A2 (operating system)

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A2 (formerly named Active Object System (AOS),^[2] and then Bluebottle) is a modular, object-oriented operating system with features including automatic garbage-collected memory management, and a zooming user interface. It was developed originally at ETH Zurich in 2002.^[2] It is free and open-source software under a BSD-like license.

A2 is a successor to Native Oberon, the x86 PC version of Niklaus Wirth's operating system Oberon.^[3][4][5] It supports multiprocessing computers, and provides soft real-time computing operation. It is entirely written in Active Oberon.

Bluebottle replaced the older Oberon OS's unique text-based user interface (TUI) with a zooming user interface (ZUI), which similar to a conventional graphical user interface (GUI). Like Oberon, though, its user interface supports a point and click interface metaphor to execute commands directly from text, similar to clicking hyperlinks in a web browser.

A2's design allows developing efficient systems based on active objects which run directly on hardware, with no mediating interpreter or virtual machine. Active objects represent a combination of the traditional object-oriented programming (OOP) model of an object, combined with a thread that executes in the context of that object. In the Active Oberon implementation, an active object may include activity of its own, and of its ancestor objects.

A2 incorporates a minimalist design, implemented in a type-safe language with automatic memory management, combined with a set of primitives (at the level of programming language and runtime system) for synchronizing access to the internal properties of objects in competing execution contexts.

Above the kernel layer, A2 provides a set of modules providing unified abstractions for devices and services, such as file systems, user interfaces, computer network connections, media codecs, etc.

• Active Oberon
• Oberon (operating system)
• Oberon (programming language)
• Oberon-2 programming language
• Minimalism (computing)

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Oberon

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: Oberon/A2

• Main Project Page
• A2 Operating System & Active Oberon community in Telegram
• An application in industrial control at Radiar
• A2 user guide and applications description
• A short movie showing a programming technique and the Bluebottle OS
• Archived Official website, ETH Zürich
• Archived Oberon Language Genealogy
• Archived Oberon Community Platform - Wiki & Forum