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SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

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Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

#51

Post by akling »

userbinator wrote: post #41

Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity software and the power-user accessibility of late-2000s nix.* In other words, a Windows GUI with a Unix-like CLI? That's something I can certainly agree with --- Windows has traditionally been very lacking with its CLI, while the Unix-ish systems (including Linux) seem to be quite fragmented and awkward at GUIs. I also thought t…

Totally agree about Windows GUI's and Unix CLI's. Sprinkle some MacOS on there and you have my vision for Serenity.

All the fonts are hand-bitmapped by me, using the included FontEditor application. I was trying to construct the imaginary love-child of Tahoma and Fixed, so you are definitely on the right track there.

Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

#53

Post by nitrogen »

brodsky wrote: post #28
reaperducer wrote: post #25

I think this is an impressive achievement, and certainly something I could never do. But I'm a little disappointed in the state of desktop operating systems these days. I don't see any innovation. Every OS is just splashing chrome on the same WIMP paradigm that's been available to consumers for 35 years. Maybe I'm looking for the equivalent of a flying car, but I wish someone would come up with an OS, or even just an…

I know what you mean. but I'm also not sure what innovation can be expected from something as utilitarian as an OS. Do you have any ideas of what you'd want to see?

Boot up an old Linux distro from around 2001 and compare WindowMaker, AfterStep, Fluxbox, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, and half a dozen others. Compare those to fictional UIs seen in movies, Hypercard, visual development systems like the ancient Klik n Play or modern Scratch or MaxMSP, etc. Learn about OLE (object linking and embedding) and document-centric vs. app-centric computing. Think about all the different ways data can flow between components of a system and how those flows can be grouped differently. Look at alt and historic OSes like Be, TempleOS, SunOS, IRIX, DOS, VMS, OS/2, old UIs like Dosshell, Commander. Look at tablets vs phones vs desktops vs. game consoles vs appliances. Remember that bytes and bits and addresses and instructions and files and programs don't necessarily have to be the fundamental units of an OS.

Then, after all that, come back and tell us that a modern desktop is the utilitarian endgame of OS innovation :).

Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

#54

Post by fouc »

nineteen999 wrote: post #32
reaperducer wrote: post #25

I think this is an impressive achievement, and certainly something I could never do. But I'm a little disappointed in the state of desktop operating systems these days. I don't see any innovation. Every OS is just splashing chrome on the same WIMP paradigm that's been available to consumers for 35 years. Maybe I'm looking for the equivalent of a flying car, but I wish someone would come up with an OS, or even just an…

At the risk of sounding inflammatory (which is not my intention), what I'd like to see is the FP and RIIR crowds getting their hands dirty and write a hobby OS like this up to this level in their language of choice. If that means they need to assemble a stable ABI/API that other programmers can build against, then that's the challenge. C/C++ programmers have been building their own hobby OS's non-stop since Linux cam…

RIIR = Rewriting It In Rust for those that don't know

Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

#55

Post by akling »

bArray wrote: post #46
akling wrote: post #13

Hello friends, author here! Fun to see my project on HN again. If you would like to see the system in action, I did a demo video in March[1] and one in April[2]. I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about the system. I’m not an expert on operating systems, but I can be pretty productive :) [1] https://youtu.be/hE52D-zbX3g [2] https://youtu.be/RBr5If8GrM4

What's the future goal for this project? Will it ever reach a point where you say "it's done"? I quite like the idea of loading this onto an old laptop I have laying around for the purpose of using it as a distraction free portable editor (if it won't crash and lose everything). Now that you have networking and a compiler, you could build a "simple" package manager. It could be just a list of supported Git repositori…

The goal is basically open. I would like to make this system good enough that I can spend most of my time on it. Without losing track of the original ideas.

A package manager is definitely coming sooner or later. There's actually an SDL port in the works (done by a stellar contributor, not myself.) I suspect that we're gonna need some sort of ports system in the Serenity tree to be able to maintain it. :)

Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

#56

Post by iamnothere »

nineteen999 wrote: post #32
reaperducer wrote: post #25

I think this is an impressive achievement, and certainly something I could never do. But I'm a little disappointed in the state of desktop operating systems these days. I don't see any innovation. Every OS is just splashing chrome on the same WIMP paradigm that's been available to consumers for 35 years. Maybe I'm looking for the equivalent of a flying car, but I wish someone would come up with an OS, or even just an…

At the risk of sounding inflammatory (which is not my intention), what I'd like to see is the FP and RIIR crowds getting their hands dirty and write a hobby OS like this up to this level in their language of choice. If that means they need to assemble a stable ABI/API that other programmers can build against, then that's the challenge. C/C++ programmers have been building their own hobby OS's non-stop since Linux cam…

The Redox OS project is doing this, in Rust. https://www.redox-os.org/

Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

#57

Post by insulanus »

poisonarena wrote: post #2

34 year old here.. about every year I set up a whole OS 9 emulation deal because of my obsession with Mac OS 9, I dont know if I am sad and dwelling on the past, but I just loved that OS so much and keep trying to get back to it and I know I am not alone. I love to see projects like these

A lot of good stuff happened on OS 9. There wasn't a lot of extra cruft, because programmers had to use the whole machine to implement their vision.

Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

#59

Post by nineteen999 »

iamnothere wrote: post #56
nineteen999 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the risk of sounding inflammatory (which is not my intention), what I'd like to see is the FP and RIIR crowds getting their hands dirty and write a hobby OS like this up to this level in their language of choice. If that means they need to assemble a stable ABI/API that other programmers can build against, then that's the challenge. C/C++ programmers have been building their own hobby OS's non-stop since Linux cam…

The Redox OS project is doing this, in Rust. https://www.redox-os.org/

Yes I'm aware of this one as well. Although again, the GUI toolkit doesn't look like much yet compared to the example we're discussing. And this one is written by one guy, Redox not so much.

Great to see examples that are getting close though, although I think my point stands that they are nowhere near as numerous or complete as their C/C++ counterparts.

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