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RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

ravynos.com

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Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#81

Post by 9dev »

henriquez wrote: post #42
blackhaz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an OS finesse?

It appears like they’ve aped some of MacOS design language, but it’s clear they’re engineers, not designers. There’s enough “uncanny valley” between this OS and actual modern Apple UI design that it comes off a bit like all those versions of KDE that tried to look and act exactly like Windows XP and always felt a bit “off.” Their screenshots page is a Frankenstein mess of poor font quality and Apple themes mixed toge…

> IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to Linux.

It may not be perfect, but it’s pretty darn good - as especially visible when comparing to this effort presented here. There’s a lot of detail and polish in MacOS interface design and UX people don’t realise until it’s missing.

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#82

Post by steve1977 »

alpaca128 wrote: post #67
fragebogen wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My interpretation would be that it's about the same level of polish ux/ui-wise as macOS. As with OP, unfortunately I don't see it either - the screenshots show some resemblance with macOS but without any of the finesse.

It's not completed yet. The features are listed under the section "project goals" and the download button has a note calling it a developer preview image. In my experience with some Linux distros goals alone don't necessarily work out, but the approach with trying to be compatible with actual Mac OS apps is already more notable than an Ubuntu reskin.

It will never be completed. GNUstep has been failing at that for decades already.

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#83

Post by maipen »

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #62

Abandonware? Last release was June 2022.

Most of OS are doomed from the start. It's a waste of everybodys time, except for those that build these systems and learn about OS development.

We don't need a new OS, much less one trying to compete with Mac (lol, no chance).

What we need is for the popular ones to continuously improve.

Windows 11 is better than 10 and 7 and vista and xp... (yes I skipped 8)

Most people that work in tech use Mac or windows, some use linux but they are small yet mighty.

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#84

Post by steve1977 »

henriquez wrote: post #42
blackhaz wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an OS finesse?

It appears like they’ve aped some of MacOS design language, but it’s clear they’re engineers, not designers. There’s enough “uncanny valley” between this OS and actual modern Apple UI design that it comes off a bit like all those versions of KDE that tried to look and act exactly like Windows XP and always felt a bit “off.” Their screenshots page is a Frankenstein mess of poor font quality and Apple themes mixed toge…

> IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to FreeBSD.

Fixed that for you…

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#85

Post by steve1977 »

9dev wrote: post #81
henriquez wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It appears like they’ve aped some of MacOS design language, but it’s clear they’re engineers, not designers. There’s enough “uncanny valley” between this OS and actual modern Apple UI design that it comes off a bit like all those versions of KDE that tried to look and act exactly like Windows XP and always felt a bit “off.” Their screenshots page is a Frankenstein mess of poor font quality and Apple themes mixed toge…

> IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to Linux. It may not be perfect, but it’s pretty darn good - as especially visible when comparing to this effort presented here. There’s a lot of detail and polish in MacOS interface design and UX people don’t realise until it’s missing.

And that’s exactly what I would call „finesse“

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#86

Post by rollcat »

barbariangrunge wrote: post #76
rollcat wrote: post #58

It's nice that more people in the FOSS community take note of macOS's design and (historically, at least) attention to detail. However, this project (judging by the screenshots, which is how everyone is going to judge you if you claim to be inspired by Apple's work), they're already making serious (but fixable) mistakes: https://ravynos.com/images/ravyn_0.4.0_pre_desktop.png > - What the actual heck is that window bo…

The aspiration to be on par is cool and over time, hopefully they pull it off. But it probably comes down to them having some dedicated graphic designers and Ux designers (and an audio person would be nice too), and foss projects have historically done poorly at recruiting those people.

Agree, it's right in the FAQ:

> I don't code but this looks awesome! Can I still help?

> Absolutely! There will be art, documentation, testing, UX and UI work, [...].

I read this and immediately think the project sees UX as "I can't write code ell oh ell". You need to treat a UX role the same way you treat a kernel hacker role - it's a specialist whose input you must respect, or be left to deal with the consequences.

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#87

Post by I_Am_Nous »

latexr wrote: post #23
krylon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like either name as well, but if it does what it is meant to do, I won't mind.

It’s not just a case of liking names, they should also be functional ¹ in terms of spreadability. If this OS eventually does what it is meant to do, I will want to tell people about it and get them to try it. When making a recommendation in a social setting, there’s a tiny window to get the other person interested in whatever you’re suggesting they watch/play/try. If the name is hard to understand, difficult to remem…

I agree with you in this instance, as early adoption for a project like this relies on people being able to find it and the more people who do and try it, the more testing is done to improve the entire project. I'm reminded of my time on helpdesk when getting people to click on the browser bar was nearly impossible and it basically didn't matter how I asked them to do it. Either they would click into their search bar or they would somehow append the URL to their homepage URL. I learned that my intentions and efforts to do something a certain way don't matter at all if someone else is incapable of doing something I think they can do.

This name is the same way. If someone searches for RavenOS there's another project named that[1]. If they don't see that, they will probably be redirected to RaveOS[2], see "ah cryptocurrency mining" and then back out. Finally, if they miss both of those, there is an Android ROM called Raven OS[3] they might also find. No matter their intention, if people can't find it easily after it being mentioned in conversation it will be harder to grow.

1. https://github.com/raven-os 2. https://raveos.com/ 3. https://techkaran.co.in/2022/02/20/official-android-12-raven...

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#88

Post by hedora »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #41

Meh macOS is more than shiny traffic lights buttons on your windows, global menus, and dock. It's also a clipboard that works everywhere and not like "oh you cannot do this because X11 this or wayland that", it's also human interface guidelines (the old ones, the new ones are unparseable shit) that make bloody sure that the OK/Cancel buttons appear where you expect them to appear. It's also some bloody keyboard short…

You are describing MacOS 9.

The ribbon had all the settings for the OS, and was always a click away. Finder worked out of the box. These days, copy-paste is hit or miss, and the window manager can’t be reliably controlled via the keyboard.

Also, even in first party apps, keyboard shortcuts are completely inconsistent. Command-0 no longer reliably restores the main window. In maps, Command-L doesn’t focus the location bar like it does in safari; it repositions the map to your GPS location.

Even the keyboard is a shitshow. Notes aggressively autocorrects technical terms to random words on the latest MacOS, but nothing else does, and I can’t find the second “turn off autocorrect” setting that it must be using instead of the OS-wide one (which is definitely disabled).

Current OS X’s UI and filesystem layout are a cruel parodies of OS 9. It’s like a bunch of Shoggoths or an army of slightly better LLMs tried to recreate OS 9, borg-style.

Apple mostly adds software features by acquiring stuff, storyboarding UIs, demoing a prototype to an exec, and then shipping it, so I guess that’s how it got so weird.

Anyway, I wouldn’t say the result has finesse.

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#90

Post by hedora »

gumballindie wrote: post #8

Well done for runining my weekend! I will give it a try. However, still struggling with NVidia drivers on FreeBSD. For the life of me I can't get them to work.

This is why I switched to AMD video cards. NVIDIA was always flaky under Linux. I finally got a working setup, and then they stopped backporting new OpenGL features to the binary blob drivers for it, breaking all sorts of stuff.

CUDA is a big advantage for NVIDIA, but I don’t use it. Similarly, NVIDIA hardware tends to be a half a generation ahead. Whatever. The AMD drivers are open source, in kernel tree, and reliable over time.

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