Crystalspace as an operating system...

[tony]

You think Crystal Space could be made into a operation systom ? I mean it pretty much has everything as far as I know.

*admin: changed the topic to something more descriptive from: "a stupid question"*

[mark]

Impossible, how should that work? CS uses OS/system functions and library functions, it's a lib and no OS

[liberostelios]

Well, I can't say I know a lot about that stuff, but maybe if you create a UNIX-based OS, including the needed libraries, you can do that. But it must have incredible work to make it work (3D graphics are going to have problems with compatibility etc. on the computers) and there will be a huge problem of performance (imagine that if you have that OS and you wish to run a 3D game it's going to be like running two 3D games the same moment!). In any case, maybe you can do it but, I think, it's not worthwhile (even if it's going to be very interesting).

[mark]

An operating system consists of a kernel that handles the hardware access via drivers and provides an API for a system library like the gnu C library and system tools.
Unless you want to write everything in hex or assembler you need a C library.
Then you have to write the essential programs that turn your piece of hardware into something useful you can work with, like init the master process, a terminal emulation or shell.
If you created your own executable format you need an own compiler or crosscompiler.
And of course you need a C++ library with compiler because CS is written in C++.
Then, after several years of coding and testing you can write your window system and higher libraries like image or sound libs and then you can port all external languages that CS can use (perl, python, java, ...) to run on your CS-OS.

You see now, CS has nothing to do with an OS. It is a library or abstraction layer and though uses all that stuff I just mentioned but it can't replace it until you wrote the *millions* of codelines needed for that.. Who would want to write a CS-OS anyway? It's dumb/impossible to create one.

[muffinpeddler]

There are no such things as stupid questions.

Something I don't understand is why people keep posting as guests?  Just register, silly!

[another guest]

why register if you aren't forced to do?
where is the advantage?

[griminventions]

So we can tell which guest is which and thus have a history to know the context of a particular discussion?  Seems useful to me.

[muffinpeddler]

And to build a "user base" with actual registered members.  Beefs up the community a little, maybe would help others get into it, but I'm getting off topic

[xtracto]

Just a comment on the main topic of this thread.

I think that what the poster meant of an "operating system" is something more like a "Window Manager". Now, for windows there is something called SphereXP (http://www.hamar.sk/sphere/screenshots.htm) which uses some kind of 3D. Then, there is the Sun's Java desktop that was presented some time ago that promised some kind of 3D functionality.


Now, that is quite possible. Just create a normal linux distribution CD, and then, over X11 (the graphical interface) you could make a window manager (something as KDE or GNOME or XFCE or Enlightment or Explorer in MSwindows) that was built on CrystalSpace.

Of course one of the main issues with 3D driven user interfaces is the functionallity of it, I am still waiting to see a 3D interface which really provides USEFUL functionality and is not only eye-candy CPU-crunching 3D graphics.

About the person that said it would be a waste of resources, there is not too much problem on that, you just need to make the window manager thread to a low priority and the OS kernel will do the rest.

Oh!, the other issue with 3D engines is the input. So far, the mouse only gives you movement on 2 dimensions, only mice with scroll wheel can have some sort of 3D. And, of course the inherent problem that our current output devices are 2D (monitors =op).

Hope someone is enlighted with this.