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Airyx OS

airyx.org

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Re: Airyx OS

#151

Post by throw0101a »

fluxem wrote: post #49

Pretty interesting project. However, who really wants a "global menu bar". It made sense for the original mac, when people just used one app at a time. And it's left in the current MacOS for legacy reasons. But now people usually have multiple 27" monitors. So, instead of having menus where the app is, you need to move the mouse all the way to the top and then back. Im not sure why anyone would want to replicate it.

> However, who really wants a "global menu bar". It made sense for the original mac, when people just used one app at a time.

Please still use one app at a time. Try examining what most people actually do: they hit maximize on each app and fill the screen.

People that tile windows are the exception from my experience.

> But now people usually have multiple 27" monitors.

[citation needed]

I'd be curious to see what the numbers are. How many people in call centres have that? How many accounting and HR departments?

Re: Airyx OS

#152

Post by scns »

martian42 wrote: post #120
endofreach wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The „good thing“ is, that Apple seems to be heading in wrong directions. So yes, it will be behind. Until suddenly it stops following and have it‘s own direction. It is way overdue for a change in the ecosystem again. There should be more choices for the average user. I urge everyone who has some demanded skills to get involved in projects like this. It is time.

What wrong directions you're referring to?

Design über alles? Form over function? Butterfly keyboard? Jobs may not be in my list of favourite people but i think he had a good sense what works.

Re: Airyx OS

#153

Post by codetrotter »

Conan_Kudo wrote: post #128
atombender wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of interest, why can't file system implementations be portable? A shared core that exists as a library that can be tested in userland, and which can then be used by a lightweight shim that implements the kernel-facing interfaces. But I haven't seen any file systems implemented this way.

The irony is that most of the newer ones in Linux are written that way, just nobody writes a FUSE binding to them. For example, both Btrfs and XFS contain fully functional pure-userspace implementations of the filesystem inside their userspace code (libbtrfs and libxfs both contain the complete filesystem code), but nobody has written a FUSE binding to either. Btrfs' implementation is even used to do most of the func…

FUSE is neat for one-off access to obscure file systems, and FUSE is usable for things like sshfs for those who use that, but it is my impression from having used FUSE myself that FUSE does come with a noticeable performance penalty. Is my perception wrong on this? Because if it is not then I’d be hesitant to use a system where the main storage was relying on FUSE.

Re: Airyx OS

#154

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

foerbert wrote: post #26
DanAtC wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ubuntu's Unity was a lot more macOS-like with the default global menu bar, then they gave up on it :( Gnome doesn't even have a menu bar anymore, preferring apps use a single hamburger menu.

Wow. I believe you, but I really don't want to. I always figured that whole branch of design came out of dealing with mobile limitations, with some amount of side benefit from more screen space to do useless but flashy things to make the boss/client happy. Why would you ever go that route for a general purpose desktop?

Because modern UX designers consider users their enemy. It's the only explanation I've heard that fits all the data.

Re: Airyx OS

#155

Post by StevePerkins »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #90

No screenshots for a GUI-centric OS? Seriously?

The OS doesn't exist today. Mostly likely it never will. Like half of the projects posted to HN, this is "aspirational". A landing page for a project that someone would sure like to do.

Re: Airyx OS

#156

Post by wott »

spijdar wrote: post #34
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> source compatibility with macOS applications (i.e. you could compile a Mac application on Airyx and run it) Hard to see how this can be done legally. The libraries (sorry, Frameworks) that make up the user-space runtime for macOS are all proprietary. There's no replacement for the most important parts of it.

Sure there are (for some definition of "most important parts). Take a look at GNUstep for a start. Some MacOS frameworks like WebKit are also open sourced from Apple itself. As an example of how this works in practice, the disassembler/decompiler Hopper has both MacOS and Linux versions that are compiled from the same code. Now, how successful they'll be extending the open source frameworks to made this useful in com…

> Sure there are (for some definition of "most important parts). Take a look at GNUstep for a start.

I was following and trying to use GNUstep 15 years ago, and they were constantly chasing a moving target and were not managing to catch up. (Plus naturally the reimplementation bugs, plus the differences in interpretation of the "spec" which forced the programmer to be very careful and not take shortcuts.)

That's the huge issue when you are trying to reproduce an API which is not under your control by any mean, and is still alive and changing.

Re: Airyx OS

#157

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

shapefrog wrote: post #59

This reminds me of vegan bacon. If you dont want to eat meat, why try and replicate the taste, texture and sensation of eating meat? If you dont want to use macOS, why try and replicate the taste, texture and sensation of using macOS?

> If you dont want to eat meat, why try and replicate the taste, texture and sensation of eating meat?

Because the taste and texture of meat are pretty great, it's just that whole "raising and killing a sentient being" thing that's the problem.

The argument for something like Airyx is pretty similar: there are things to like about MacOS and things to not like about it, and it'd be great to get an alternative that has fewer negatives.

Re: Airyx OS

#158

Post by mvanbaak »

ericwooley wrote: post #60
saagarjha wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, building software for iOS is possible on other platforms although this is against the terms of the Apple developer agreement.

> this is against the terms of the Apple developer agreement. Of course it is Heaven forbid we have any choices at all.

Nobody is forcing you to make ios apps

Re: Airyx OS

#159

Post by lapinot »

codetrotter wrote: post #153
Conan_Kudo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony is that most of the newer ones in Linux are written that way, just nobody writes a FUSE binding to them. For example, both Btrfs and XFS contain fully functional pure-userspace implementations of the filesystem inside their userspace code (libbtrfs and libxfs both contain the complete filesystem code), but nobody has written a FUSE binding to either. Btrfs' implementation is even used to do most of the func…

FUSE is neat for one-off access to obscure file systems, and FUSE is usable for things like sshfs for those who use that, but it is my impression from having used FUSE myself that FUSE does come with a noticeable performance penalty. Is my perception wrong on this? Because if it is not then I’d be hesitant to use a system where the main storage was relying on FUSE.

Stuff like gocryptfs seem to push FUSE to quite high performance. There is still some latency but streaming read/write seem to go fast.

Re: Airyx OS

#160

Post by mkl »

soperj wrote: post #57
spijdar wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure there are (for some definition of "most important parts). Take a look at GNUstep for a start. Some MacOS frameworks like WebKit are also open sourced from Apple itself. As an example of how this works in practice, the disassembler/decompiler Hopper has both MacOS and Linux versions that are compiled from the same code. Now, how successful they'll be extending the open source frameworks to made this useful in com…

>Some MacOS frameworks like WebKit are also open sourced from Apple itself. It had to be, it was forked from KHtml, which was GPL.

KHTML is LGPL, as is much of WebKit. If it was GPL, Safari would have to be too, instead of proprietary.
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