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RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

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Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#161

Post by oneplane »

creatonez wrote: post #70
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…

What should WIP software look like? There was a time when the 1998 beta for macOS, called Rhapsody, looked horrible and disjoint. There was also a time when the iPhone looked like this - https://i.imgur.com/wwH2UoF.jpg

That looks like it's SwitchBoard, not iOS. Users do not have access to the internal Apple test software.

As for Rhapsody, that looked decent, it had a similar vibe to A/UX where it looks like Mac OS Classic but runs Unix.

Perhaps you are referring to Kodiak or Cheetah, but those were pretty GUI-consistent at that time. Granted, up to Panther it was just Aqua and getting it to work consistently and performant, but I don't think it was ever in the state that this RavynOS is. That's mostly because NeXTStep as a foundation already had an existing GUI that was consistent.

RavynOS is having a bad presentation because it looks like some sort of odd partially-done theme based on CDE/Motif.

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#163

Post by giancarlostoro »

cristeigabriel wrote: post #100

It just looks bad. You want to be MacOS? Actually go and copy it, as close to pixel perfect as you fancy. I've personally experimented with replicating UIs using just a "device" object to a graphical API, so I know very well that it is possible. What prevents this project from just... going out and actually doing what they're trying to achieve? Take high resolution screenshots, carefully understand what's going on, a…

I would rather they just use KDE and make a nice skin that has a similar scheme to Apples. KDE looks sleek on its own, and then make keybindings as close to Apples as possible. Heck, KDE3 used to have a wizard that asked if you were more accustomed to Mac, Windows or Linux, and set your key bindings that way.

You can get insanely close with KDE, and KDE apps all follow a standard UI approach and the theming will transfer over. I'm pretty much convinced that the best DE is KDE for something full feature. If I had an OS with only the apps made for their respective Desktop Environments, KDE would be the winner for me, everything from games to code editors, browser(s?), and what have you.

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#164

Post by viraptor »

cristeigabriel wrote: post #155
LeFantome wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the pace they are going, they are years from a usable system. The screenshots you are looking at are from an abandoned approach to doing the GUI tech. The level of polish that you are advocating seems completely premature to the current level of development. This is not just a visual design shell. They are proposing a macOS mimic much more deeply at the OS level.

To advertise "finesse of macOS", you should deliver on that

You advertise what you're aiming for, not what you've just achieved. Do you really want some alpha level software with description "an app that draws some windows and sometimes doesn't crash", or do you want to know what the author has in mind for when it's finished?

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#165

Post by hnlmorg »

major505 wrote: post #29
hnlmorg wrote: post #24

Maybe this is just me but I never considered Apples approach to software installs to be elegant. And I’m not a fan of their unified menu bar (or most aspected of their desktop environment for that matter). What I’d love to see would be a whole new desktop environment for macOS (homebrew has its warts but is a “good enough” package manager for my day to day needs)

I do like it. Its easy to explain to my mom how this work because is what most users would consider a software install.

That makes it simple. It doesn’t make it elegant. And I certainly wouldn’t be getting anyone non-technical to run a FreeBSD/macOS hybrid that doesn’t support either platform fully.

Not taking anything away from this project, it’s looks really interesting. But it’s definitely not a mom and pop friendly platform.

Besides, since when have app stores been difficult to use? Package management doesn’t have to be CLI based.

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#166

Post by bigstrat2003 »

rollcat wrote: post #86
barbariangrunge wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think you're reading too much into it. Saying "if you aren't a programmer you might be able to help in various ways, including UX" isn't the same as saying "UX doesn't require any particular skills".

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#167

Post by FullyFunctional »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #163
cristeigabriel wrote: post #100

It just looks bad. You want to be MacOS? Actually go and copy it, as close to pixel perfect as you fancy. I've personally experimented with replicating UIs using just a "device" object to a graphical API, so I know very well that it is possible. What prevents this project from just... going out and actually doing what they're trying to achieve? Take high resolution screenshots, carefully understand what's going on, a…

I would rather they just use KDE and make a nice skin that has a similar scheme to Apples. KDE looks sleek on its own, and then make keybindings as close to Apples as possible. Heck, KDE3 used to have a wizard that asked if you were more accustomed to Mac, Windows or Linux, and set your key bindings that way. You can get insanely close with KDE, and KDE apps all follow a standard UI approach and the theming will tran…

The main thing I miss whenever I try yet-another mac-like skin is keybindings that actually work. I have decadeS of muscle memory, so when keyboard binding are different, I instantly bail. Now I understand why that's hard (this is all implemented individually by each app), but it's a non-starter without this.

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#168

Post by sunshine-o »

pipeline_peak wrote: post #141
sunshine-o wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember 20 years ago Gnome or even KDE were toys compared to the very structured but slow moving GNUStep. GNUStep was also hard to install (no rpms), ugly but very snappy. But nobody big put any money or devs on GNUStep. Even Sun invested in Gnome (!), what did not made sense at the time because they had invested in OpenStep & the whole thing was Java friendly (I believe Java was a first class citizen in early rel…

> I always wondered if it might have been because there were some legal risks... What was in it for Sun to invest in GNUStep? Jobs was always resistant towards supporting other platforms. So it’s clear OpenStep was the last attempt at making use of the dying Next line. I could maybe imagine a sales pitch scenario like “port your Mac apps to Solaris”. But when OSX came around, Cocoa was steered more towards the consum…

> What was in it for Sun to invest in GNUStep?

I'm saying that Sun needed an update to the old CDE and invested quite heavily in the development of Gnome to create their Java Desktop System [1] I believe it was a mistake for many reasons, nobody like JDS, the name itself was a lie and ultimately they just helped their competitor RedHat by turning GNOME into a serious project.

I believe Sun still had all the Lighthouse Design softwares that were made for NeXTSTEP [2] Jonathan Schwartz founded Lighthouse and actually joined Sun through the acquisition (!)

Anyway at that time the relationship between Sun & Apple had turned very bad & Steve Jobs threatened them when he saw the Looking Glass demo [2]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Desktop_System

[2] https://jonathanischwartz.wordpress.com/2010/03/09/good-arti...

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#169

Post by piperswe »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #147

I dont entirely understand what this is. I think this is an effort to create a skin, or graphics layer / window layer to FreeBSD that looks and feels like Apple. But then it says the project uses the Mach kernel. Does that mean that they have a version of FreeBSD running on top of the Mach kernel? That sounds cool. Are they creating a clone of Cocoa that will have the same interface as the original? Or is Cocoa a ope…

It's using FreeBSD's existing Linux compatibility layer, so it's less "building Linux compatibility" and more "making sure they don't break the existing Linux compatibility"

Re: RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD

#170

Post by giancarlostoro »

FullyFunctional wrote: post #167
giancarlostoro wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would rather they just use KDE and make a nice skin that has a similar scheme to Apples. KDE looks sleek on its own, and then make keybindings as close to Apples as possible. Heck, KDE3 used to have a wizard that asked if you were more accustomed to Mac, Windows or Linux, and set your key bindings that way. You can get insanely close with KDE, and KDE apps all follow a standard UI approach and the theming will tran…

The main thing I miss whenever I try yet-another mac-like skin is keybindings that actually work. I have decadeS of muscle memory, so when keyboard binding are different, I instantly bail. Now I understand why that's hard (this is all implemented individually by each app), but it's a non-starter without this.

It depends on how the app implements some event handlers, but yes you're correct, not all apps might honor the keybinding configuration. I think all KDE apps do.
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