Anyone Heard of FenOS?

Spoonhead98

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Hi, have you heard of FenOS? Its a hybrid Operating System which runs Windows, Mac, Linux, Unix and Solaris applications. It is being released 9th September 2014. Tell me what you think, Will it be a Windows killer or a failure?

http://www.myfenos.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ookZ59I9EyY
 

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Cheap enough.
 

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Hmm... so it will run software built for 'Microsoft, Apple, Linux/Unix or Solaris' and do so on lots of hardware including Power-PC and ARM?

That does sound quite ambitious!
 

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I am skeptical about many of it's claims.
Compatibility with Linux, within limits, isn't particularly difficult as the source code for most distributions is freely available and can be used pretty much as you wish. Not so for Windows and Mac OS which are both closed source. Microsoft controls who has access to the Windows source code and how it can be used. FenOS would have to be developed without access to the Windows source code and without using any Windows files. That is a very tall order. And then there is Mac OS compatibility facing the same challenges.

There is an open source Windows project known as ReactOS. It has been under development for years and claims compatibility only up to Server 2003. It is not complete and has many known compatibility issues. According to the website it is recommended only for evaluation and testing purposes. At present it is not a viable alternative to Windows and there is doubt that it ever will be.

FenOS is claiming much more. I would not be at all surprised if the whole thing evaporates before it is released.
 

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Sounds interesting. My guess would be that they use an interpretor a la Dalvik in Android. Question is how that will perform. If the opening of Gimp in the video demo is an indication, then it would be fast because Gimp is very slow to open.
 

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I am, by nature,always cautious of ambitious claims. A while ago I was on their home page. Offers of purchase 6 months in advance, at a hugely discounted price?? !!. Attempts to contact them had no response. It will have to be a wait and see, but, for certain, they wont be getting any cash support from me until I get more response or evidence.
 

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Hi there.

To our "Aussie Colleagues" it sounds a bit like Ground Hog day.

I'm not sure if there are too many people on this Forum who can remember when right at the start of the PC revolution a software company started selling a program called "The Last One" which if I remember correctly (showing my age here !!) advertised itself that you would never need to code a program again.

The Last One (software) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It used BASIC as the code and was passably effective - but the technology wasn't there (nor the hardware) to move this on further. Today software giants like SAP produce what's known as "Meta code" which will then run on any platform - but the ideas that "The Last one" had went beyond that -- being able to write the solution of a problem in English (or whatever your home language is) and then have a computer to generate a program for it looks like becoming a winner again.

Like Da Vinci's submarine (actually would have worked had he had the materials back in his day) the inventors of that were too early -- but I'm sure now with fast hardware the time for this type of stuff has come again.

However I wouldn't invest any money in this stuff just yet -- but watch this space as this type of solution is becoming increasingly feasable with modern hardware and effective A.I algorithms.

(To old hacks here -- I remember working on a FORTRAN IV compiler for IBM mainframes back in the distant past -- what we actually did was convert the Fortran IV user source code into IBM 360 Basic assembly language source code and then use the System Assembler to "compile" our generated Assembly code.

These days compilers are far more efficient than that but it was early days in developing that stuff (and in some ways I miss the old pioneering spirit of those days !!).

Cheers
jimbo
 

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Hmm... so it will run software built for 'Microsoft, Apple, Linux/Unix or Solaris' and do so on lots of hardware including Power-PC and ARM?

That does sound quite ambitious!

Look at iOS 7, it has to be able to handle five families of devices, 32 and 64 bit. Mac actually is pretty good at doing that, especially with Bootcamp. And that's just within one company.

If whoever is making this OS can do what they claim I'm all for it, cos if Apple can maintain their OSes for such a wide variety of devices, and Windows can be installed as wide as it can be installed, then someone ought to be able to make a hardware-and-software spanning OS like this. It does sound ambitious, the question is, ambitious for what end, to give people an OS that could possibly do all this claims just for the love of doing for other people, or to dredge money from people? If the latter, then I doubt if it will be any good.

The reason why VLC is such a good piece of software is because it is made by bunches of people who give their time to the project. And because of this, there is no Crapware bundled with it, unless you download it from other than the official VLC site.

OK< so these people want 50 bucks for it - Ya know? I'll risk that, maybe next month.
 

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You can already do most of this with any Linux distro no? Wine anyone? As for running Apple software I am not sure. Though come to think of it, isn't most things on mac available for other platforms anyway (Other than the apple proprietary stuff)?

Just by looking at that awful UI alone... I'm out.

Josh :)
 

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Josh, did you ever get the Wine to really work. Up to now I had no luck with it. But I have not really thoroughly investigated what the cause of my problem was.
 

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Josh, did you ever get the Wine to really work. Up to now I had no luck with it. But I have not really thoroughly investigated what the cause of my problem was.

It can be quirky at the best of times. The issue is that it does NOT emulate windows but just offers a basic Windows file structure and registry hive. Whenever an application relies on a core system component or uses a recent proprietary language such as VB.NET then it seems to fail :( For installed apps you may need to go to /.wine/c_drive to view the strucutre provided and find the installed apps.

There is WinConn which essentially runs Windows in a VM and then creates links to certain applications. When you click on them it creates an RDP session with the VM and streams the application to the linux system. Think of it as like Windows XP mode for Linux if you will. Of course downside, you need a pro edition and you need a machine that can handle VMs and you need a valid Windows license on top of that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMue5lPht_A - Skip to about 8 mins unless you want to hear the whole life story about it!

Josh :)
 

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Thanks Josh. That is very informative. I will have a look at this video.

Of course, if I had a key for a Windows system, I could run it in VMware Player. But that is a costly proposition. Jimbo made a few elaborate setups running 8.1 under Linux. Have a look at his posts - e.g. this one.
 

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Thanks Josh. That is very informative. I will have a look at this video.

Of course, if I had a key for a Windows system, I could run it in VMware Player. But that is a costly proposition. Jimbo made a few elaborate setups running 8.1 under Linux. Have a look at his posts - e.g. this one.

:thumbsup: Nice!! Not sure about WinConn and 8.1 but I can definitely confirm that it works for 7.

Josh :)
 

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Shadowjk said:

There is WinConn which essentially runs Windows in a VM and then creates links to certain applications. When you click on them it creates an RDP session with the VM and streams the application to the linux system. Think of it as like Windows XP mode for Linux if you will. Of course downside, you need a pro edition and you need a machine that can handle VMs and you need a valid Windows license on top of that.

Interesting, that's how Microsoft Virtual Machine worked under OS X 10.3.9 or so, I had it installed with Windows 2000, it allowed you to plant shortcuts in the OS X Dock or Desktop. I wish I could get this running on my G5 tower - I have what amounts to the fastest machine in my whole farm, and I can't RUN anything on it. :(
 

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