JavaOS

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JavaOS

Company / developer	Sun Microsystems
Working state	Discontinued
Supported platforms	ARM, PowerPC, SPARC, IA-32

JavaOS is an operating system with a Java virtual machine as a fundamental component. It is developed by Sun Microsystems. Unlike Windows, Mac OS, Unix or Unix-like systems which are primarily written in the C programming language, JavaOS is primarily written in Java.

As of 2006, Sun considers JavaOS a legacy system.

Contents 1 Design 2 Applications 3 Future 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Design

The system is based on a hardware architecture native microkernel. The Java virtual machine runs on top of the microkernel.

Platforms that the kernel runs on include:

• ARM
• PowerPC
• SPARC
• StrongARM
• IA-32

All device drivers are written in Java and executed by the virtual machine.

A graphics and windowing system, implementing the AWT API is also written in Java.

[edit] Applications

JavaOS was designed to run on embedded systems and has applications in devices such as set top boxes, networking infrastructure and ATMs. It's also the operating system that comes with the JavaStation.

[edit] Future

Sun now officially considers JavaOS a legacy system and recommends migration to Java ME.^[1] This by itself however is not a full replacement, as Java ME is an API specification, which runs on top of an operating system, and is not an operating system in itself.

[edit] See also

Other implementations of Java based operating systems:

• JNode - Open source project creating a Java based OS written entirely in Java (and machine code)
• JX (operating system) - Operating system written in Java
• Sanos - Minimanist kernel designed to run Java (and C) server applications
• SavaJe - Mobile phone OS designed to run Java SE applications

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Inside the IBM JavaOS Project
• JavaOS Architecture presentation from Sun^{[dead link]}
• Press release announcing JavaOS (May 29, 1996)^{[dead link]}
• JavaOS SDK page java.sun.com