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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

#61

Post by nanis »

akling wrote: post #27
newsbinator wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10% of this is knowing in advance what UI/UX paradigms you're matching/mimicking. The original developers had to come up with the concept of, say, a taskbar from scratch. They understood it has to run separately from other parts of the OS in case of crashes, it should support icons that are references to the same icons that windows have, etc. But they were also limited by the resources of their day, and had to get cl…

You are absolutely right about the benefits of mimicking existing UI paradigms. It saves so much time already knowing basically how I want things to look and work. And not having to worry as much about resources as people did in the past is a huge load off. (Although I do all my development with 128MB of RAM or less, because I enjoy that sort of challenge..) Serenity is an unapologetic remix/mash-up of all the things…

> I do all my development with 128MB of RAM or less, because I enjoy that sort of challenge

I remember being excited that I was able to splurge on a 486 with 4 Mb RAM.

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

#62

Post by hestefisk »

pizlonator wrote: post #36
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

This is seriously awesome work. Productive is an understatement, damn.

Second that statement. I don’t know how you have time or money to develop something mine this. Shock and awe!

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

#63

Post by olliej »

humanrebar wrote: post #24
Koshkin wrote: post #16

Also, a good example of a clean modern C++ code.

Mostly. A good portion of the AK subdirectory should be replaced with standard and/or boost functionality, though: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/9153666e72effdf5...

Presumably the intent is not to depend on boost, but rather only standardized parts of the language.

Also using something like boost ties you to a specific version of boost due to the wonders of c++ abi - your OS libraries can’t expose anything that explicitly or implicitly includes things that aren’t ABI stable.

(I’m sure kling is already requiring 100% stable abi :) )

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

#64

Post by gjs278 »

educomments wrote: post #31
nonbirithm wrote: post #30

I love the aesthetic of 90's/00's desktop interfaces and use bb4win and openbox to recreate the look. It's too bad everything is so much flatter and antialiased in most recent operating systems. I purposely got myself a lower resolution monitor (in 4:3) so the bitmapped fonts I use are easier to see. I wonder if there's a WM that can mimic the look of old versions of GNOME/KDE more closely.

openbox + fbpanel can approximate early gnome pretty closely with a tiny bit of work.

I prefer fluxbox but that work too

rox filer for the file manager and shortcuts and it’s pretty nice

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

#65

Post by logicprog »

I would so love to contribute to this! I love the layout, aesthetic, and the approach to the internals that you've taken; I would use this in a heartbeat to be honest.

Unfortunately although I know C++ I don't really know much about OSdev. If there's any way I can help, I have a few months of free time (summer break) that I'm looking to fill!

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

#67

Post by somatic »

nitrogen wrote: post #53
brodsky wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This strikes me as profound and I would like to hear more.

Do you have other writings?

Are there any books about this?

Do you think about this often?

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

#68

Post by iamnothere »

nineteen999 wrote: post #59
iamnothere wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

True, although I'd personally rather see a focus on getting the backend right -- I think that's what Redox is focusing on. There are many options for "pretty" frontends, especially on Linux, but there are very few OSes out there with a decent approach to security. (Rust's inherent safety should help with that, although it's not magic security fairy dust by any means.)

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

#69

Post by la_barba »

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…

Under the hood, there is already a very very long list covering those 35 years.. virtual memory, pre-emptive multitasking, micro kernels, mandatory and discretionary access control, advancements in file systems, system administration, etc, etc

As far as the UI is concerned, are you talking about increased productivity or just looking for the wow factor? I'm not convinced a change in UI paradigms is necessary for what people use computers for. Touch UIs are OK for consumption, but I feel severely handicapped without a keyboard/mouse when doing any moderately involved task. Email - slow, chat - slow, browsing - slow, file/photo/document management - slooow, content creation - slow, gaming - okay, programming - heh.

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

#70

Post by vips7L »

tyingq wrote: post #23
Aeolun wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whenever I see these kinds of videos, I’m struck by how much time and work it must have taken to be able to announce a new slider component. From the state a month ago, it’s very reasonable. From scratch however... How do you even start building an OS?

"How do you even start building an OS?" Probably not the answer you wanted, but I assume from a poc/toy bootloader. I wasn't disciplined enough to go further, but I did play around getting a toy OS working, and stopped a little bit past that part. This effort, from a one man show, is amazing.

I decided I wanted to try this about a year ago.

So far I've learned C [0], x86 asm [1], read OSTEP [2] and begun hacking on xv6 ...and I still feel like I have years to go.

[0] http://www.knking.com/books/c2/index.html

[1] http://opensecuritytraining.info/

[2] http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~remzi/OSTEP/

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