MSX Operating Systems compared on My Navi

The popular Japanese portal MyNavi has published an extensive article on MSX in their series on Operating Systems. After dealing with the obvious MSX history lessons and a dive into the various versions of MSX-DOS the third page of the article reveals the author has really done his homework.

The article describes how MSX reached great heights by the hands of the community - not only by writing games, but also by writing Operating Systems. The first example is UZIX - the UNIX clone for MSX based on UZI. The writer is astonished to find out that Unix with TCP/IP, web browsing and harddisk support is possible on MSX.

Last but not least, the article concludes with a review of SymbOS (SYmbiosis Multitasking Based Operating System). Again, the writer is surprised by the quality of the OS - praising its comfortable interface and extensive support for file systems, printers and sound devices. The author regrets that work on SymbOS has stalled since 2007, but he - and the entire MSX community for that matter - might be in for a surprise, since very recently SymbOS developer Prodatron returned to our MSX Forum and revived the massive SymbOS thread. Prodatron is again working on SymbOS and it seems like it's only a matter of time until we can enjoy a new release.

Relevant link: MSX Operating Systems compared on My Navi