Start-Up Trumpeting New OS

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July 08, 1999 (4:55 PM EDT)

By Malcolm Maclachlan,

People who say they'd rather run anything than Windows are going to get a chance to prove their sincerity.

Next month, Australian company Trumpet Software will release an alpha version of its new operating system called PetrOS, designed to act as a substitute for Windows 95/98 and NT. Unlike Linux and other competitors, the company said, PetrOS will be able to seamlessly run 32-bit Windows applications.

This will offer a smooth changeover and let the company aggressively go after the workstation market, said Simon Milburn, U.S. manager for Trumpet. Even if the company only managed to get a 1 percent market share in workstations, Milburn said, it would consider PetrOS successful.

PetrOS' main marketing advantage, Milburn added, is speed. Its kernel only takes up about 100 kilobytes.

The company is using its website to market the software. Companies can sign up to use the product as Trumpet develops it beyond the alpha version. While this is not a true open source project -- Trumpet will do all the engineering and the code will be proprietary -- users can suggest new features they would like to see in the software.

"We're not even sure if the software will take off."
-- Simon Milburn
Trumpet

About 1,000 companies have already signed up, Milburn said, mostly in Australia. The eventual cost will be under $100 a copy, he added, with volume discounts.

"We just want direct input from people," Milburn said. "We're not even sure if the software will take off."

They're not the only ones, said Dean Koester, director of product marketing for open source software company Cygnus Solutions. If Trumpet wants PetrOS to compete with Windows, he said, they had better put a great GUI on it.

The lack of Windows compatibility and a easy GUI have been largely blamed from keeping Linux, the open source clone of Unix, out of the hands of common users. One group of over 50 Linux developers has been working on the Wine project, software which lets Windows programs run on Linux. Douglas Ridgway, administrator of the Winehq website, said in March that the Wine team hopes to support 90 percent of Windows programs, including most Microsoft Office programs, but has not yet reached that goal.

Cygnus' Koester said PetrOS' small size may mean it has a better chance battling Windows CE for the imbedded systems market, instead of going after the workstation battleground fought over by NT, Linux, and other flavors of Unix. However, he said, imbedded systems are also a prime market for true open source software development for two reasons. First, the open source review process tends to create small, fast software. Second, imbedded device manufacturers don't like waiting for proprietary OS makers to port to different devices.

Even if PetrOS gains a market, it could face another hurdle: legality. PetrOS essentially emulates Windows, Milburn said. He added while Trumpet has investigated the issue, it is not entirely sure about the legality of such emulation under U.S. law. For its part, Microsoft never pursued legal action against another emulator, Connectix Virtual PC, software that let people run Windows programs on their Macintoshes.