Forth OSes

The idea for a modern Forth OS has been kicking around since maybe 1995. It's popular with folks who want a simple, understandable OS. Anyway, feel free to add your ideas here (see Text Formatting for info on TUNES CLiki formatting rules).

Traditionally Forth OSes are no-kernel systems, but recent incarnations are integrated with "modern" OSes kernels and so they have usual protection barriers.

Projects:

IBM PC (Intel Architecture)

RetroForth/Native.
BootOS (old, at FIG RU).
Enth & Flux (lots of experimental Color Forth type stuff).
colorForth Chuck Moore's Forth OS.
ZOG is FICL on top of eCos.
SOL is a small, FORTH-like language and OS. It currently runs on 8086-based PCs with at least 64K bytes of RAM.
4IM is a Forth system that can run standalone or in DOS.
ForthOS started out as a port of eForth by Andy Valencia to the x86 architecture in 32-bit mode, more recently, this work was dusted off to adapt it to the GRand Unified Bootloader, also known as "GRUB". While this was easily done, the itch was irresistable to spruce up the environment a bit... the result is ForthOS.
Cy/VOS kernel 2 (or embedded) by Jennifer Elaan.
H3rL Hohensee's 3-ring Linux, a Forth-like language in the Linux kernel.
Diesel.

Non-PC

Aha Jeff Fox's project for the F21 processor.
JPB Forth a M68000 based Forth system (hardware + software) with GUI.
herkforth for PPC, integrating many ideas from The Humane Environment.
Color Vision Systems COLDFORTH link to source code is actually (2004-10-30) broken -- MaD70 (old mirror).
Color Vision Systems uCForth, COLDFORTH on top of uCLinux.

Project Proposals

OS/Forth a proposal at SVFIG old mirror.

Missing in Action (MIA)

4os proprietary OS intended to run on MISC-based set-top-box. Mirror
FITS is "Forth Incompatible Timesharing System", [MIA], last known url was http://www.lysator.liu.se/~mc/oldhacks.html. Mirror

Goals for a basic Forth OS:

Boot up in a split second.
Use a small portion of a floppy.
Assembler/metacompiler so it can recompile itself.
Block Editor, etc.. for a complete development environment.
Simple, efficient

Additional goals for a more powerful Forth OS:

Support common hardware (hard/cd/floppy drives, usb, video, etc)
Graphical interface
Network and internet support
Web browser/email
Other applications

Blocks vs. Filesystems?

Do both? Say, 240 blocks on a floppy, 1200k for files.
Just using BLOCKS would be simpler and easier to implement, though it would be incompatible with other OSes.

This page is linked from: Forth