Vino

What is Vino?
Vino (pronounced as ‘we-know’) is an open-source project hosted on CodePlex. It is still under development. It promises to be a mature, free and open-source operating system based not on the contemporary players in the market but on something new. Vino will be a modular operating system made both for the x86 (32-bit), x64 (64-bit) and the ARM computing platforms.

Unlike any popular operating system, Vino isn’t all about a GUI (graphical user interface). Although a GUI shell may be provided, Vino is a modular operating system where the GUI shell, file system, etc. are built above the OS in the user space. The bare Vino would be bent towards providing facilities keeping the minimum system requirements as per the system. So, a dog’s collar which would run Vino will not be geared to provide 3D accelerated graphics but good GPS navigation. Vino will also be an operating system for embedded devices.

Embedded Devices, Eh?
An embedded system is a computer system designed to do one or a few dedicated and/or specific functions often with real-time computing constraints. It is embedded as part of a complete device often including hardware and mechanical parts. By contrast, a general-purpose computer, such as a personal computer (PC), is designed to be flexible and to meet a wide range of end-user needs. Embedded systems control many devices in common use today.

So, with the Internet becoming an integral part of our life, the options for embedded systems are maximized. We will soon see a significant part of the Internet traffic to be caused by these embedded systems. Your refrigerator could order eggs from the grocery store when it sees that you are running out of eggs. You can sit at your desk and monitor your dog’s location on a map with a collar attached with an embedded system. Wrist watches, cars and many other common objects can turn into magical devices when they connect to the Internet and when they run a robust operating system designed keeping their architecture in mind.

Vino is a Universal OS
This is where Vino comes. Vino, by itself is basically an operating system kernel which cannot do much other than load and execute modules which are programs that run above the Vino kernel. So Vino can be running on a ‘smart’ router, a desktop computer connected to the router or the server to which the router will take you.

Contrary to popular vote that breaking the OS into modules will result in lesser efficiency and performance, it holds true that running 3D acceleration in a wrist watch is not a very efficient thought. So, separating the OS into modules is indeed required for developing Vino. The modular approach keeps things simple and also helps managing bugs efficiently.

Coding Language
Vino will open a world of creating operating systems in Java. With creations like JOS, JNODE, JavaOS is a pretty nice thought. However, the user programs themselves will follow a more loose specification in terms of the coding language. Therefore, till now, the planning says that the kernel will be created in C / C++ and assembly language (for low-level stuff like bootloading) and the user programs will support Java, QML, Python and web-based languages like HTML5, CSS, PHP, etc.

We need loads of HELP!!
We are short-staffed. We are broke. We are in deep-s***. So we need your help. You might want to drop us a mail at contact.vino@rocketmail.com