Does it run Skyrim?
Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
111–120 of 299 posts
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#112This is insane, I can't imagine how much work went into it. I had a similar idea as a kid, I was pissed at all the bloat consuming my cpu and ram on windows so I wanted to build my own os that would run a single app taking advantage of 100% of the hardware. I learned some assembly and managed to create a bootable floppy disk, then quickly gave up, realizing how much work a functioning os would take...
It's a lot of work. One guy pulled it off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
Yes, and several others since.
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#113Earlier 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?
Like beOS/Haiku does! Metadata and dynamic grouping of files + search is an amazing concept
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#114So 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…
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 from first principles here. You have the control to make sure all file changes go through the proper api and update the metadata to be as accurate as you like.
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#115Earlier 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"
> "how much space this will take if I copy it to other filesystem"
This is ambiguous between "how many bytes are all these files in total" and "how many bytes does it take to store a single copy of all these files on such-and-such file system (mostly the current one)". The latter can be different because of transparent compression, which is common on e.g. BTRFS.
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#116If 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/
I wasn't really that interested in this project from the website, but this video sold me. Super cool, wow!
Agreed, the video really impressed me. He mentioned that you can't delete files yet, I am wondering what the idea would be if you delete a file that is open in an app, change it to untitled in the app maybe ?
Very impressive, amazing amount of work went into it clearly.
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#117This is insane, I can't imagine how much work went into it. I had a similar idea as a kid, I was pissed at all the bloat consuming my cpu and ram on windows so I wanted to build my own os that would run a single app taking advantage of 100% of the hardware. I learned some assembly and managed to create a bootable floppy disk, then quickly gave up, realizing how much work a functioning os would take...
I did this in the mid-90s when this book came out:
https://www.amazon.com/Developing-32-Bit-Operating-System-Cd...
I knew x86 well from demo scene coding, and I had the Linux and NetBSD sources to help, but the hardest bit was just getting all the boot sector stuff going properly and getting the processor into 386 mode as soon as possible.
I wrote an entire OS that booted into a windowed GUI, multi-threaded, file system support etc, etc and my goal was the whole thing booting happily to the desktop in 4Mb of RAM from a 1.44Mb 3.5" floppy, which it did. Every line was written from scratch in x86 assembler, because I was a masochist like that.
I called it Tinkerbell, for reasons lost to time, and it was hosted at tinkerbell.org back when I owned that domain. I just checked archive.org but sadly they didn't grab it when it was around.
EDIT: 32-bit OS book and the source are here:
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#118This is insane, I can't imagine how much work went into it. I had a similar idea as a kid, I was pissed at all the bloat consuming my cpu and ram on windows so I wanted to build my own os that would run a single app taking advantage of 100% of the hardware. I learned some assembly and managed to create a bootable floppy disk, then quickly gave up, realizing how much work a functioning os would take...
I did this in the mid-90s when this book came out: https://www.amazon.com/Developing-32-Bit-Operating-System-Cd... I knew x86 well from demo scene coding, and I had the Linux and NetBSD sources to help, but the hardest bit was just getting all the boot sector stuff going properly and getting the processor into 386 mode as soon as possible. I wrote an entire OS that booted into a windowed GUI, multi-threaded, file sys…
[deleted]
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#119New OS’es are sorely needed IMHO.
Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch
#120So 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…
or the file manager showing when files are open On Windows and Linux this is not difficult, I believe; the functionality is already present in things like https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/hand... and lsof.
Again, it depends on how the application accessing the file is developed.
If your program just read to copy in memory then closes the file, waiting for the next save to reopen it, the OS can’t know on which file you are working. And this, i think, must be a pretty common implementation.