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Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

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Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#231

Post by Stevvo »

yiyus wrote: post #222
Santosh83 wrote: post #189

So many interesting/fascinating concepts and ideas that will remain relegated to niche communities because of basically one problem: lack of drivers. This is the problem that must be solved if we ever want to move away from the dominance of a few OSes "too big to fail" and their million compromises to a thriving field where competent programmers can create new OSes as easily as now they can create new apps.

This used to be the case but, nowadays, there is a second problem, which is lack of web browser. Now, in addition to deal with present and future hardware, you need to deal with present and future web technologies, or your OS will not succeed. This makes it more difficult for amateur OS designers. All this said, it makes me very happy that some people are brave enough to keep trying.

Sure, you need to keep up with it the rest of the world. You used to have to include a C compiler with your OS. When was the last time Windows came with a C compiler?

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#232

Post by lambdaba »

yiyus wrote: post #222
Santosh83 wrote: post #189

So many interesting/fascinating concepts and ideas that will remain relegated to niche communities because of basically one problem: lack of drivers. This is the problem that must be solved if we ever want to move away from the dominance of a few OSes "too big to fail" and their million compromises to a thriving field where competent programmers can create new OSes as easily as now they can create new apps.

This used to be the case but, nowadays, there is a second problem, which is lack of web browser. Now, in addition to deal with present and future hardware, you need to deal with present and future web technologies, or your OS will not succeed. This makes it more difficult for amateur OS designers. All this said, it makes me very happy that some people are brave enough to keep trying.

Mozilla should finance something like this and make an OS. Call it Firefox OS. Oh, wait

But in all seriousness I would use a Chrome OS made by Mozilla with a daring new interface (tabs everywhere!), unixy with a brand new text shell, etc.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#233

Post by mysterydip »

torginus wrote: post #193
Santosh83 wrote: post #189

So many interesting/fascinating concepts and ideas that will remain relegated to niche communities because of basically one problem: lack of drivers. This is the problem that must be solved if we ever want to move away from the dominance of a few OSes "too big to fail" and their million compromises to a thriving field where competent programmers can create new OSes as easily as now they can create new apps.

I wonder if this could be solved by picking a widely available but fairly stable platform for it - like a Raspberry Pi, and making sure it works there. Atm, it seems like it's an x86-based OS, so I'm not sure how difficult would it be to port it to ARM.

This is a really good idea. If I was making a hobby OS (someday!), this is the route I would choose.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#234

Post by brnt »

zoom6628 wrote: post #99
thom wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good point but likewise one has to wonder why the need for folder hierarchies anyway. With bonkers fast disks and cpus the organising of files should be able to be dynamic and driven by some form of metadata and tags rather than static tree structures. The web doesn’t first require you to define a structure before search so why should a desktop?

Because spacetime is hierarchical in that way too. I can put a thing in a box in a room, but I can't put the thing in multiple boxes in various rooms. The filesystem thus makes intuitive sense: we store physical objects in exactly the same way.

Now sure, it'd be nice to grep through my house, but I still couldn't hang the same painting in two places at the same time.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#235

Post by cryptonector »

ninjanomnom wrote: post #114
cryptonector wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your examples of (2) and (3) have nothing to do with the desktop, really, or, rather, they are about things that one could see reflected in the desktop if only they were feasible at much lower layers. "total size of subdirectories" is basically impossible as long as there are hardlinks. But hardlinks are useful, so. Even w/o hardlinks, if you have anything like ZFS snapshots and clones then you have multiple kinds of…

You're assessing the feasibility here making the assumption that a polling pattern would be used but this is exactly what an event based pattern is perfect for. As long as files are modified through the os you can propagate changes upwards and only update folder metadata when required. This is what the parent meant by moving the cost upfront. If your only option is polling you're right but we're talking abou an os fr…

There's a lot more to it than that. For example, two links to a file in the same directory shouldn't count as doubling the space it consumes in that directory nor all its parents -- that's an easy case to consider, but there are others that are much harder.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#236

Post by phendrenad2 »

pshirshov wrote: post #228
phendrenad2 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust is an ugly language that is not fun to use. There is one OS written in it (Redox) and it's progress is very slow. It's actually less work to audit C++ code manually to find memory unsafety than it is to use Rust and get that safety "for free". Sorry to say these things out loud.

> Rust is an ugly language that is not fun to use. There is one OS written in it (Redox) and it's progress is very slow Yes, you are right. We need to invest lot more resources into that. And we need languages better than Rust. > It's actually less work to audit C++ code manually to find memory unsafety Nope, you are fundamentally wrong. And every new zeroday shows that you are wrong.

Zero-days only show that someone wasn't willing to put in the effort to audit the C++ code. If they won't do that, how will they put in the effort to write it in Rust?

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#237

Post by CRConrad »

swiftcoder wrote: post #209
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #12

So 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…

> Features that only work if you have really tight integration ... Programs updating file name when you rename from the file manager ... Even systems like MacOS are going to struggle MacOS has actually had this one in the bag for a couple of decades now (likely due to their really tight integration).

Doesn't even Windows do that? Rename a file in File Explorer, and the app that has it open pops up a dialogue saying "File So-and-so has been renamed.", or some such. But maybe that's because the app has to do the work of keeping track of it (though probably via hooks into the OS / Explorer), so it's not fully automatic? Can't recall if all apps do it, think I've only noticed it in a few.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#238

Post by abnercoimbre »

tzot wrote: post #183
abnercoimbre wrote: post #79

If you want a fleshed out demo [0], we had the author present at our conference recently. Worth a watch. [0] https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/

This video is already included in the web page under the “Watch a demonstration of the system running on real hardware. Recorded in October 2021.” paragraph.

Don't think it was there until I mentioned it to the author :) The demo is under a CC license -- he graciously updated the site to reference this one.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#239

Post by CRConrad »

zoom6628 wrote: post #99
thom wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Good point but likewise one has to wonder why the need for folder hierarchies anyway. With bonkers fast disks and cpus the organising of files should be able to be dynamic and driven by some form of metadata and tags rather than static tree structures. The web doesn’t first require you to define a structure before search so why should a desktop?

So I'd have to tag every one of the umpteen files I create (in some session doing whatever) with some spur-of-the-moment searchword I'll never remember later, in stead of just cd-ing to some directory and that's where they'll all be?

It's funny how all these anti-directory tag-and-search proponents seem to take for granted that their hobbyhorse is obviously superior. I've never seen any proof that it is, and I don't think it is.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#240

Post by abnercoimbre »

bmitc wrote: post #212
abnercoimbre wrote: post #79

If you want a fleshed out demo [0], we had the author present at our conference recently. Worth a watch. [0] https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/

Just a note that the same video is already on the linked website.

Author said he'll update the site to reference this conference link. The demo is under a CC license and we want people to easily download it.
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