Oberon (2009)

Plan 9&#x27;s UI works in a quite similar way. I&#x27;m not up to date on my history of those systems, but I wouldn&#x27;t be surprised if there is heavy cross pollination between the two.<p>Additionally, the fact that the writer of this post mentions Oberon&#x27;s zooming user interface and the Canon Cat means I have to encourage anyone interested in this topic to read this wonderful book: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Interactive/dp/0201379376/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1380936948&amp;sr=8-3&amp;keywords=raskin" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.com&#x2F;The-Humane-Interface-Directions-Intera...</a><p>---<p>The article linked to at the very beginning is not available on the original site. Here is an archive.org link: <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20090416033922/http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/94591835/warning-a-long-rambly-exploration-of-the-state" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;web.archive.org&#x2F;web&#x2F;20090416033922&#x2F;http:&#x2F;&#x2F;stevenf.tum...</a>

Eagle Mode (<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6yPQKt3mBA" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=G6yPQKt3mBA</a>) uses the zoomable UI concept and takes it to an extreme.

The text and GUI integration describes exactly why I fell in love with Linux. There is a GUI, but I will be damned if there are things (save some terrible GNOME cruft from personal experience) that cannot be facilitated the terminal commands and scripting. Around the same time in college as I discovered Linux and began really exploring, I started a sysadmin gig at school maintaining Winboxen, and the inability to script a lot of core stuff (this was before Powershell, but my opinion is little has changed beyond &quot;this is the crap Microsoft thinks you should automate&quot;) is incredibly frustrating and what drove me to admire the utilitarian approach of Linux and other UNIX environments so so much. That is why Linux, *BSD, and even in a small way OS X make me really happy.<p>Oberon seems to harmonize both. That is very cool, and definitely would be an OS of choice for me.

<i>To launch applications or execute commands, you first type them somewhere (anywhere, it doesn’t matter), and then middle-click them</i><p>Has anyone used this extensively? I&#x27;m extremely skeptical about the cost of switching from keyboard to mouse constantly.<p>And then there&#x27;s the following: <i>Need to explain to your aunt what application to launch? Tell her to click on a word in the e-mail you just sent her.</i><p>&quot;Need to create a botnet? Tell your (or your hacked celebrity account&#x27;s) Twitter followers to click on a word in the tweet you just posted.&quot;

So every time I see these threads about classic computing systems that did something interesting or novel (Oberon, Plan 9 Symbolics OpenGenera, BeOS, Amiga, etc), I want to be able to try them out on my own machine.<p>After discovering that OpenGenera was available, I tried a bunch to find a way to run it in a VM in OS X and had no luck finding an Alpha virtual machine host on which to install it.<p>Is Oberon one of those systems that I can get up and running in a virtual machine on OS X in an afternoon?

I still remember the days when we had those Oberon machines (not yet bluebottle) at the computer rooms at the ETHZ. Nobody touched them except the computer science students. You didn&#x27;t even needed a login to use them, just a mouse with 3 buttons for the famous interclick to execute commands! :)

This part is the most exciting to me. - &quot;obsoletes the idea of opening a document. Essentially, all documents can be open all the time. All you have to do to interact with one is to zoom in close enough.&quot;

It&#x27;s a bit silly to claim that outside of Oberon, all modern graphical UIs are descended from the Lisa. Unix and its many variations were very active in the early 1980s, and there were non-Lisa sophisticated window systems emerging around the same time as the Apple Lisa.<p>I remember seeing Oberon in the late 1980s, running on a Sun workstation which supported the SunView and X10 - simultaneously (at the time, we&#x27;d figured out how to run SunView in the color buffer and X10 in the overlay buffer, configured to be a separate virtual screen). In those three environments, I feel little could be ascribed to the Lisa, but much to PARC.

Considering the bit about different European languages, it seems really strange that words would become links to applications. Sending instructions on how to do something from your home in &lt;latin character set country&gt; to your Russian aunt? Better know the Cyrillic version of what you want to launch.<p>Snark aside, there are some interesting aspects to that; I really like the idea of simple launcher lists, even if it means you have to know the names of everything you want to launch. I teach some kids with dyslexia and I can imagine trying to do this in a classroom environment.

Implemented with a GC enabled systems programming language!

I remember giving Oberon a try in the late 90&#x27;s. As I recall, Oberon was available as both an application and as a stand-alone OS.<p>I really liked the interface of both Oberon and Plan 9. I wasn&#x27;t really able to get much done with them back then, as I was a real novice, but I did find the UI attractive.

That guy needs a new camera, idk. why, but his camera has a ghosting effect! I initially thought it&#x27;s a built-in effect, but it&#x27;s his camera..weird..

After reading the article I thought Oberon might be really interesting, then I watched the linked Youtube video.