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I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

awesomekling.github.io

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Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#61

Post by Siira »

ncmncm wrote: post #54
tachyonbeam wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it kind of is. You can make a basic browser, sure, but you'll have a hard time implementing video playback, canvas, JavaScript and everything else, while also delivering good performance and rendering everything accurately. Yes, I know his browser has JS support, but the performance is likely at least an order of magnitude slower than V8 or Firefox... And then there's CSS, and the fact that HTML, JS and CSS k…

Like telecomm, wifi, and USB standards, web browsing protocol standards are deliberately overcomplicated as a way to legally fend off competition. Anytime a big corporation gets its hooks into a Standard, one can expect its complexity to grow forever unless an individual at said corporation prevents it.

It’s probably not so much deliberate complexification, as reluctant simplification. The system will become complex all by itself when there is little pressure to streamline it.

Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#62

Post by tachyonbeam »

rogerclark wrote: post #58
tachyonbeam wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it kind of is. You can make a basic browser, sure, but you'll have a hard time implementing video playback, canvas, JavaScript and everything else, while also delivering good performance and rendering everything accurately. Yes, I know his browser has JS support, but the performance is likely at least an order of magnitude slower than V8 or Firefox... And then there's CSS, and the fact that HTML, JS and CSS k…

In the span of about 2 years, the Serenity browser has gone from nothing to where it is now. It already supports JavaScript and the canvas API. Do you think you could build this in 2 years? The answer is yes, you could.

Sure, but like I said, having some JS support is one thing, building a fast JS engine is another. The same goes for canvas, I mean, you have to realize, there is WebGL support on the web now, but also the Web Audio API, WASM, etc. It never stops growing. There's even talk about adding machine learning features to WASM.

Again, this isn't to minimize the accomplishment, this is great, it's just to say, while building a hobbyist browser must be fun for sure, and I'm sure this browser can be useful to browse many websites out there, particularly if said websites intentionally restrict which HTML features they use. However, it's probably not realistic to think you could compete with the commercial browsers. They have dozens of people who have been working full-time on those projects for two decades and they are constantly adding new features.

I think if Andreas Kling was here, he would probably agree. I'm sure his goal was never to replace Chrome/Firefox or compete with them, but rather to learn, educate, and have fun. I congratulate him on his success and for reaching the milestone of being able to sustain himself from his passion project.

Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#63

Post by gardaani »

nightowl_games wrote: post #25

Andreas is the best part about this project. He's just _nice_. He's a good person. It makes me want to contribute and work with him because I feel like I'll learn from him. Too many elite programmers are total jerks!

He has a lot of happy commits! :^) https://happy-serenityos.linus.dev

Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#64

Post by genezeta »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #50
ksec wrote: post #35

>SerenityOS [1] Graphical Unix-like operating system for x86 computers. SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix-like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems. Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity software and the power-user accessibility of late-2000s *nix. This is a system by us, for us,…

It seems very interesting. Anyone has an idea whet the minimal system requirements are?

It's generally aimed at being run on QEMU. But it can be installed on bare metal at your own risk. This [1] mentions:

> Current hardware support is extremely limited. [...] x86 [...] Most successful hard disk installations have been on Pentium 4 era hardware [...] 2 GB parallel ATA or SATA IDE disk [...] no support for USB but some machines will emulate PS/2 keyboards and mice in the BIOS via USB [...] having real PS/2 input devices is recommended [...] A minimum of 128 MB RAM and a Pentium III class CPU [...] No GPU suport [...] VESA BIOS [...] No wifi [...] only three network card chipset [...] The sole sound card supported is the SoundBlaster 16 ISA

The HW compatibility list [2] is pretty short also.

[1] https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/master/Documenta...

[2] https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/master/Documenta...

Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#65

Post by [deleted] »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #50
ksec wrote: post #35

>SerenityOS [1] Graphical Unix-like operating system for x86 computers. SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix-like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems. Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity software and the power-user accessibility of late-2000s *nix. This is a system by us, for us,…

It seems very interesting. Anyone has an idea whet the minimal system requirements are?

[deleted]

Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#66

Post by boricj »

dvfjsdhgfv wrote: post #50
ksec wrote: post #35

>SerenityOS [1] Graphical Unix-like operating system for x86 computers. SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom Unix-like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas from various other systems. Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity software and the power-user accessibility of late-2000s *nix. This is a system by us, for us,…

It seems very interesting. Anyone has an idea whet the minimal system requirements are?

I've netbooted it on my ASUS A7N8X Deluxe motherboard with an Athlon XP processor and 1 GiB of RAM (~2003 era). I haven't tried older museum pieces, but the unofficial CPU requirement is a Pentium III-class CPU or better.

Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#67

Post by skeeter2020 »

I'm unlikely to ever use this project, follow it closely or interact with the creator but it still makes me extremely happy to see someone working on a project like this, with the goals, motivations and context that Andreas discusses. Thank you for making the world a little bit better at a time when it feels so crazy.

Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#68

Post by ffhhj »

SerenityOS looks impressive.

Programming in assembly is like playing with Legos. Last year I started creating my own pet OS in a Bochs virtual machine, compiling with nasm. Created the boot loader and UI, but then realized what I really wanted to implement wasn't the low level layer.

For that reason I placed the project aside and moved to the highest level, creating a distributed command-line console in Javascript that connects to Node.js based servers. If I ever complete my dreamed OS then I can either translate it into assembly, or build a JS interpreter.

At this point the console allows creating programs with UI controls, launch processes without blocking the console, and terminating them just clicking a button, as well as connecting to other servers to perform tasks.

Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#69

Post by tachyonbeam »

adenozine wrote: post #53
tachyonbeam wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it kind of is. You can make a basic browser, sure, but you'll have a hard time implementing video playback, canvas, JavaScript and everything else, while also delivering good performance and rendering everything accurately. Yes, I know his browser has JS support, but the performance is likely at least an order of magnitude slower than V8 or Firefox... And then there's CSS, and the fact that HTML, JS and CSS k…

Just a nitpick, but I'm pretty sure Opera was gutted of engineers as well after their acquisition fiasco with that Chinese outfit. I don't think they had as much manpower as the good ol days AND not enough manpower to compete with the old engine. I'm on mobile or I'd go find a source, but I'm fairly certain some key people left before all that went down. Not that maintaining a web browser is easy, but they WERE doing…

It's not just Opera though. Microsoft Edge is using also Webkit. I'm legit worried that if Mozilla ever tanks, we could have a complete WebKit browser monoculture.

Re: I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time

#70

Post by jagger27 »

phaemon wrote: post #56
jagger27 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to expand on those bold assertions?

I'm not sure what you consider bold about the assertions so it's difficult to expand. I am certainly not the sharpest tool in the shed, and I'm religious, so that provides at least circumstantial evidence for my initial statement. Do you think I should consider that atheists could be dumb too? Most of the ones I've spoken to seem fairly convinced that they're reasonably smart.

Alright it's clear you're only here to rile people up. Not sure why you think that's appropriate here.
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