Gives me very strong BeOS vibes.
Stronger than Haiku? https://www.haiku-os.org/
I've never used the original: Is there a difference between BeOS vibes and Haiku vibes?
Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
61–70 of 299 posts
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#62This is an amazing piece of work, but it's clearly a labor of love: this isn't going to have any real-world use any time soon. Where operating systems are headed is more towards security (process isolation, bulletproof input etc), not lightweight GUIs on top of thin kernels like this. Are there any passion (or other) projects that explore this? I know about Qubes, but that's more like a heavy layer on top of a heavy…
There was SubgraphOS which used namespaces, but it seems pretty dead. Qubes is the best and most currently complete thing i've seen (In the last couple years its also made progress supporting GPU domain). Its not perfect and has some controversial opinions like default passwordless sudo in VMs, but it is still far ahead of most distro's security. For me Qubes 4.1 performs well though I have it on an m.2 and have plen…
> There was SubgraphOS which used namespaces, but it seems pretty dead.
Knowing nothing more than what you've just told me: That doesn't sound like a bad thing, IMO; if you're using that kind of system, you probably care a lot about security, and I'm not sure I'd trust a shared-kernel system against malicious code. (I appreciate that other people may make that trade-off very differently)
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#63What is a "desktop operating system"? Why do you need to reinvent operating system when all you create is a (rather traditional looking) desktop environment?
> Why do you need to reinvent operating system when all you create is a (rather traditional looking) desktop environment?
Because a lot of the things they're doing are vanishingly unlikely to work on an existing system. (I discussed my breakdown of whether features could be portable more above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29952283)
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
Modern filesystems that use CoW will share data between files even without any hard links.
Then you get into semantic arguments: If a directory contains 2 1GB files, does the user care that 99% of their blocks are shared, or that just an under-the-hood implementation detail, and the user wants to know that there are 2GB worth of files in there?
Really, there should be two file sizes: "how much space this will take if I copy it to other filesystem" and "how much space will be freed if I delete this"
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then you get into semantic arguments: If a directory contains 2 1GB files, does the user care that 99% of their blocks are shared, or that just an under-the-hood implementation detail, and the user wants to know that there are 2GB worth of files in there?
Really, there should be two file sizes: "how much space this will take if I copy it to other filesystem" and "how much space will be freed if I delete this"
Well, three, "how many bytes do I get if I open it and read all the bytes out". Or maybe four, how many bytes do I get if I open it and read all bytes which aren't holes (ie. how many bytes do I need to put into an archive that supports sparse files) :)
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#66So first off: Very cool. Amazingly polished, and self-hosting! Especially since it looks to be an actually-independent project with POSIX as an optional compat layer. I feel like the features that are unique are mostly in 3 groups: 1. Features that shouldn't be unique to this system. Tabbed windows have occasionally happened on other systems, and probably should become more common, and there's no reason it shouldn't…
> Programs updating file name when you rename from the file manager
Doesn't inotify provide move events that allow that?
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#67So first off: Very cool. Amazingly polished, and self-hosting! Especially since it looks to be an actually-independent project with POSIX as an optional compat layer. I feel like the features that are unique are mostly in 3 groups: 1. Features that shouldn't be unique to this system. Tabbed windows have occasionally happened on other systems, and probably should become more common, and there's no reason it shouldn't…
What’s the state of the art for file systems in the age of M2 drives that are bonkers fast? I dunno about everyone else, but knowing hierarchically where my disk space is going is a really common concern.
I would imagine, the “m2 fast” is visible more in reading medium sized files than 100k tiny reads (when recursively querying directories like this case GP is taking about)
To make GP’s use case better, FS really needs an custom index or require that every write also update all hierarchy. Unless of course they work like indexers and just work with delayed data
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#68"No tasks run in the background"
This.
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#69> * Graphics: BGA and SVGA.
...BGA?