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Urbit

urbit.org

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Re: Urbit

#21

Post by matildepark »

pickdenis wrote: post #8

Does anyone know how Urbit's solving the problem of being incredibly slow? It's running on a naively simple virtual machine and they claim that higher level operations can be abstracted and implemented in native code (called jets last time I heard) to make the overall execution time reasonable. Or, alternatively: Does anyone even actually use urbit? I tried once and it was so god damn slow it made me sad. It's so coo…

(Obvious disclosure that I work on the project.) Slow, like, literally the VM is slow? There's infrastructure work being done to rewrite the VM at the moment, though there's been some major work in the last six months on this front as well that personally have felt like night and day. Slow, like, the network is slow? There's an update going out shortly with a rewrite for Ames that makes it a bit easier to work on. There's a good blog post [1] our CTO put out on how the infrastructure cost this year has been predominantly on planning a very resilient stack, rewriting a lot of archaic code to be easier to modify by more than just a handful of kernel engineers, more pliant. I feel pretty confident about the performance in future.

[1]: https://urbit.org/blog/stable-arvo/

Re: Urbit

#23

Post by nootropicat »

ALittleLight wrote: post #15

I have seen Urbit a couple times but never really understood it. From the "Understanding Urbit" page - >Imagine that you can login from anywhere with one name and password. >And when you do, your entire OS appears. >Inside is your whole digital life. All of your communities, conversations, and connections. All of your biometric data and devices. Your entire personal archive in one place that’s secure, private, and de…

The part you buy is dns that runs on ethereum (iirc), but with artificial scarcity because they want to make money. This part is completely pointless, because the actual system could work as well on ens directly, or even dns.

The actual urbit is like docker with standard API for communication between all apps on different containers, but it runs on a lisp-machine like architecture, except instead of lisp there's a new esoteric language called Hoon.

If not for the scammy wealth extraction attempt with the name system, I would consider it to be in the same general category as TempleOS - a form of art.

Re: Urbit

#24

Post by ShamelessC »

I found the descriptions to be far too abstract and mysterious. I guess it gives the project a sort of cool hacker vibe, but I really just want a few screenshots of the interface of the actual OS. As it stands, I have no clue whether it's an actual operating system like Windows/Linux/MacOS or if it just vaguely fits the definition of an OS.

I've seen in other comments here that it's both an "Overlay OS" and a VM that you can supposedly run in the cloud or on your laptop. First, what exactly is an "overlay OS"? Am I understanding correctly that this would be running "on top of" an existing OS? Maybe something like the "Seamless mode" in virtual box? Second, how is it being virtualized?

Ultimately though, it looks cool, but I think just putting some screenshots front and center instead of abstract graphics explaining metaphors about the design would go a long way.

Re: Urbit

#25

Post by theamk »

ALittleLight wrote: post #15

I have seen Urbit a couple times but never really understood it. From the "Understanding Urbit" page - >Imagine that you can login from anywhere with one name and password. >And when you do, your entire OS appears. >Inside is your whole digital life. All of your communities, conversations, and connections. All of your biometric data and devices. Your entire personal archive in one place that’s secure, private, and de…

Urbit “planet” is like a VM, but running an OS developed completely independently from existing computing words. There is a custom language, a custom network layer, a custom cryptography and custom identity system. There are even custom words for common terms. This has no GUI, but it does has a web interface that you can connect to.

From the practical standpoint, you have a linux process running from a data directory. You run it, and the you can access it via CLI and via web interface (which also has a terminal-like webapp). It then uses regular IP to talk to other urbits in P2P fashion.

From what I could find, the whole thing is full of magic and pretty opaque - you are only supposed to interact with it by running it and typing commands there. In particular, you’d probably want to back it up. The only instructions I could find is to stop it and tar it up, and back up manually. Better do it often if you want your “digital life” to be safe.

Re: Urbit

#26

Post by whalesalad »

ShamelessC wrote: post #24

I found the descriptions to be far too abstract and mysterious. I guess it gives the project a sort of cool hacker vibe, but I really just want a few screenshots of the interface of the actual OS. As it stands, I have no clue whether it's an actual operating system like Windows/Linux/MacOS or if it just vaguely fits the definition of an OS. I've seen in other comments here that it's both an "Overlay OS" and a VM that…

Yeah, I’ve seen this movie before. It’s an art project.

Re: Urbit

#27

Post by pjior »

There are users in this thread that aren't fully disclosing that they work for Urbit, despite commenting about the software from a third-party perspective.

Just a heads up.

Re: Urbit

#28

Post by theamk »

ShamelessC wrote: post #24

I found the descriptions to be far too abstract and mysterious. I guess it gives the project a sort of cool hacker vibe, but I really just want a few screenshots of the interface of the actual OS. As it stands, I have no clue whether it's an actual operating system like Windows/Linux/MacOS or if it just vaguely fits the definition of an OS. I've seen in other comments here that it's both an "Overlay OS" and a VM that…

It is a VM as in JVM, not like a VirtualBox. This is a Linux app you run and it listens on a port; you use your browser to connect to it.

It was called “overlay os” because it reimplements a bunch of things traditionally provided by OSes. There is a peer to peer network layer, and a storage layer, and a way to execute code.

Re: Urbit

#29

Post by tomrod »

dang wrote: post #22

Many previous threads—good luck: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Thanks Dang! I've become interested in alternative forms of Internet due to the recent .Org/ICANN news. Is it okay that I post these (also posted gnunet)? I'm learning a lot from people's comments.

Re: Urbit

#30

Post by _8j50 »

The first step to a decentralized network is establishment of identity and authentication protocols and network anyone can use with ease. Everything else should be built upon that foundation.
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