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Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

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Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#261

Post by joshspankit »

cardiffspaceman wrote: post #256
joshspankit wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> vector-based UI just doesn't look that good on those Counterargument: Fonts are vectors, and with sub-pixel hinting they can look pretty good on low-DPI monitors

> > vector-based UI just doesn't look that good on those > Counterargument: Fonts are vectors, and with sub-pixel hinting they can look pretty good on low-DPI monitors Ah, but I feel safe in saying, no one puts hints in nor uses hinting in the rendering of anything to do with folders and the like in a GUI. The fact that autohinting exists doesn't mean that is easy to do.

Agreed that it’s a safe thing to say, but there’s nothing stopping an OS from putting in the work to do that, and therefore allow them to have a single vector-based UI for Low and Hi DPI screens.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#262

Post by ksec »

Santosh83 wrote: post #189

So many interesting/fascinating concepts and ideas that will remain relegated to niche communities because of basically one problem: lack of drivers. This is the problem that must be solved if we ever want to move away from the dominance of a few OSes "too big to fail" and their million compromises to a thriving field where competent programmers can create new OSes as easily as now they can create new apps.

I keep wondering if this is as bad as it looks. Compared to the old days where there seems to be infinite combination of drivers, these days GPU, Sound and Network vendors are fairly limited.

Now that Intel has finally been forced to change its mindset. I hope they will see the need to Open Source their IP and Drivers as competitive advantage. I am not even an avid Open Source supporter, but if they need or want to balance the power between Operating System competition. That is what will be needed.

This will require a complete pivot to Fabless and IP model.

It is sort of strange to see how thing plays out, I could see the possibility of Intel and Microsoft releasing x86 ISA and Windows kernel as open source in the future.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#263

Post by ninjanomnom »

pmarreck wrote: post #257
ninjanomnom wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Adding different kinds of measurements of size doesn't particularly increase the difficulty of tracking it here, just adds some more fields to the metadata and maybe some additional events. To take an example of size data types from another thread, let's imagine you want to track 2 kinds of size: size as read sequentially (A) and size gained if deleted (B). The first cares about links but the second does not. Every f…

This is exactly how I assumed modern operating systems would operate (macOS seems to operate this way because you can actually show size subtallies, but it actually polls and caches; Windows doesn’t even bother unless you get properties on a directory, which is lame; I think beOS may have actually done this?), and was disappointed when I realized it wasn’t… and still doesn’t for some reason? Why not? Couldn’t they ju…

There's no real reason they couldn't but polling systems tend to be the first thing implemented as conceptually they are simpler and require less rigor to enforce. Switching from a polling pattern to an event pattern however is a sizeable amount of work required and you can frequently get bugs in the switch. The discussion here is in the context of a greenfield project where such concerns aren't an issue.

To be clear it's not like an event registration system is better in every way than polling. It's trading some extra hd and (potentially) memory usage for upfront and cheaper cpu costs. It is possible that whoever made the decision weighed the two options and decided on polling instead of events, and this decision was made long ago when os filesystems were first being designed and storage was at much more of a premium.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#264

Post by addicted »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #12

So 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…

I think the point of the tabbed windows isn’t so much window tabbing, as the idea that the window belongs to the user and not the app.

The user manages windows and not apps.

Currently, this is being leveraged in tabbed apps, and in the ability to open a window, resize it, etc and then decide which app should show itself in that tab of that window.

But the paradigm change itself could potentially lead to new workflows, etc if creative app developers and designers really start working woth it.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#265

Post by nsonha »

d_tr wrote: post #254
nsonha wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the original motivators behind "Open Source" is scratching your own itch. that's what I said, and you repeated it, as if it's some new insight or supports some argument. Is there not an issue in OSS where thing that should not be used in commercial context, are used in commercial context, they break, then people blame the adopters for expecting too much from OSS? Rarely the other side of the coin is addressed which…

You are saying a different thing now. Your previous comment touched a philosophical matter. Now it's about using, in a commercial product, OSS software people develop in their own time and that they might promote too much (I read this as "irresponsibly"). Both of these do not apply only to this kind of software and even if they did, what is the point of having this discussion (which could be an interesting one) here?…

the conversation derailed long time ago, I originally commented about why they need a new OS because it seems too me it's easier to just create a DE.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#266

Post by sedan_baklazhan »

dmitriid wrote: post #241
sedan_baklazhan wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lately I was tryong to understand the exact reason "why". Why are modern browsers so ridiculously complicated? Rendering a (albeit confusing) content is a PDF-like kind of job (or am I wrong?) What is the exact complexity here (except for JS compiler, which is again just a compiler)?

> What is the exact complexity here There are hundreds of standards spanning thens of thousands of pages. Some of them are obsolete, some of them are not, most of them interact with each other in complex and non-obvious ways. An attempt to measure the scope is here: https://drewdevault.com/2020/03/18/Reckless-limitless-scope.... And that's before we get to things like Javascript or WASM. Another measure is the count…

Thanks. It looks like complexity increase deliberately aimed at maintaining market monopoly. I can't rationally believe than tens of thousands of pages of documents are needed to display just a (however complex it is) UI. It's a UI engine, after all, and nothing more.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#267

Post by perryizgr8 »

jbverschoor wrote: post #87

Very cool. Nice that it runs without all the processes... But that will come at a certain point haha. I like that they implemented composing tabs between different applications. This is the way I try to organize work/projecta/projectb/personal use, but it never works with current osses. Spaces in macOS is actually kind of useless, because certain applications have windows across screens (finder, chrome). Tabbed Finde…

> I like that they implemented composing tabs between different applications. This is the way I try to organize work/projecta/projectb/personal use, but it never works with current osses.

This workflow works very well for me on Win10. I can easily separate work/hobby stuff by using different desktops.

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#268

Post by throwawaywat251 »

the_biot wrote: post #25

This is an amazing piece of work, but it's clearly a labor of love: this isn't going to have any real-world use any time soon. Where operating systems are headed is more towards security (process isolation, bulletproof input etc), not lightweight GUIs on top of thin kernels like this. Are there any passion (or other) projects that explore this? I know about Qubes, but that's more like a heavy layer on top of a heavy…

Fuchsia is open source, though it's Google, so don't know how open. Wikipedia lists licenses BSD, MIT and Apache 2.0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)

Re: Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

#269

Post by scoutt »

torginus wrote: post #193
Santosh83 wrote: post #189

So many interesting/fascinating concepts and ideas that will remain relegated to niche communities because of basically one problem: lack of drivers. This is the problem that must be solved if we ever want to move away from the dominance of a few OSes "too big to fail" and their million compromises to a thriving field where competent programmers can create new OSes as easily as now they can create new apps.

I wonder if this could be solved by picking a widely available but fairly stable platform for it - like a Raspberry Pi, and making sure it works there. Atm, it seems like it's an x86-based OS, so I'm not sure how difficult would it be to port it to ARM.

> I wonder if this could be solved by picking a widely available but fairly stable platform for it.

For buses and basic IO it might be a solution. For a broader picture, it may be not.

For example: your favorite USB device that requires a custom driver won't work (like a USB-to-Serial FTDI chip). Starting from there, now imagine giving support for every printer in existence.

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