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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

#72
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :) )

Fair, but I was replying to this being a good example of modern C++. It's atypical that implementing your own vector and string is even a good idea, let alone exemplary.

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

#73
post #45

Get Actual Pixel Artists To Design The UI

I don't have the money to spend on that sort of thing. I do have a dreamer Patreon for the project, but it's all very modest :) I'll continue iterating on the look though. Here's a more recent demo that shows a bunch of pixel-related improvements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS56tlXFmEk

May I suggest using the Windows 2000 warm grey instead of the Windows 95 grey?

It does a lot to make the UI feel less dark

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

#75
post #51

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.

Surely OpenSTEP does this?

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

#76
post #8

Looks a lot like Linux with a fvwm95 interface on top. I mean, it's always great and so exciting to see something totally new being created from scratch! But you don't actually need to switch to some entirely homegrown, untested kernel for that 1990s UI fix! ;-)

One could always also throw together a virtual machine for running Windows 3.1 like I keep doing.

For most non-technical people, a Windows 3.1 type GUI is all they need.

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

#77

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

I loved the interface dearly. I miss MacOS classic and feel OSX is a step backwards in many ways, UX wise. But I don’t miss how primitive the OS itself was. Tracking down extension conflicts? Manually allocating memory? Cooperative multitasking? I’ll pass on those.

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

#78
post #27

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…

Awesome, this looks really exciting!

Will it be possible at some time to compile Qt based applications in SerenityOS?

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

#79
post #75
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Surely OpenSTEP does this?

[deleted]

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

#80
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :) )

Fair, but I was replying to this being a good example of modern C++. It's atypical that implementing your own vector and string is even a good idea, let alone exemplary.

The C++ stdlib versions of vectors have different design goals, including a bunch of ABI constraints for very old code (things like the vector specializations). Likewise there are questionable spec behaviors like unordered_map that specifies suboptimal implementation.
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