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Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

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Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#291

Post by tekknik »

pshirshov wrote: post #279
tekknik wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And we will continue reading about lifes ruined by bugs and people killed by exploits. There is no sustainable future with unsafe foundation. Really? people die because of c++? it’s pretty hard to take the rust crew seriously if this is the point of view.

They do. At least some zero-days were used by some state actors to track, detain and kill people. Also I don't like Rust.

I’d like to see some links showing remote exploits. Rust doesn’t protect against anything if the attacker has local access.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#292

Post by fsflover »

the_biot wrote: post #25

This 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…

> I know about Qubes, but that's more like a heavy layer on top of a heavy duty GUI

Actually Qubes has relatively small CPU overhead due to its utilization of hardware VT-d virtualization. RAM usage is huge though. Source: using it as my daily driver.

I wonder if I can have a Qubes VM with Essence working.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#293

Post by cxr »

dmitriid wrote: post #241
sedan_baklazhan wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately I was tryong to understand the exact reason "why". Why are modern browsers so ridiculously complicated? Rendering a (albeit confusing) content is a PDF-like kind of job (or am I wrong?) What is the exact complexity here (except for JS compiler, which is again just a compiler)?

> What is the exact complexity here There are hundreds of standards spanning thens of thousands of pages. Some of them are obsolete, some of them are not, most of them interact with each other in complex and non-obvious ways. An attempt to measure the scope is here: https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.... And that's before we get to things like Javascript or WASM. Another measure is the count…

> An attempt to measure the scope is here: https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope....

The methodology used there is horrendously bad. Drew's smart, so it's hard to conclude that this isn't intentional just so he can pump up the numbers and tell cute stories like the one about Wikipedia's list of longest novels. (Not to mention, an overabundance of specification of correct behavior isn't what makes implementation hard, it's trying to match the undefined behavior that everyone else follows without having a spec that makes things hard.) Any serious attempt to measure the scope of what browsers actually implement is pretty straightforward, so there's no real excuse: you start with the the HTML5 spec and then go from there.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#294

Post by alxndr »

CRConrad wrote: post #239
zoom6628 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "tag every... file I create ... with some spur-of-the-moment searchword"

isn't that kind of what we are already doing with the names used in the directory hierarchy + the filename?

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#295

Post by CRConrad »

alxndr wrote: post #294
CRConrad wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> "tag every... file I create ... with some spur-of-the-moment searchword" isn't that kind of what we are already doing with the names used in the directory hierarchy + the filename?

No, I just create files. I don't have to do any tagging at all.

Or: Yes, in a way that's what the hierarchical directory structure already does for us.

In either case: So what's the use of ripping out the hierarchical directory structure and replacing it with some (other) "tagging" system???

(We already have a universal "tagging" system that automatically uses every single word in every single file as a searchable "tag"; it's called "grep"...)

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#296

Post by joshspankit »

pmarreck wrote: post #255
native_samples wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have, no? GNOME/KDE have supported SVG icons for years, the themes are usually vector based. I don't think there are necessarily many bitmaps in a default modern GNOME install. For macOS the reason is simple and deliberate: it's much easier for artists to make beautiful icons as bitmaps. They can use Photoshop and not just vector editors. Given that screen resolutions increase at a somewhat slow and predictable…

You can store anything painted on a computer in a vector format and just rasterize it at will, no?

You definitely can

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#297

Post by pmarreck »

joshspankit wrote: post #296
pmarreck wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can store anything painted on a computer in a vector format and just rasterize it at will, no?

You definitely can

Like, I almost want to say that vector should be the native format for anything created on a computer, even in "paint" programs (which might for example cache a rasterized version too)

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#298

Post by pmarreck »

Lammy wrote: post #167
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…

RE: tabbed windows, try Stardock's "Groupy" if you're on Windows: https://www.stardock.com/products/groupy/ This was going to be built in to Windows 10 v1903 as "Sets" but it got pulled: https://www.howtogeek.com/352109/how-to-use-sets-in-windows-...

I've been using "Files" on Windows, works great!

https://www.microsoft.com/store/productId/9NGHP3DX8HDX

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#299

Post by joshspankit »

pmarreck wrote: post #297
joshspankit wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You definitely can

Like, I almost want to say that vector should be the native format for anything created on a computer, even in "paint" programs (which might for example cache a rasterized version too)

Agreed whole-heartedly
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