SERVOS Development Team - 2012-05-08

SERVOS Operating System

SERVOS is an open source Linux-based operating system. It is a modern dynamic system which can dynamically load and unload executable modules at runtime on or having a minimal hardware requirement. The versatile modular approach using LZMA compression technology makes SERVOS one of the best highly compressed operating system in the history. SERVOS modules are specially designed to be much smaller than any other compressed packages available nowadays, and through the use of a Monolithic Kernel Design, speed of decompression remains usually faster than reading the full data from disk. SERVOS aims to provide a less investment with more quality and features.

Language Support
• Catalan
• Croatian
• Czech
• Danish
• Dutch
• English
• Estonian
• Finnish
• French
• Galician
• German
• Greek
• Hebrew
• Hungarian
• Icelandic
• Italian
• Lithuanian
• Norwegian
• Nynorsk
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Romanian
• Russian
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish
• Swedish
• Turkish

Name “SERVOS”

The name “SERVOS” was derived from the name “Service” and “Operating System” by its author Fahad Ibn Omar A. Fajardo A.K.A “Fudgee” and his Father, and in some cases it was said to be derived from “Server” and “Operating System”. It was also pronounced as “SERV-OS” on some countries.

History

In 2004 Fahad Ibn Omar A. Fajardo A.K.A “Fudgee” was a second year college student of Systems and Software Engineering with Open source Laboratory Elective in Asia Pacific College. He designed the SERVOS as Live-CD to restore data from crashed Linux and Windows operating systems; soon it was also updated to remove virus, malwares, and spywares on Hard Drives, and Memory Sticks.

The 2004 a proposed research project for SERVOS to be installed on a Flash Memory Stick was declined due to fact that at that time a flash memory stick can only hold 128MiB storage, while SERVOS needs to occupy 300MiB of storage.

In 2006 Fudgee had no intentions in developing SERVOS for commercial release; instead he continuously developed SERVOS and managed to design useful systems for his job as a Data Analyst in IBM Business Services Inc,. SERVOS was used to develop the Post-In-Time and Digital Tracking System of IBM Business Services Inc, as well as recover lost data of its procurement department.

In 2008 IBM Business Services Inc, again Fudgee as a Security Software Engineer to develop the encryption codes of “Business Process Management System (BPMS)” here SERVOS was used to design a tamper proof encryption system for international data transmission.

In 2009 Fudgee has decided to stop the development of SERVOS due to financial research requirements. Hence, development of an operating system requires investment on laboratories and computers as well as time and dedication. However, his Father Hon. Mohammad Omar A. Fajardo convinced him to join their family owned business, Network Sourcing Telecom Co. Inc, (NS Telecom), and continue his research on the SERVOS. NS Telecom sponsored the research of SERVOS. The aim of SERVOS is now inclined to provide service and development of technology on the country of its origin, Philippines.

In 2010 SERVOS became the heart of NS Telecom products. It served as a bundled operating system for its VOIP iPBX, and REDcam Security Surveillance System this was the first time for SERVOS to be commercially released. SERVOS was also demonstrated on a group of Computer Science and Information Technology students in the University of Santo Tomas which became the eye opener that Filipinos can have their own operating system.

In 2011 Fudgee personally demonstrated the features and capabilities of SERVOS on all Engineering, Computer Science, and Information Technology Students of Asia Pacific College which happens to be the birth place of the SERVOS Operating System. On the other hand, SERVOS was demonstrated and presented in the New Era University through the initiative of Brother Rod Martin and has an on-going discussion on making New Era University a SERVOS University.

In 2012 SERVOS Professional v3 and SERVOS Server Elite v2 were the first commercial and public release of SERVOS operating system. These distributions were personally demonstrated by Fudgee in the Philippines' Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) hoping that SERVOS can be of help to the people’s battle against piracy.
Fahad Ibn Omar A. Fajardo stated that “This is the start of the emergence of the Filipino race….”

SERVOS Design philosophy

The SERVOS operating system is oriented towards portability, compactability, universality, and simplicity. Thus users will have the ease of use and free from data loss. Its compact design makes it portable to run on different storage and different disk system format. Universality design makes applications from other platforms be easily bridged to SERVOS.

Installer

SERVOS ships without a graphical installer. Like most distribution-specific tools the installation program of SERVOS is an ncurses-driven shell script. Probably the biggest potential barrier for inexperienced users is the lack of a guided hard disk partitioning tool within the installer; instead SERVOS utilizes a third party partitioning tool (Parted Magic).

The SERVOS Live-CD serves as the installation disk. Parted Magic is a third party graphical application for storage partition management included in all the SERVOS Live-CD. All SERVOS distribution requires a two major partition for the boot loader and servos operating system. An optional partition of swap may also be configured to provide a more efficient and fast processing of transactions or commands. SERVOS runs on a multi-disk system format in which the boot loader requires to have FAT32 format while the servos operating system may have any disk system format except NTFS. Swap partitions will automatically be detected by the SERVOS operating system.

Fahad Ibn Omar A. Fajardo A.K.A “Fudgee” said on some of his demonstrations that SERVOS works more stable on a journal disk system format. He recommended two file systems for SERVOS namely the JFS and XFS. The JFS has a low CPU usage even on a heavy disk activity environment and works great for a 32 bit and 64 bit environment whilst JFS is known to be a 64-bit journaling file system. On the other hand, XFS is also a 64-bit journaling file system in which SERVOS will perform better for a storage server system.

Boot loader

All SERVOS distributions are utilizing the SYSLINUX boot loader. The SYSLINUX Project is the work of Hans Peter Anvin. SYSLINUX uses a FAT file system to work and is not normally used for booting a full Linux installation since Linux is not normally installed on FAT file systems. SERVOS contradict this instance although it is a Linux-based operating system it can run on a FAT file system.
SERVOS provide an option for PXELINUX boot load which is used for SERVOS installations from a central network server or for booting diskless workstations. This feature is only available for SERVOS Server Elite.
Fahad Ibn Omar A. Fajardo A.K.A “Fudgee” stressed that SERVOS will soon have distributions using GRUB as its boot loader and will still continue to release SERVOS using SYSLINUX.

GUI environment

The default user GUI environment is the Kommon Desktop Environment or KDE. It uses the Trolltech’s Qt framework for the KDE project. Having its new release based on Qt4, KDE allows to be distributed on Windows Microsoft and MacOSX which gives leverage to SERVOS wherein if you know how to use the two other operating system then it will definitely be easy to use SERVOS.

Module Administration

SERVOS uses a GUI-based module administration tool that only accepts LZMA file extension. It simply imports the SERVOS application in the module folder and on the process of un-installation it simply exports the application on the desktop. This process was inspired by the KISS principle “Keep it simple stupid!” or “Keep it simple and straightforward”.
The Author simply says “Why delete or remove the application? Why not simply move it to the desktop and give the user the freedom to permanently delete or reinstall the application?”.

32-bit compatibility libraries

SERVOS is a 32 bit operating system, and can also work as a 64 bit operating system by simply adding or installing the 64 bit add-on library available on the website. However, the 64 bit SERVOS system is not stable at the moment. The author confirms that there might be bugs on the 64 bit libraries. SERVOS developers are encouraged to share their solutions and ideas to improve the 64 bit of SERVOS.

Development model
• Open development

SERVOS Professional is the release for the open development. This distribution includes the basic tools in developing SERVOS Applications. In reality SERVOS Core Distribution is bug free and will definitely work smooth. Bugs and Errors will only occur when the user installs a bad compiled program, non-compatible system code, and/or applications that have prior errors.

Fahad Ibn Omar A. Fajardo A.K.A “Fudgee” is on the process of accrediting institutes, schools, colleges, and universities to be a “SERVOS University” wherein a group of Engineers, Information Technology, and Computer Science students will we be trained to compile, design, and develop SERVOS applications. Conversion of 20,000 rpm and 29,000 debian applications to SERVOS will be learned in this university. Different SERVOS Universities in the world will have a central portal website where they can upload applications, comment, and communicate ideas, problems and solutions that will help innovate SERVOS.

• Non-open development

SERVOS Server Elite does follow a Non-open development paradigm, and official code contributor or developer is highly selected by the Author/Founder, Fahad Ibn Omar A. Fajardo A.K.A “Fudgee”. The thorough selection of contributors ensures the stability of the system whilst bug reports and contributions are still essential to the project, and are managed in a formal way. The final decisions on what is to be included in the SERVOS Server Elite distribution is strictly and highly supervised by the Author/Founder.

Module Package management and Source

SERVOS Professional Modules can be downloaded for free or some requires a service/license fee on the http://www.servos-os.com under the modules.
SERVOS Server Elite Modules can be downloaded free or some requires a service/license fee. Download location of modules for this distribution will appear on your account once you acquire a SERVOS Server Elite Account. Number of downloadable non-free applications is based on the donation received while non-free application can be separately purchased to download. The donation to this distribution is not a license fee but instead for the continuous development of applications for SERVOS that is as much as possible free of (or less) bug. If applications installed are not from your SERVOS Server Elite Account the SERVOS Server Elite Development Team assumes no responsibility to any bugs or errors to be encountered but rather forward the concern to a Group of SERVOS Professional Philanthropists.

Dependency resolution

Common library or application dependencies can be downloaded from http://www.servos-os.com under modules. In some cases rpm or debian applications can be converted to LZMA to have it compatible to SERVOS. The SERVOS has no automatic dependency detection since it’s the developer or code contributors’ duty to complete a full working module package prior to release.

Versions

SERVOS release policy follows a feature and stability based release as well as rolling schemes. All release proposals are subject to the approval of the Author/Founder, Fahad Ibn Omar A. Fajardo A.K.A “Fudgee”.

Support term

SERVOS Professional has no official support term policy whilst SERVOS Server Elite has a support term policy stated on the Support section.