiden
Our system doesn't spy, and doesn't explicitly help your programs to spy on you.
But your hardware does.
If in doubt - buy BESM-6, or IBM series 360/370 - that old-but-good stuff was surely 100% safe.
Thanks for your suggestion, sir. I just happen to ask questions regarding security since such questions may arise when I present my report. And I need to give them a good answer, especially that it was pointed out that there aren't any security features made for KolibriOS due to the fact that it's not that a good target to pose a threat on.

Re: Need help about KolibriOS

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2016 1:59 am
by reddollmaiden
By the way, if you noticed that I did some editing on my very first post to this thread... I just want that other students (especially those from where I came from) would put more effort to reach out to your team to ask more about your valuable work and learn from it as well.

Re: Need help about KolibriOS

Posted: Mon Nov 21, 2016 10:37 am
by art_zh
reddollmaiden

You can report that KolibriOS has no advantage and takes no responsibility in users' data security.

Only a careless idiot will install it on his data-critical mainframe or workstation.

This project is focused on other targets and priorities.

Re: Need help about KolibriOS

Posted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 1:45 am
by reddollmaiden
Quick question, since it was pointed out that KolibriOS is still a work in progress, what particularly are the important OS functions that you prioritize to complete?