Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997

Posted by kome 11/1/2025

Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997(visopsys.org)

494 points | 145 commentspage 2

arjie 11/2/2025|

Speaking of these, does anyone recall the AtheneOS distribution/OS. There’s an archive.org copy of the desktop environment version of it, but I recall there was a really fast version with only 2D graphics and it was a full distribution.

Can anyone validate whether this is real? I tried contacting the guy who wrote it but the Companies House address for his company (Rocklyte) bounced the letter.

anthk 11/2/2025|

Syllabe OS?

arjie 11/2/2025||

Huh, SyllableOS might well be it. I thought for sure it was a different version of Athene that I was running but now looking at the screenshots they have a weird familiarity to them so maybe it was just around the same time that I tried both and the memory of two decades has blurred. Thank you!

dustractor 11/2/2025||

It mentions preemptive multitasking as one of its features. Are there any operating systems that still use cooperative multitasking?

andsoitis 11/2/2025||

> Are there any operating systems that still use cooperative multitasking?

RISC OS uses cooperative multitasking: http://www.riscos.info/index.php/Preemptive_multitasking

jonjacky 11/2/2025|||

There is Wirth and Gutknecht's Oberon System. It's still available but is older than Visopsys -- it was created around 1990, then updated in 2013. I think it's now considered an historical artifact.

https://www.projectoberon.net/

bigstrat2003 11/2/2025|||

I think it's worth mentioning on a hobby OS, just because it's a decent bit more work to do preemptive multitasking. It's a badge of honor to have successfully implemented it.

throw-qqqqq 11/2/2025|||

Many RTOS support it, eg FreeRTOS’s co-routines: https://www.freertos.org/Documentation/02-Kernel/02-Kernel-f...

hulitu 11/2/2025||

> Are there any operating systems that still use cooperative multitasking?

Android ? /s Still not able to run 2 programs in the same time after all these years.

seabrookmx 11/3/2025||

Android literally has a desktop Window manager now:

https://www.androidauthority.com/working-android-16-desktop-...

_false 11/2/2025||

Took me a while to realize it's not a linux distro. Incredible!

marenVoyant88 11/2/2025||

It’s amazing how one person kept this project alive since 1997, that’s real passion and love for coding!