RandOS is the Random
Operating System. It's an idea I came up with one day while thinking about
monkey code. The problem, as I see it, is that we spend a lot of time actually
writing code to create an operating system. Worse still, many people go to
school at length, and study other Operating Systems, and play around with
programming for many years before ever writing an
OS. And it often takes hundreds of people to create a
product which always has some shortcomings! And in the end, what is the result? A bunch of 0's and 1's written to a CD.
There is something wrong with this. After all, anyone can write 0's and 1's to a CD, why are we wasting all this time learning stupid high level languages to produce a product that really isn't what we want? So I came up with the idea of RandOS. It's a rather simple concept, rather than worry about writing the program, RandOS will be created by randomly writing bits. Each night a new ISO image will be distributed, which people can test to see if we have reached our goal. I think this will quite possibly revolutionize the world of computing.
RandOS FAQ
- What is RandOS?
RandOS is a revolutionary attempt to create an operating system with as little human effort as possible, at the same time striving to be one of the most powerful operating systems ever created.
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When will it be released?
Nightly ISO images will be made available for download and testing. Statistically speaking, the OS could be ready tomorrow, or in a few billion years. Hard to say really...
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What features will it have?
All we can say at this point is that it will be the best operating system ever created, we will not stop until it is. Even if we get some crummy half working OS in the next thousand years, we will keep going, striving for perfection.
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What hardware will it support?
Everything! That's right, we will support every piece of hardware out there, in time. And you'll never have to write driver's for it, just be patient and they'll be available! In the meantime, it is suggested that you try nightly downloads on a variety of hardware, as it is not possible to know what any given build will run on.
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Is it open source?
Due to the fact that RandOS is written directly in binary form, it cannot be open source. However, you are free to use a decompiler to generate source code and distribute it, but that would be kinda silly, eh?
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How hard is it to install?
Currently, we do not know. Nightly downloads may prove quite difficult to install or may not install at all. We suggest burning the image to a cd and trying to boot off it on as many different computer systems as possible. Eventually we will have the most intuitive, easy to use graphical installer on the market, but the odds are this will take some time.
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What file system will it use?
We also do not know this. When the installer is done, it will allow you the option of formatting your disks. If you do manage to get RandOS to boot but are not given this option, we suggest you try to access as many different file systems as possible, one of them just might work.
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What if I find something useful?
The odds are pretty good that there might be a useful program in some of the releases. If you find one, please let us know what it is and where on the CD we can find it, and we will set it aside. The final release may contain several of these programs which were successfully generated earlier.
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How can I help?
Try out the releases! Really! We don't need any help coding, since there is no code. We also have a good grasp on generating the nightly builds. The best way to help is to currently put the nightly releases through rigorous testing and report back to us with results.