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Polit (operating system)

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Polit
Other namesPolit OS, Політ, ОС Політ
Original author(s)Ivan Kozak  UKR
Developer(s)Ivan Kozak, Andriy Trunin, Andrew Kosovich, Yury Benesh, Oleksandr Zaytsev, Sir Cyberhead
Initial releaseMay 29, 1999; 25 years ago (1999-05-29)
Final release
2005.08.30 / August 30, 2005; 19 years ago (2005-08-30)
Preview release
2005.08.30 (beta) / August 30, 2005; 19 years ago (2005-08-30)
Written inPascal
Operating systemDOS, MS-DOS, Win95, Win98, FreeDOS
Platformx86-16, IA-32
Service nameHalcyon (Blue Bird)
Size< 1 MB
Available inUkrainian, English, Belarusian, Russian
TypeDOS Shell, GUI
LicenseGNU GPL
Websitebespin.org/~polit

Polit (also Polit OS, Ukrainian: ОС Політ, lit. 'Flight OS') — is a free and open-source multitasking windowing GUI shell for DOS with a Ukrainian interface. Source code of the program written in Pascal licensed under terms of GNU GPL.

History

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On 29 May 1999, the first SLOCs of the Polit OS shell has been written by Ivan Kozak (Ukrainian: Іван Козак), a Ukrainian programmer, at the time he being a student of KPI, later a student of KNU in the field of Cybernetics.[1][2][3][4][5]

Halcyon used as service name for Polit OS, and blue bird as logo

On 6 January 2001, a new developer, nicknamed 'Cyberhead', joined the Polit development.

During Sumer 2001, source has been fully rewritten from Turbo Pascal 5.5 to Borland Pascal 7.

On 15 January 2002, author of Polit has been hosted to talk about Polit OS at the «Night zone online» (Ukrainian: Зона ночі online) late night TV-show on the Novy Kanal.[6]

On 4 July 2002, CaesarAgency, one of Ukrainian domains registrators, gifted Polit with a free hosting and polit-os.org.ua domain.[7] Polit named as "the first Ukrainian operating system" because it has Ukrainian interface mimiced to Microsoft Windows UI.

On 21 August 2002, Yury Benesh,[8] author of the StormDOS shell in Assembly,[9] ported Polit to Virtual Pascal, which resulted in a small improvements of execution speed and decreasing size of distribution files. Source code and both 16-bit and 32-bit binary builds of this port available on the official Polit OS website.

On 30 August 2005, Ivan Kozak released the last version of the Polit shell, commemorating it to the 14th Anniversary of the Independence of Ukraine. It has a new the "Blue Bird" default theme.

During all of the time of active development, there was at least 6 contributors (from Kyiv, Kharkiv, Odesa and Belarus), including author, who joined the Polit OS development.[6]

Features

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Polit distributed in a form of zipped folder and floppy disk IMG-file, and could be launched from DOS (MS-DOS, FreeDOS) and Windows 95/98/M on PC or run inside emulators and virtual machines (DOSBox, DOSBox-X, VirtualBox).[10][11]

External videos
video icon POLIT - UKR OS 2004 (MS-DOS UKR WINDOWS)
video icon Operating Systems written in Pascal, Delphi, Lazarus IDE, FreePascal, Turbo Pascal, Modula-2

Pros

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Cons

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  • Impossible to launch external DOS software, except of own built-in software and software written for Polit.
  • Bad support for hardware components and devices due to lack of drivers.
  • Limited number of ready to use software (but new software could be created by users with a knowledge of Pascal).

Software

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Screen of Polit with some of its built-in sotware
Screen of Polit with built-in navigation dock and games

Built-in

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  • Filer — a file manager with a two-panel mode support (similar to File Explorer and Total Commander).
  • Wave player — a WAV audio player.
  • Friends — an address book (similar to Windows Address Book).
  • HTML viewer — a simple web browser with vector fonts support (tested with Google Search at the time).
  • Image viewer — supporting opening files from file browser (supported formats: BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG).
  • Navigator — a side hidable dock widget for quick access to files and disks.
  • Notepad — a text editor (similar to Windows Notepad) with a function for print text documents.
  • Printer — a tool for interacting with printers, configuring printers and printing documents.
  • Calculator — a simple arithmetic calculator with addition of trigonometric sin/cos/tag calculation of angles in degrees, (similar to Windows Calculator).
  • App Wizard — a Pascal program template (.pas) generator, intended to help users to start creating own software for Polit (similar to file template generator in Geany IDE).
  • Task Manager — a process monitor and task manager (similar to Windows Task Manager).
  • Screenshot — a screenshot software with a F9 function key as keyboard shortcut.
  • Settings — a setting dialog for configuring system options and look (also, could be configured by editing configuration INI files in Notepad).
  • ScrSetup — display settings manager.
  • Tasks panel — includes "Start" menu (like Windows Start menu), and system tray with keyboard layout indicator, analog and digital clocks (if move mouse cursor over it it also shows actual date).
  • Terminal — terminal emulator or command prompt (similar Cmd.exe)
  • Handbook — a browser to read help docs in HTML format, uses HTML viewer.
  • Screesaver — an animated fireworks screensaver.
  • Arkanoid — a simplified iplementation of the Arkanoid game.
  • Tanks — an implementation of the classic Tank Wars [de] and Scorched Earth games.

Third party

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Similar projects

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  • ELERA — is a Turkish open-source GUI shell for DOS in Free Pascal and Assembly with a pre-emptive multitasking support, developed by Fatih Kiliç (Turkey).[14]
  • FPC DOS — is an open-source DOS Shell in Free Pascal and i8086 assembly, developed by Nikolay Nikolov (Bulgaria) during 2015-2022.[15][16] Nikolov also developed an open-hardware DOS-compatible computer Tralala 8088.[17]
  • Pascal Graphical Environment (also PGE) — wa an open-source GUI DE project for DOS in Pascal, developed by Colin Alston (UK).[18][19][20] Project stalled since 2002.[21]
  • StreamOS — is a Ukrainian open-source 32-bit GUI shell for DOS in Object Pascal, developed by Oleksandr Natalenko, being a student at the Kyiv Polytechnic Institute, during 2005-2009.[22] Later Natalenko moved to the Czech Republic, and on 15 June 2024 republished all the sources of StreamOS.[23][24][25]
  • Many other operating systems and DOS shells in Pascal and Free Pascal created without GUI, but with CLI/TUI instead (FPOS, TORO Kernel, StreamOS. etc.).[26]
  • Proolix — is another Ukrainian (but without Ukrainian locale) open-source POSIX-compliant and DOS-compatible operating system for i8086 , developed by Ukrainian programmer Serge 'Prool' Pustovoitoff since 1996. As of November 2023, the project still is active.[27][28]

See also

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Publications

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  • Kozak, Ivan (2004). Політ: книга програмера [Polit: the programmer book] (Internet resource) (in Ukrainian). Kyiv.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) (ZIP)

References

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  1. ^ "dos:gui_shells [Vintage2000]". old.vintage2000.org. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
  2. ^ Green, Richard L. "FREE SOFTWARE FOR DOS — Desktops, Shells, GUIs". bttr-software.de.
  3. ^ "Іван Козак". orion.spaceports.com. Archived from the original on 2002-02-02.
  4. ^ Kozak, Ivan (2000). "Козацький «Політ»" [Cossacks' «Flight»]. Мой компьютер. 38 (105). Київ: 30–31. ISSN 1819-8708. Archived from the original on 24 June 2002.
  5. ^ Горбенко, Роман (18 April 2002). "Хронология одного "Полета"" [The chronology of the one "Flight"]. Русский Журнал. Москва: Русский институт. Archived from the original on 6 May 2003.
  6. ^ a b "ОС Політ: Про проект". bespin.org. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  7. ^ "ПОЛІТаємо?" [Lets FLIGHT?]. caesar.kiev.ua. 2002-07-05. Archived from the original on 2002-08-06. CaesarAgency стала спонсором унікального проекту - сайту першої української операційної системи нового покоління ПОЛІТ. [CaesarAgency become a sponsor of a uniqie project - the website of the first Ukrainian operating system of the new generation POLIT.]
  8. ^ "exhu / Profile". sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  9. ^ "SD (StormDos)". SourceForge. 2013-03-22. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  10. ^ "POLIT DOS GUI". multiboot-windows.dscloud.me. Retrieved 2024-08-18.
  11. ^ shotter_nail (2022-12-18), 22 DOS GUI Worth Trying - Vbox VHD Install Files, retrieved 2023-12-29
  12. ^ "Мій Політ - сайт підтримки ОС Політ: INI-файли". www.bespin.org. Retrieved 2023-12-29.
  13. ^ a b "APServer - Завантаження". apserver.org.ua. Retrieved 2023-12-28.
  14. ^ Kiliç, Fatih. "elera0/elerais". Bitbucket. Retrieved 2024-08-19. Elera Operating System; Aiming to involve all other programmers, especially assembler programmers, it started to be coded as a hobby in order to write a common operating system.
  15. ^ "FPC DOS". SourceForge. 2022-04-12. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  16. ^ "nickysn / Profile". sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  17. ^ "Tralala 8088 Homebrew Computer". SourceForge. 2023-11-07. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  18. ^ "Pascal Graphical Environment". pge.sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  19. ^ "calston / Profile". sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  20. ^ "calston - Overview". GitHub. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  21. ^ "Pascal Graphical Environment / News: Time of death..." sourceforge.net. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  22. ^ "StreamOS 0.21-RC1 Released – OSnews". Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  23. ^ Natalenko, Oleksandr (15 June 2024). "Post by @[email protected]". natalenko.name. And yes, it's Free Pascal on top of FreeDOS. Not as fancy as things like PolitOS (it's beautiful, and its site is still intact: bespin.org/~polit/), but it gave me a possibility to invent many things I was not aware already existed like state machine, call recursion etc.
  24. ^ streamos. "streamos". Codeberg.org. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  25. ^ "StreamOS source code republished 15 years later – OSnews". Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  26. ^ "Operating Systems written in FPC - Free Pascal wiki". wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
  27. ^ Pustovoitoff, Serge (4 November 1999). "New version of Proolix: Proolix running under Windows 95 MSDOS-session". users.itl.net.ua. Archived from the original on 2000-04-17.
  28. ^ "Serge Prool / proolix · GitLab". GitLab. Retrieved 2024-08-19.
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