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Airyx OS

airyx.org

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Re: Airyx OS

#191

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

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…

GNUStep is not current with the frameworks that it corresponds to on macOS (and was never complete).

Those frameworks are also a tiny part of the full set that you need to build non-trivial software on macOS.

Audio? Video? so much more stuff that nobody has ever tried to reimplement the APIs for.

Yes, such a reimplementation would be legal,but Wine has been a project for 20+ years and has a huge headstart compared to any idea of doing this for macOS.

Re: Airyx OS

#192

Post by marcellus23 »

kitsunesoba wrote: post #79
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.

I like the menubar being a system-owned fixture (as it is for global menubars) because then there’s no reason for app developers to try to trim away menus or cram them in a “junk drawer” hamburger menu in the name of minimalism.

this this this. On Windows, menu bars are few and far between because of this.

Re: Airyx OS

#193

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

3np wrote: post #63
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.

This is addressed in the README I linked to. Reimplementation of APIs is not legally sketchy. See Oracle vs Google. https://www.eff.org/cases/oracle-v-google https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... .

To clarify, I didn't mean to imply that reimplementation would be a legal issue.

I meant to imply that unlike the case with Windows/Wine, there is no reimplementation of the overwhelming majority of macOS APIs. So if you wanted to do this now, you could only do it by copying frameworks directly from macOS (which some people are doing for various reasons), and that does have some potential legal issues.

Theoretically, a reimplementation is possible. It doesn't exist, it's a huge project (far, far bigger than GNUstep), and as someone notes down-thread, it's also a moving target. There are also uncounted numbers of bugs in the current implementation of Apple's APIs, and for many things to work correctly you'd need to implement the bugs too since developers have designed around them.

Yes, Wine exists. But Wine started in 1993. The idea that a bit of hard work by some good developers is going to provide a reimplementation of the macOS frameworks in a year or three strikes me as without any foundation in reality.

Re: Airyx OS

#194

Post by TchoBeer »

hulitu wrote: post #142
paxys wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it funny that there are people working (presumably) really hard to replicate the trademark OS X look and feel for other operating systems while Apple is working similarly hard to move away from it as quickly as possible.

It's a general trend in SW development. If it works, fix it. It seems to make everyone except users happy.

I had a buddy who had a sort-of designer-developer role who would say "if it ain't broke don't don't fix it"

Re: Airyx OS

#195

Post by eddieroger »

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".

Me? Even when I "use" multiple apps at the same time, I can only interact with one at at time in the current keyboard/mouse paradigm we're working in, and it's nice to know that when I need menu options, they're always in the same place - the top left. There's always a context menu available by right/ctrl clicking if I'm so inclined and it's properly implemented, but in my multiple-monitor setup, I like having the global menu bar for when keyboard commands don't cut it.

Re: Airyx OS

#196

Post by lowalden »

Does anyone have a screenshot of the OS? I can't see it on their Twitter page. I am quite curious about how beautiful the OS looks.

Re: Airyx OS

#197

Post by saagarjha »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #189
saagarjha wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Emulating macOS at the Darwin layer is not necessary and often not advisable (see: GNUstep).

The goal was "source code compatibility with macOS applications".

Most Mac apps never call into the Darwin layer directly.

Re: Airyx OS

#198

Post by queuebert »

bmn__ wrote: post #138
fn1 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how hard it is to implement a modern filesystem that won't eat users' data. Why is that so hard? Because of edge-cases? Caching/Timing considerations?

The big problems continue to be • C being a shitty language that does not force or even encourage programmers to handle errors • implementation knowledge about file system technology is generally stuck in the 1990s • disk controller hardware lying to the OS to make them appear more performant than they really are visit https://danluu.com & ctrl+f "files"

Can you elaborate on the second point?

Re: Airyx OS

#199

Post by grappler »

curious how Airyx devs think about the question of supporting apple silicon arm64, like m1 (or presumably m2 etc later on). Is it an explicit non-goal? A question of having the resources?

Re: Airyx OS

#200

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #190
bobsomers wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Hard to see how this can be done legally. Why? Things like Wine and Proton exist and Windows is proprietary.

How many years has the Wine project been running? There is absolutely no equivalent for macOS frameworks. GNUStep is a tiny part of the picture, and in addition has not kept up with the fairly radical changes that Apple has introduced to the frameworks that GNUStep does correspond to.

That's a practical question, not related to the legal question.
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