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HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

hellosystem.github.io

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Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#51

Post by enriquto »

swozey wrote: post #47

About 20 years ago I was an openbsd and freebsd admin, webhosting mostly. Then the rest of my maybe 16 year career was debian with some sprinkles of centos/rhel What would bring me to bsd today? Not in a negative way at all, I'm curious what people love about it. I barely remember much about it. I loved pf over iptables but I don't remember why. It has jailed containers which.. I think people still love? I'm not sure…

For me the main point of bsd or small linuxes over debians/redhats is that running htop fills just one third of the screen and I can understand what each program does right away. It fills me with a sense of control and tranquility that just isn't there in more complex setups.

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#52

Post by bee_rider »

wk_end wrote: post #43
soneil wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"hello" doesn't show up in https://www.apple.com/legal/intellectual-property/trademark/... which probably makes it much easier.

> The following is a non-exhaustive list of Apple’s trademarks and service marks. [...] The absence of a product or service name or logo from this list does not constitute a waiver of Apple’s trademark or other intellectual property rights concerning that name or logo.

So the idea is that Apple might have a trademark on the word Hello in cursive?

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#53

Post by danjoredd »

azinman2 wrote: post #7
trollied wrote: post #2

The UI reminds me of RISC OS!

It’s a pretty clear rip of macOS, from the aqua-inspired UI, finder at base, to the layout of the directories.

I mean, the directories are laid out in the same way because MacOS runs on top of BSD. They basically ARE the same file system. I agree on the rest of your points though.

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#55

Post by rollcat »

pacija wrote: post #46
pacija wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also find these BlahBlahBSDs silly. Since when is setting desktop themes or tuning a few sysctls "forking" or worth calling a new OS?

Ok, I see downvotes coming and I understand I didn't give enough context so I'll try to clarify. I use BSD, particularly FreeBSD and OpenBSD, for two decades now. For the last 15 years professionally. Four "recognized" members of BSD family are FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonflyBSD. Each of them pursue different goals - FreeBSD stability, OpenBSD security, NetBSD portability, DragonflyBSD no idea, never tried it.…

> I don't have a slightest idea why would I choose HelloSystem or HardenedBSD for my laptop instead of FreeBSD.

I haven't actually tried HelloSystem on real hardware as a daily driver, but I can clearly see why people would find it valuable (at least according to their stated goals).

The reasons are the same as why you'd choose Ubuntu over Slackware: the base install is intended as a fully functional desktop OS. Focus on the OOB experience, vertical integration, accessibility, polish, simplicity, etc. Even if you're a power user, there is still value to having all of these things: your energy is probably better spent on something more useful than figuring why basic, random stuff isn't working. (Assuming HelloSystem delivers on their stated goals!)

It is true that these are all "merely" downstream projects, but I wouldn't dismiss them on these grounds alone. As long as any improvements can be ported back to FreeBSD, it's a win for everyone involved.

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#56

Post by swozey »

enriquto wrote: post #51
swozey wrote: post #47

About 20 years ago I was an openbsd and freebsd admin, webhosting mostly. Then the rest of my maybe 16 year career was debian with some sprinkles of centos/rhel What would bring me to bsd today? Not in a negative way at all, I'm curious what people love about it. I barely remember much about it. I loved pf over iptables but I don't remember why. It has jailed containers which.. I think people still love? I'm not sure…

For me the main point of bsd or small linuxes over debians/redhats is that running htop fills just one third of the screen and I can understand what each program does right away. It fills me with a sense of control and tranquility that just isn't there in more complex setups.

That's a great point. Would you consider yourself a minimalist in general? I think I'm the opposite. I'm one of those people who installs every (secure and vetted) plugin/extension/app that makes my life/work "easier." I have a ridiculous amount of vscode/intellij/obsidian plugins that I use. I'm sure if I used emacs/vim it'd be the same.

Just as an example that's super frowned upon, I install about 5-10 various packages like jq, htop, net-utils, bash, httpie, things like that into each oci container I build. I also have the exact same customized ~/.bashrc with aliases and a motd that tells me the distro and outdated packages and what not in all of the oci containers I build. Also a custom ~/.nanorc with syntax highlighting so I don't have to constantly write nano -l (everyone will hate me for using nano, I know).

I have to troubleshoot containers a lot. This example I'm posting here went from a 150Mb container to 203 with my "debug" packages. And each time I exec into one I get a nice little motd that makes fixing things so much faster for me. A 203Mb container has absolutely no effect on my autoscaling infrastructure. We watch for anomalies and immediately scale up and have the oci images cached on the clusters. I used to make these little 30mb scratch go containers that had literally nothing but the app. It was so annoying having to troubleshoot them and the benefit seemed so not worth it. Not having bash installed is absolutely horrendous. Being forced to use sh. I can't use arrow keys to move the cursor or up and down to go through history. I think ctrl-r doesnt even work.

I would get absolutely screamed at by the greybeard genius nix admins I used to work with. But I make the infra standards now.. Package attack vectors are definitely a concern. My containers go through a rigorous security test while being built.

https://imgur.com/MkyuyVS

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#57

Post by danjoredd »

pacija wrote: post #35
pipeline_peak wrote: post #15

Contribute to GNUStep if you want to support a legitimate transition for Mac users. Not yet another aqua rip off distro running reskinned Mate. Just get FreeBSD with gnome or mate if you’re so inclined. If you’re using Hello as your daily driver, you’re gonna get your hands dirty getting things to work anyway. Might as well start from core. GhostBSD, MidnightBSD, TrueOS, haven’t people realized FreeBSD is too obscure…

I also find these BlahBlahBSDs silly. Since when is setting desktop themes or tuning a few sysctls "forking" or worth calling a new OS?

Its less setting a new desktop theme, and more maintaining compatibility with a Desktop Environment. Ghost BSD is significant because it is the "easy way" to get BSD working on computers. FreeBSD by itself is about like setting up Arch Linux. Same with most versions of BSD. If you know what you are doing you can get something set up, but if you don't care for needing to set everything up yourself, a distro like GhostBSD is invaluable.

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#58

Post by wk_end »

bee_rider wrote: post #52
wk_end wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The following is a non-exhaustive list of Apple’s trademarks and service marks. [...] The absence of a product or service name or logo from this list does not constitute a waiver of Apple’s trademark or other intellectual property rights concerning that name or logo.

So the idea is that Apple might have a trademark on the word Hello in cursive?

Like I said, I'm not a lawyer, but: yes, I would claim that Apple has a trademark on the word "hello", entirely in lowercase cursive, in that very particular cursive typeface, with a animation that shows it being written out at precisely that speed and in precisely that manner, as a means of promoting a distinctive graphical computer operating system, in a manner that they've continued to reference for the past 40 years [0], yes.

Not a lawyer though.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGrxGQUPqxk

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#59

Post by jonhohle »

Lammy wrote: post #42
hedora wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they cloned Finder from MacOS 9, which was better than the MacOS X one in pretty much every way. The screenshot makes me think they might have.

It looks like the Mac OS X 10.0–10.2 Finder with the toolbar collapsed. Same massive icon spacing: https://i.imgur.com/fLndIw6.png The closest Free Software analogue I've ever found for the Classic Finder is ROX-Filer, pictured here: https://cooltrainer.org/images/original/freebsd11-wmaker.png

That screenshot gives me the feels: WindowMaker, WipEout, FreeBSD. That’s as beautiful today as it might have been 15+ years ago. The “modern” FreeBSD logo and composited windows decorations betray it’s timelessness a bit (2005 or sooner), though I suppose the earliest it could have been was sometime after 1999 (ROX-Filer and Sim City 3000).
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