Jawed’s Blog

Jnode is an open source Java operating system. It was started when JDK 1.0.2 released, Ewout Prangsma (the founder of JNode) dreamed of building a Java Virtual Machine in Java. It should be a system that was not only a VM, but a complete runtime environment that does not need any other form of operating system.

Ewout made various attempts to develop this OS. He first developed a JBS; the Java Bootable System. It became a somewhat functional system, but had far too much native code, in C and assembler, in it. So he started working on a new JBS system, called JBS2 and finally JNode. which doesn’t have C code, but has only a little bit of assembly code. In may on 2003 Ewout came public with JNode and development proceeded ever faster from that point on.

Hardware Requirements:

To be able to run JNode, you’re hardware should be at least equal to or better then:

• Pentium class CPU with Page Size Extensions (PSE) feature
• 256Mb RAM

more on hardware requirements

Performance:

Performance of an OS is critical. That’s why many have suggested that an OS cannot be written in Java. JNode will not be the fastest OS around for quite some time, but it is and will be a proof that it can be done in Java. To make JNode as fast as possible, we’ll concentrate on doing things as smart as possible, but still to do it in Java.

more on performance

Daylight Saving Time (DST) is a system of handling the changing amounts of daylight throughout the year. The goal of DST is to maximize the daylight hours available during typical waking hours.

The United States has planned a change to its DST observance beginning in 2007. The Energy Policy Act of 2005 mandates that DST will start on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November. In 2007, the start and stop dates will be March 11 and November 4, respectively. These dates are different from previous DST start and stop dates. In 2006, the dates were the first Sunday in April (April 2, 2006) and the last Sunday in October (October 29, 2006).

The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) stores rules about DST observance all around the globe. Older JREs will have outdated rules that will be superseded by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. As a result, applications running on an older JRE may report incorrect time from March 11, 2007 through April 2, 2007 and from October 29, 2007 through November 4, 2007.

If you are concerned about application failures that may result from these DST changes, you should update your Java Runtime Environment. The following Java platform versions have correct time rules to handle the DST changes that will affect U.S. time zones in 2007. You can download any of the following Java platform versions to resolve this DST issue:

• JDK 6 Project (beta)
• J2SE 5.0 Update 6 or later
• J2SE 1.4.2_11 or later
• J2SE 1.3.1_18 or later

Read all at Sun Developers Network

A new TIOBE Software study has found that Java is the most popular programming language among developers, surpassing Visual Basic, was was the leader a year ago. This popularity measurement uses a simple metric: the number of relevant search engine queries. According to the most recent results, the top ten are Java, C, Visual Basic, PHP, C++, Perl, C#, Python, JavaScript, and Delphi.

A chart that shows trends among the top ten can be found at:

http://www.tiobe.com/index.htm?tiobe_index

The TIOBE Programming Community index simply “gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages, the company says. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written.

The index can be used to check whether your programming skills are still up to date or to make a strategic decision about what programming language should be adopted when starting to build a new software system. The definition of the TPC index can be found here.

The changes in the popularity rating since the month of June place Visual Basic at the top of the gainers list. Search engine queries for “Visual Basic” in July were nearly 5% more than during the previous month. “Java” queries were up 2.19%.

Programming languages that lost popularity in July were C, C++, and Perl. All other changes in the top 10 were below 1%. The study does not include HTML, XML, SQL, or ASP.NET.