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HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

hellosystem.github.io

61–70 of 150 posts

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#61
post #11

I wonder if, in the future, stable diffusion or other AI techniques can be used to generate nice icon sets and other UI elements. Not that I'd expect Apple levels of design, but anything to bridge the gap would be nice...I'm primarily a macOS user, secondarily a windows user, and my forays into *nix have always provided a poor first impression. Anecdotal, of course...

Or bring back skins[0]! Have software read textures from areas in a big image, then let the user replace the image. Forest theme for Microsoft Teams! SciFi file explorer!

I tried using MidJourney to generate exaggerated UI themes (not skins, just general themes for inspiration), but the results were disappointing. They were always gorgeous[1], but my prompt engineering skills couldn't coax it to use space efficiently.

[0]: https://skins.webamp.org/

[1] https://i.imgur.com/5KC2u7J.png

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that's interesting. I find the icons available for *nix far superior and interesting. The problem is finding out the good stuff, because its hard with the current signal vs noise ratio. I actually dislike the current macOS icon sets, far too colorful and saturated.

Which icon sets do you find superior, in particular? Note that parent meant the UI holistically, and not just icon sets. AFAIK, this way of thinking about the design of the entire system, and not just in discrete segments is largely unique to macOS. I think it is because Apple has a design language they try to enforce as rigorously as possible, even onto 3rd party developers, which gives the OS & all applications on…

Most linux desktop environments (notable exception of Gnome3 though it applies for Gnome2) seem to favour old school UX design which, incidentally, I happen to find nicer than “pretty”.

I personally really like the Adwaita icon sets much more than windows and at least on-par with MacOS, though MacOS has the advantage of being rendered only on extremely high DPI screens. So most people only have that experienfe

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#65

[flagged]

Mac OS currently has no enterprise usable file sharing, for starters. The Samba driver is garbage and AFP is maintained by third parties. Etc. The Mac OS has uses, but they are VASTLY fewer in number than Linux or Windows. Why does anyone make new stuff? To solve problems, or serve needs and desires.

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#68

[flagged]

I feel like you're looking a bit too much into it and that this rant is a bit unnecessary. You write as though you're being attacked by the creators or something. It's not going to "replace your MacOS" or anything, but rather is a showcase of clean UI and UX. Looking through the "What" and "Why" sections on their Github says how it follows certain UI and UX guidelines; many of which Apple has adopted. I don't think you're the target audience either. If you're interested in FreeBSD and like MacOS, you'd probably love this.

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#69
post #4

Another project in this ecosystem: https://ravynos.com/

RavynOS is a much more interesting project. Basically it keeps everything that's open-source in Darwin (save for XNU), and re-implements what that's proprietary with tailor made free software, on top of a FreeBSD kernel.

Since many layers, frameworks and APIs from macOS are reused (even for the GUI which is written in Objective-C and uses the actual Cocoa APIs), the goal is to achieve compatibility with both macOS and FreeBSD apps. And yes, it natively runs Mach-O binaries in the kernel, no emulation layer.

"ravynOS is explicitly trying to be compatible with Mac software at a source and eventually a binary level, without losing support for FreeBSD/X11 software, and to implement a very similar experience on the desktop and at the command line. For example, on ravynOS you can type open -a MyApp image.jpg and have image.jpg open in MyApp. You will find things in (mostly) the same directories as a Mac, like ~/Library or /System/Library/Fonts."

Most other projects are just vanilla FreeBSD or Linux with a macOS theme.

Re: HelloSystem: A graphical OS built on FreeBSD

#70
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which icon sets do you find superior, in particular? Note that parent meant the UI holistically, and not just icon sets. AFAIK, this way of thinking about the design of the entire system, and not just in discrete segments is largely unique to macOS. I think it is because Apple has a design language they try to enforce as rigorously as possible, even onto 3rd party developers, which gives the OS & all applications on…

Most linux desktop environments (notable exception of Gnome3 though it applies for Gnome2) seem to favour old school UX design which, incidentally, I happen to find nicer than “pretty”. I personally really like the Adwaita icon sets much more than windows and at least on-par with MacOS, though MacOS has the advantage of being rendered only on extremely high DPI screens. So most people only have that experienfe

For whatever it's worth, macOS/OS X has had very high resolution icons well before high DPI displays were commonly available. Even 10.0 which was released in 2001 supported 128x128 icons, which was 4x larger than what other popular desktops were capable of at the time and enabled far greater levels of detail, even if most users wouldn't be seeing that detail most of the time.
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