Oberon (operating system)

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Oberon
Tiled window arrangement of Oberon
Website	www.oberon.ethz.ch
Company/ developer	Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht
Programmed in	Oberon
Available language(s)	English
Supported platforms	NS32032, several others
Default user interface	Text user interface
License	ETH Oberon License

Oberon is an operating system, originally developed as part of the NS32032-based Ceres workstation project; it is written entirely in the Oberon programming language. The basic system was designed and implemented by a team of two part-time programmers at ETH Zürich (ETHZ), Niklaus Wirth and Jürg Gutknecht. It was later extended and ported to other hardware by a team at ETHZ. For a full listing of team members, see ETH Oberon Hall of Fame.

Oberon has a text user interface or TUI. It combines the point-and-click convenience of a graphical user interface (GUI) with the linguistic strength of a command line interface (CLI) and is closely tied to naming conventions of the Oberon language. Any text appearing on the screen can be edited and used as command input. No prompt or anything similar is required. Although radical, the TUI is efficient and powerful. It has yet to appear in more commonplace operating systems, although strongly inspired Rob Pike's Acme system under Plan 9.

The Oberon OS is available for several other hardware platforms, generally in no cost versions. It is typically extremely compact. Even with an Oberon compiler, assorted utilities including a web browser, TCP/IP networking, and a GUI, the entire package has been able to fit on a single 3.5" floppy disk. The version which runs on bare PC hardware is called Native Oberon.

There is also a version called Oberon V4 that is closer to the original operating system developed by N. Wirth. It was also developed at ETHZ, but the most recent version is at Linz university.

The computer science department at ETHZ has in recent years begun exploring active objects, and concurrency for operating systems and has released an early version of a new language Active Object Oberon and a new operating system for it, first called AOS and now called Bluebottle. It is available from ETHZ with most source via the Internet. Versions are currently available for Intel IA-32 single and dual processors and for the StrongARM CPU family.