; Athene :Athene is an object-based operating system first released in 2000 by Rocklyte Systems. The user environment was constructed entirely from objects that are linked together at runtime. Applications for Athene could also be created using this methodology and were commonly scripted using the object scripting language Dynamic Markup Language (DML). Objects could have been shared between processes by creating them in
shared memory and locking them as needed for access. Athene's object framework was multi-platform, allowing it to be used in Windows and Linux environments for developing object-oriented programs. The company went defunct and the project abandoned sometime in 2009. ; BeOS :
BeOS was an object-oriented operating system released in 1995, which used objects and the
C++ language for the
application programming interface (API). The kernel was written in C with C++ wrappers in user space. The OS did not see mainstream usage and proved commercially unviable, however it has seen continued usage and development by a small enthusiast community. ; Choices :Choices is an object-oriented operating system developed at the
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. It is written in
C++ and uses objects to represent core kernel components like the
central processing unit (CPU),
processes, and so on.
Inheritance is used to separate the kernel into portable machine-independent classes and small non-portable dependent classes. Choices has been ported to and runs on
SPARC,
x86, and
ARM. ; ETHOS :ETHOS was an experimental object oriented version of the Oberon System (see below) created by Clemens Szyperski for his PhD Thesis written in
Oberon-2 ; GEOS :
PC/GEOS is a light-weight object-oriented multitasking graphical operating system with sophisticated window and desktop management featuring scalable fonts. It is mostly written in an object-oriented x86 assembly language dialect and some C/C++ and is designed to run on
DOS (similar to Microsoft Windows up to
Windows Me). GEOS was developed originally by
Berkeley Softworks in 1990, which later became GeoWorks Corporation, and it is continued to be maintained by BreadBox Computer Company. Related
software suites were named
Ensemble and
New Deal Office. Adaptations exist for various palmtops, and 32-bit systems with non-x86-CPUs. ; Haiku :
Haiku (originally named
OpenBeOS), is an open-source replacement for BeOS. It reached its first development milestone in September 2009 with the release of Haiku R1/Alpha 1. The x86 distribution is compatible with BeOS at both source and binary level. Like BeOS, it is written primarily in
C++ and provides an object-oriented API. It is actively developed. ; IBM i (OS/400, i5/OS) :IBM introduced
OS/400 in 1988. This OS ran exclusively on the
AS/400 platform. Renamed
IBM i in 2008, this operating system and runs exclusively on
Power Systems which also can run
AIX and
Linux. IBM i uses an object-oriented methodology and integrates a database (
Db2 for i). The IBM i OS has a 128-bit unique identifier for each object. ; IBM OS/2 2.0 :IBM's first priority based pre-emptive multitasking, graphical, windows-based operating system included an object-oriented user shell. It was designed for the Intel 80386 that used
virtual 8086 mode with full 32-bit support and was released in 1992.
ArcaOS, a new OS/2 based operating system initially called Blue Lion is being developed by Arca Noae. The first version was released in May 2017. ; IBM TopView :
TopView was an object-oriented operating environment that loaded on a PC on DOS, and then took control from DOS. At that point it effectively became an object-oriented operating system with an object-oriented API (TopView API). It was IBM's first multi-tasking, window based, object-oriented operating system for the PC led by David C. Morrill and released in February 1985. ; Java-based :Given that
Oracle's (formerly
Sun Microsystems')
Java is today one of the most dominant object-oriented languages, it is no surprise that Java-based operating systems have been attempted. In this area, ideally, the
kernel would consist of the bare minimum needed to support a
Java virtual machine (JVM). This is the only component of such an operating system that would have to be written in a language other than Java. Built on the JVM and basic hardware support, it would be possible to write the rest of the operating system in Java; even parts of the system that are more traditionally written in a lower-level language such as C, for example
device drivers, can be written in Java. :Examples of attempts at such an operating system include
JavaOS, JOS, JNode, and
JX. ; Lisp-based :An object-oriented operating system written in the
Lisp dialect
Lisp Machine Lisp (and later
Common Lisp) was developed at MIT. It was commercialized with
Lisp machines from
Symbolics,
Lisp Machines Inc. and
Texas Instruments. Symbolics called their operating system
Genera. It was developed with the
Flavors object-oriented extension of Lisp, then with New Flavors, and then with the
Common Lisp Object System (CLOS). :Xerox developed several workstations with an operating system written in
Interlisp-D. Interlisp-D provided object-oriented extensions like LOOPS and CLOS. :Movitz and Mezzano are two more recent attempts at operating systems written in Common Lisp. ; Medos-2 :
Medos-2 is a single user, object-oriented operating system made for the
Lilith line of
workstations (processor:
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
2901), developed in the early 1980s at
ETH Zurich by Svend Erik Knudsen with advice from
Niklaus Wirth. It is built entirely from modules of the programming language
Modula-2. It was succeeded at ETH Zurich by the
Oberon system (see also below), and a variant named
Excelsior was developed for the
Kronos workstation, by the
Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, Siberian branch,
Novosibirsk Computing Center, Modular Asynchronous Developable Systems (MARS) project, Kronos Research Group (KRG). ; Microsoft Singularity :
Singularity is an experimental operating system based on Microsoft's
.NET Framework. It is comparable to Java-based operating systems. ; Microsoft Windows NT :
Windows NT is a family of operating systems (including
Windows 7,
8,
Phone 8,
8.1,
Windows 10,
10 Mobile,
Windows 11 and
Xbox) produced by
Microsoft, the first version of which was released in July 1993. It is a
high-level programming language-based,
processor-independent,
multiprocessing,
multi-user operating system. It is best described as
object-based rather than object-oriented as it does not include the full inheritance properties of object-oriented languages. :The
Object Manager is in charge of managing NT objects. As part of this responsibility, it maintains an internal
namespace where various operating system components, device drivers, and
Win32 programs can store and lookup objects. The NT
Native API provides routines that allow
user space (mode) programs to browse the namespace and query the status of objects located there, but the interfaces are undocumented. NT supports per-object (file, function, and role)
access control lists allowing a rich set of security permissions to be applied to systems and services. WinObj is a Windows NT program that uses the NT Native API (provided by NTDLL.DLL) to access and display information on the NT Object Manager's name space. :; Component Object Model ::On the
user mode side of Windows, the
Component Object Model (COM) is an
application binary interface standard for
software components introduced by
Microsoft in 1993. It is used to enable
interprocess communication and dynamic
object creation in a large range of
programming languages. COM is the basis for several other Microsoft technologies and frameworks, including
Object Linking and Embedding (OLE),
OLE Automation,
ActiveX,
COM+,
Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM), the
Windows shell,
DirectX, and
Windows Runtime. OLE is a
proprietary technology developed by
Microsoft that allows embedding and
linking to
documents and other objects. On a technical level, an OLE object is any object that implements the
IOleObject interface, possibly along with a wide range of other interfaces, depending on the object's needs. Its primary use is for managing
compound documents, but it is also used for transferring data between different
applications using
drag and drop and
clipboard operations. :; Compound File Binary Format ::
Compound File Binary Format (CFBF) is a file format for storing many files and streams within one file on a disk. CFBF is developed by Microsoft and is an implementation of Microsoft
COM Structured Storage. Structured storage is widely used as main file format in Microsoft Office applications including
Microsoft Word,
Microsoft Excel, Microsoft
PowerPoint,
Microsoft Access and is the basis of
Advanced Authoring Format. :; Object Linking and Embedding ::Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) was part of a grander plan named
Cairo, the code name for a project at Microsoft from 1991 to 1996. Its charter was to build technologies for a next generation operating system that would fulfill
Bill Gates' vision of "
information at your fingertips". Cairo
never shipped, although parts of its technologies have since appeared in other products. The
Windows 95 graphical user interface was based on the initial design work that was done on the Cairo user interface. The remaining component is the
object-based file system. It was once planned to be implemented in the form of Windows Future Storage (
WinFS) as part of
Windows Vista. WinFS is the code name for data storage and
management system project based on
relational databases, running on the Windows NT
file system (
NTFS), which is object-oriented in that it can store the NT objects including its NT object identifier. Each NTFS object has an object identifier; a shortcut with a target that's on an NTFS volume also records the object identifier of the shortcut target, and the object identifier of the drive. WinFS was first demonstrated in 2003 as an advanced storage subsystem for the
Microsoft Windows operating system, designed for
persistence and management of
structured,
semi-structured, and
unstructured data. WinFS development was cancelled in June 2006, with some of its technologies merged into other Microsoft products such as
Microsoft SQL Server 2008 and
Microsoft SharePoint. It was subsequently confirmed in an interview with Bill Gates that Microsoft planned to migrate applications like
Windows Media Player,
Windows Photo Gallery,
Microsoft Office Outlook, etc., to use
WinFS as the data storage back-end. ; NeXTSTEP :During the late 1980s,
Steve Jobs formed the computer company
NeXT. One of NeXT's first tasks was to design an object-oriented operating system,
NeXTSTEP. They did this by adding an object-oriented framework on
Mach and
BSD using the
Objective-C language as a basis. It achieved a niche status in the computing market, notably used by
Tim Berners-Lee developing the first implementation of the
World Wide Web. :NeXTStep later evolved into
OpenStep and the
Cocoa API on
macOS and
iOS (
iPadOS,
watchOS). :OpenStep was provided as an API layer on many operating systems, namely
HP-UX, NextStep,
Solaris, and Windows. ; Oberon System :
Oberon System is a single user, object-oriented operating system made for the
Ceres line of
workstations (processor:
National Semiconductor NS32000), developed in the later 1980s at
ETH Zurich by
Niklaus Wirth and
Jürg Gutknecht. It is built entirely from modules of the programming language
Oberon. There are two successors of the Oberon System, ETHOS (see above) and, as of 2023 still maintained, an evolution named
Active Object System (AOS), then renamed
Bluebottle, then renamed
A2. ; OOSMOS :The Object-Oriented State Machine Operating System (OOSMOS), written in C, promotes object-oriented encapsulation and implements a full table-driven hierarchical state machine architecture. It generates C code directly from state charts drawn with the open source tool
UMLet. OOSMOS also supports a unique feature call 'state threads' which allows a thread of execution per state. OOSMOS operates on a bare board or in cooperation with an existing operating system. ; Phantom OS :
Phantom OS adheres to a principle where "everything is an object" and eliminates the concept of a file entirely, instead transparently persisting virtual memory to storage. ; ReactOS :
ReactOS is an open-source operating system intended to be binary compatible with application software and
device drivers made for Microsoft Windows NT versions. Written from scratch, it aims to follow the
architecture of Windows NT designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is
not a Linux-based system, and shares
none of the
unix architecture. ; Smalltalk :
Smalltalk was invented at
Xerox in the 1970s. The Smalltalk system is fully object-oriented and needs very little support by
BIOS and the
run-time system. ; Syllable :
Syllable makes heavy use of
C++ and for that reason is often compared to
BeOS. ; Symbolics Genera :
Genera from
Symbolics is an operating system for
Lisp machines written in
ZetaLisp and Symbolics
Common Lisp. It makes heavy use of
Flavors (an early object-oriented extension to Lisp) and the
Common Lisp Object System (CLOS). Development began in the mid 70s at MIT. ; Taligent :
Taligent was an object-oriented operating system project, begun by
Apple Inc. and jointly developed with
IBM in the 1990s. It was later spun off to an IBM subsidiary and transformed from an operating system to a programming environment. == See also ==