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Show HN: GodotOS – Fake operating system interface made in the Godot engine

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Re: Show HN: GodotOS – Fake operating system interface made in the Godot engine

#71

Post by bee_rider »

actionfromafar wrote: post #38
larschdk wrote: post #35

Related: Grey Hack is a fake OS, Network, Internet in a multiplayer game where the objective is to hack (including each other). It simulates many basic functions quite well (you can steal files, place files on other computers, install software, run commands from a command line, including imitations of many tools). You can also write your own programs.

When will someone go all in and release a hack game with hundreds of emulated real little servers of various operating systems and vulnerabilities?

I’ve always thought it would be interesting to try something like that for a LARP.

It would be fun to run in an “anything goes” type setup. Get a cheap raspberry pi and install some really old Linux kernel with plenty of well know holes. I’d worry about delineating between game-machines and real ones. It would have to be totally isolated from the real network I guess.

Re: Show HN: GodotOS – Fake operating system interface made in the Godot engine

#72

Post by ladberg »

vcg3rd wrote: post #63
ladberg wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be sooo much worse from a UI point of view. All nice OS features (good text rendering, uniform text editing interface, accessibility, transparency) would all get chucked out the window. I also don't think Godot is inherently more performant for any random UI than Electron is. It happens that most Godot apps are performant because they're made by the type of people who want to use videogame engines and thus…

> All nice OS features (good text rendering, uniform text editing interface, accessibility, transparency) would all get chucked out the window. Could you explain this to someone who doesn't program and knows nothing about how os internals? My naive question is wouldn't the OS/DE/WM still take care of the above for an application?

To give an example comparing a text field in a native OR webview-based macOS app with a hypothetical Godot-based one, the Godot version would need to reimplement (or likely just omit):

- Copy/paste

- Emacs/readline keybindings (Ctrl-A, Ctrl-E, etc.)

- User's preferred text size and font as selected in System Preferences

- Spellcheck

- Nice features for non-latin text (e.g. built in pinyin keyboard)

- Crisp text rendering

- Dictation support

- Screen reader support

- Autofill

- Automatically updated with OS updates (e.g. HiDPI, all Java UIs had looked almost-native but were now stuck looking pixelated)

- And hundreds more features I'm forgetting...

This is all possible to do in Godot (e.g. the Godot Editor does a lot of these) but with a lot of work required. It's completely built in to any native or web-based text field and doesn't need any additional work.

Re: Show HN: GodotOS – Fake operating system interface made in the Godot engine

#73

Post by cmeacham98 »

mikepurvis wrote: post #54
actionfromafar wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When will someone go all in and release a hack game with hundreds of emulated real little servers of various operating systems and vulnerabilities?

At a certain point on the realism continuum, just get rid of the gamey parts and deliver someone a set of VM images that they have to boot up and break into. (Maybe that's actually what Hack the Box is, mentioned in the sibling— I hadn't heard of that and only looked briefly at the homepage for it.)

> Maybe that's actually what Hack the Box is, mentioned in the sibling

Hack the Box hosts the VM for you on their servers (and you connect to a VPN to get access), but it's effectively that. They release a box every so often (roughly monthly?) and users compete to collect the user/root flags.

They also have a rotating selection of past boxes (and I think you get access to all of them if you pay them), so it's kind of like an "on demand" CTF.

Re: Show HN: GodotOS – Fake operating system interface made in the Godot engine

#75

Post by bufio »

ladberg wrote: post #58
Gormo wrote: post #51

This is actually a great proof of concept for using Godot as a cross-platform framework for desktop applications. The distribution package is incredibly simple -- just a single executable and a data file -- and performance is excellent. This seems much superior to Flatpak and the like as a way to offer fully self-contained distro-agnostic binary packages, and vastly superior to Electron in the performance department.…

This would be sooo much worse from a UI point of view. All nice OS features (good text rendering, uniform text editing interface, accessibility, transparency) would all get chucked out the window. I also don't think Godot is inherently more performant for any random UI than Electron is. It happens that most Godot apps are performant because they're made by the type of people who want to use videogame engines and thus…

I have never encountered an Electron app that can even display the results of keystrokes in a timely manner, and that includes vscode. All Electron apps waste system resources to an obscene degree. Also, Electron apps have already thrown away OS conventions to the point that user interface consistency has become a thing of the past.

I don't believe that either choice is ideal, but if Godot were ubiquitous instead of Electron, applications would probably at least be less laggy and more memory-efficient.

Re: Show HN: GodotOS – Fake operating system interface made in the Godot engine

#77

Post by [deleted] »

xeonmc wrote: post #7
popcar2 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a fake OS in the sense that it's actually an application, not something that can be ran as an operating system like Linux or Windows. I've been a bit careful with my wording when advertising this, I wouldn't want to give the wrong impression.

Would "desktop environment" be a more appropriate description?

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: GodotOS – Fake operating system interface made in the Godot engine

#78

Post by [deleted] »

iosonofuturista wrote: post #6

Popcar2 , a note on your disclaimer that you are not affiliated with the Godot foundation. Is that usual in projects using an engine? Or is it because of your , IMHO, poor naming choice. Think of this way, if the tagline of the project was “EstragonOS, a fake os made in godot”, would the disclaimer be so proeminent in the page? I think you know you are playing with fire, to make the disclaimer a larger font. It’s not…

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: GodotOS – Fake operating system interface made in the Godot engine

#79

Post by bee_rider »

popcar2 wrote: post #11
xeonmc wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would "desktop environment" be a more appropriate description?

Absolutely, but I feel like it's a technical term that might be hard to understand or advertise. When I explained the project to my non-technical friends before showing them, I told them "Ah, it's like an operating system" and they generally understood what I'm going for.

Is it a desktop environment in the Gnome or KDE sense? I didn’t see any third party programs in your trailer video so I guess you can only run your built-in “programs,” right? So I would say it is not really a desktop environment… I’m not sure what the technical definition is, but I must have something to do with acting as an environment to draw other programs.

Calling it a fake OS was, IMO, s great choice for avoiding confusion. Maybe something like Concept-OS or Desktop Environment Mockup could be good names if you want to be fancy.

How hard would it be to include a terminal emulator? You’d get a lot of functionality for free, there!

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