DISTRIBUTED AND NETWORK OPERATING SYSTEMS

This section lists distributed and network operating systems, those designed to provide common control for a set of computers communicating through a network. Network operating systems are considered here to be those which provide support for networking and remote resource access, often by a separate layer of software on top of a conventional OS. Distributed operating systems strive for a high degree of transparency and often support data and process migration.

Distributed systems intended primarily for real-time applications are listed in the real-time section. Distributed systems for shared-memory multiprocessors are listed in the multiprocessor section.

Network Operating Systems

ACCENT

Network OS kernel developed at Carnegie-Mellon U. for the PERQ workstation. Early 1980s [Rashid & Robertson 1981].

BOS/NET

Multitasking, multiprocessing version of BOS/5.

COCANET UNIX

A local network operating system based on UNIX, developed for the COCANET local area network at U.C. Berkeley. Early 1980s [Rowe & Birman 1982].

CP/NET

Networking version of CP/M. Digital Research, Early 1980s [Kildall 1981, Rolander 1981].

CP/NOS

A memory-resident, diskless version of CP/NET. Digital Research, Early 1980s [Kildall 1981].

HetNOS

LahNOS

MP/NET

Version of MP/M with networking facilities. Digital Research, Early 1980s [Kildall 1981].

MP/NOS

Memory-resident, diskless version of MP/NET. Digital Research, Early 1980s [Kildall 1981].

NetWare

Network OS for Local Area Network and server control by Novell.

Newcastle Connection

A network OS layer for UNIX systems providing transparent distributed access. Early 1980s [Brownbridge et al 1982].

NSW

National Software Works. Late 1970s [Millstein 1977].

PC/NOS

Network OS for MS-DOS or CP/M. Applied Intelligence [Row & Daugherty 1984].

RIO/CP

Network operating system for the ZNET. Late 1970s [Zarella 1981].

RSEXEC

Network OS for the ARPANET, based principally on TENEX. Early 1970s [Thomas 1973].

TRIX

A network oriented OS. Late 1970s [Ward 1980].

uNETix

Network OS for the 8086, 68000, & 16032 families. Multitasking with transparent remote file access, load balancing, and multiple windows. UNIX and PC-DOS compatible. Lantech Systems, Mid-1980s [Foster 1984].

Distributed Operating Systems

Distributed operating systems differ from network operating systems in supporting a transparent view of the entire network, in which users normally do not distinguish local resources from remote resources.

AEGIS

OS for the Apollo DOMAIN Distributed system. Early 1980s.

AMOEBA

A distributed OS based partly on UNIX. Based on passive data objects protected by encrypted capabilities. 1980s [Tanenbaum & Mullender 1981, Mullender & Tanenbaum 1986].

Arachne

A distributed operating system developed at the U. of Wisconsin. Late 1970s [Finkel 1980].

Charlotte

Distributed OS for the Crystal Multicomputer project at the U. of Wisconsin. Explores coarse-grained parallelism without shared memory for computationally intensive tasks. 1980s [Finkel et al 1989].

CHOICES

Distributed, object-oriented OS featuring a high degree of customization. U. of Idaho, 1990s [Campbell et al 1993].

Clouds

A distributed object-based operating system developed at Georgia Institute of Technology. Early 1990s. [DasGupta 1991]

CMDS

The Cambridge Model Distributed System. U. of Cambridge (England). Late 1970s [Wilkes & Needham 1980].

CONDOR

A distributed OS described as a "hunter of idle workstations," which distributes large computationally intensive jobs among available processors in a workstation pool. U. Wisconsin at Madison, 1980s [Litzkow 1988].

Cronus

Object-oriented distributed computing system for heterogenous environments. BBN Systems, 1980s [Schantz et al 1986].

DEMOS/MP

A distributed version of the DEMOS operating system. Message-based, featuring process migration. U.C. Berkeley, early 1980s [Miller et al 1984].

DISTOS

A Distributed OS for a network of 68000s.

DISTRIX

Message-based distributed version of Unix. Early 1980s.

DUNIX

A distributed version of UNIX developed at Bell Labs. late 1980s [xxx 1988].

Eden

A distributed object-oriented OS at the U. of Washington, based on an integrated distributed network of bit-mapped workstations. Capability-based. Early 1980s [Almes et al 1985].

Galaxy

A distributed UNIX-compatible system featuring multi-level IPC and variable-weight processes. Univ. of Tokyo, late 1980s [Sinha et al 1991].

LOCUS

Distributed OS based on UNIX. Mid 1980s. [Popek & Walker, 1985].

MDX

MICROS

Distributed OS for MICRONET, a reconfigurable network computer. Late 1970s [Wittie & van Tilborg 1980].

MOS

An early version of MOSIX. Controls four linked PDP-11s. Mid 1980s [Barak & Litman 1985].

MOSIX

A distributed version of UNIX supporting full transparency and dynamic process migration for load balancing. Developed at the Hebrew U. of Jersusalem. Mid 1980's to 1990's [Barak et al 1993].

Newark

Early version of Eden developed for the VAX environment. The name was chosen because it was "far from Eden."

NSMOS

A version of MOSIX for National Semiconductor VR32 systems. late 1980's [Barel 1987].

Plan9

Distributed UNIX-like system developed at Bell Labs by the originators of UNIX. Features per-process name-spaces, allowing each process a customized view of the resources in the system. 1990s [Pike et al 1995].

REPOS

Operating System for small PDP-11's attached to a host computer. Late 1970s [Maegaard & Andreasan 1979].

RIG

Rochester Intelligent Gateway. Network OS developed at the University of Rochester. Influenced Accent and Mach. Early 1970s [Ball et al 1976].

Roscoe

Distributed OS for multiple identical processors (LSI-11s). University of Wisconsin, Late 1970s [Solomon & Finkel 1979].

Saguaro

Distributed OS at the U. of Arizona, supporting varying degrees of transparency. Mid 1980s [Andrews et al 1987].

SODA

A Simplified OS for Distributed Applications. Mid 1980s [Kepecs & Solomon 1985].

SODS/OS

OS for a Distributed System developed on the IBM Series/1 at the U. of Delaware. Late 1970s [Sincoskie & Farber 1980].

Spring

Distributed multiplatform OS developed by Sun. Not related to the Spring Kernel, a real-time system. 1990s [Mitchell et al 1994].

Uniflex

Multitasking, multiprocessing OS for the 68000 family. Technical Systems Consultants. Early 1980s [Mini-Micro 1986].

V

Experimental Distributed OS linking powerful bit-mapped workstations at Stanford U. Early 1980s [Cheriton 1984, Berglund 1986].

Distributed Programming Systems

Distributed programming systems combine a distributed OS with language support for a particular programming model. Very often these systems are object-oriented.

Argus

A distributed programming system featuring resilient objects. Developed at M.I.T. mid 1980s [Liskov 1984].

Arjuna

A C++ based distributed programming system based on objects and atomic actions, developed at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne [Shrivastava et al 1991].

Emerald

A distributed object-based operating system based on fine-grained (object level) mobility. U. of Washington, 1980s [Jul et al 1988].