Joining the best of both worlds, i love it.
Kudos :)
SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
91–100 of 186 posts
Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
#92Looks 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! ;-)
I would rather use the original fvwm actually. :)
Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
#93I 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 don't see any innovation.
To me to Windows95 UI (not the OS) is peak productivity usability. All UI innovations that came later were just distractions except maybe tiling window managers and the "Exposé" function in Mac Os X which later was completely botched in Snow Leopard. At some point no further innovation is required.
I'd rather see innovation on another level: Do away with C and introduce a new programming language which gets rid of the need for a MMU or preemptive Multitasking at compile time.
Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
My blog is mostly just tech demos or tutorials with dry writing. I do think about the very deep unmet potential for technology often.
A 1995 book that somehow ended up in my old home town's public library called Tog On Software Design, describing a project at Sun to build a desktop of the future, was one influence as a kid. Definitely check out the celebrity endorsements on Amazon.
Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which looks like nextstep.
Does it, though? Windows 95: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#/media/File:Windows... vs Nextstep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_... Yeah they're both light grey, but other than that, they don't really look similar to me...
When comparing Windows 95 to other Operating Systems of its era (Windows 3.1, Mac OS 7.1/7.5 or OS/2) it becomes more apparent that they must have gotten inspired by NeXTSTEP.
Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
#96Hello 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
Does it run on real hardware? Any plans for 64 bit? Any plans for SMP? The old readme mentions a gcc patch. Is it still needed? What does it do? Just the final executable's format? Is there an FAQ somewhere that I missed? :)
I haven't tried running it on real hardware yet, I'm too comfortable with my VM-based workflow at the moment. It'll eventually get there though, but I'm not in a hurry. :)
The answer is basically the same for 64-bit and SMP support. Some day I'll wake up with the burning desire to implement those things, and then I'll start on it. Or someone will show up with patches. We'll see! Nothing really depends on those features, although they would certainly be huge improvements to the architecture.
Yeah we still need patches for binutils and GCC. Any custom operating system does, you can see the patches here: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Toolchain...
It's all about setting up the executable formats, providing the system names, and telling the compiler how we like things linked, etc.
There's no FAQ but maybe I should compile one..
Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
#97I 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…
Have you seen Plan 9?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs
Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
#98Why "unix-like" and not just Linux underneath, with the (really) cool 90s productivity software on top?
probably because that’s just not as fun, i would imagine a huge part of it is implementing everything from the low level to the high, and seeing how it all works together ^_^
Correct! It's fun to control the whole stack. And while I've been programming on POSIX systems for over 10 years, I've learned more about POSIX programming in the last year than in all the preceding years. There's no better way to understand something than to implement it.
And staying within a Unix-y paradigm means that if some part(s) become too good, they can be semi-easily ripped out and turned into portable libraries/programs instead.
Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
#99I 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.
> I purposely got myself a lower resolution monitor (in 4:3) so the bitmapped fonts I use are easier to see.
Unless you use a CRT, i'd recommend to get a 1366x768 monitor with a VA panel. The low DPI makes pixels look crisp, if you game you'll get great performance even with low end hardware while you'll be able to play a lot of older games in a natively supported resolution (1024x768, centered) without UI issues and (the reason for VA) you get deep blacks (not as deep as OLED but certainly better than the washed out garbage you get with IPS panels) which are great on both movies and games. The main negative of VA is low refresh, but unless you are playing competitive games you should be fine.
If you use a CRT, then carry on. Although note that those guns wont live forever and they do wear out. I use mine only on the occasion i want to play some old 2D game that simply doesn't work with anything other than its "native" resolution.
Re: SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
#100Earlier 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 :) )
Anything that ever ran on Serenity must continue running, otherwise I've failed. :P
There are some parts of the code where I don't want to depend on anything other than the C++ language. Some folks are working on porting parts of this to some very constrained platforms, and bringing in boost or even STL would really gum things up.
But let's also be honest: It's fun making string and vector classes, and designing them to work just the way I like. :)