It’s short for “visual operating system” but there are no screenshots anywhere. That would have felt off even in 1997.
Maybe they mean something else by visual.
Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
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Re: Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
#72It’s short for “visual operating system” but there are no screenshots anywhere. That would have felt off even in 1997. Maybe they mean something else by visual.
Re: Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
#73It’s short for “visual operating system” but there are no screenshots anywhere. That would have felt off even in 1997. Maybe they mean something else by visual.
Around 1997 I learned the concept of RTFM! Obviously my father already taught me to look in the DOS and WordPerfect manuals to learn about features and commands one might use. Great learnings.
Oh and:
Re: Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://0ver.org/
I always found semantic versioning a little too verbose. Particularly when deciding when to release major versions. OSX was on version 10 for many years but of course released a new "major" version every year. Semantic versioning is just something everyone does in software development, but is is really that necessary?
Semantic versioning is for APIs, not for functionality. So it's for developers consuming that API (whether a library, or a service).
For releases in production, use a calendar version. v2025-11-02 is a clear release tag. Add preciseness as required. There should be a SBOM/Manifest (Bill Of Materials) of the versioned major components and configuration for that overall release.
For users, it depends on the type of user and what they expect. Their focus is on functionality. So when there's a new feature, bump the number.
It's a bit like the car model. It can be random extension letters like "-X", or "6Si".
Re: Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://0ver.org/
I always found semantic versioning a little too verbose. Particularly when deciding when to release major versions. OSX was on version 10 for many years but of course released a new "major" version every year. Semantic versioning is just something everyone does in software development, but is is really that necessary?
Versioning is a tool to communicate changes and backwards compatibility to the users. SemVer makes sense in a lot of cases, but it neither covers everything (eg. compare with Debian/Ubuntu packaging versions), nor is it always needed (think of REST API versions which usually only go with major versions, and commonly multiple major versions from the same codebase).
Re: Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I always found semantic versioning a little too verbose. Particularly when deciding when to release major versions. OSX was on version 10 for many years but of course released a new "major" version every year. Semantic versioning is just something everyone does in software development, but is is really that necessary?
Semantic versioning is for APIs, not for functionality. So it's for developers consuming that API (whether a library, or a service). For releases in production, use a calendar version. v2025-11-02 is a clear release tag. Add preciseness as required. There should be a SBOM/Manifest (Bill Of Materials) of the versioned major components and configuration for that overall release. For users, it depends on the type of use…
Developers are "users" (of a library, API, tool...), and "API functionality" is a subset of "functionality": what purpose would such distinction serve?
For example, in end user desktop software (say a text editor), how would you indicate a security bug fix for an old version v2023-11-02 without forcing users to pay for a new version of v2025-09-15?
Again, versioning is a tool, and depending on the release structure of a project, SemVer might work well or it might not (including for APIs/libraries).
Re: Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
#77it took me a while to find. here is the source code: https://sourceforge.net/projects/visopsys/files/visopsys-0.9...
Thanks for digging it out. It is still quite large code base. 274052 lines.
That's 4000 pages, small enough that you could easily lift it. You could read it all in a week, though that wouldn't be enough time to understand much of it. It's half the size of glibc and a hundredth the size of Firefox or the Linux kernel.
Re: Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
#78This is very very cool, and unlike a lot of other "hobby" OSes actually looks usable as a daily driver if your needs are basic (kids, elderly, older/cheaper hardware, etc). While for nerds computers have become these monstrously powerful things that can do everything under the sun, there's definitely still plenty of people who just want a computer to write down notes, keep a calendar, use the calculator... eg the thi…
What youre describing is called iOS on a large iPad. Everyone from 4 year olds to my 77 year old computer illiterate Dad can figure it out. This doesn't look very usable at all by someone who isn't basically a computer nerd.
You mean the OS that "upgraded" to transparent background, sometimes hard to read text by default?
I can't recommend those in good concience ton elders anymore.
Kids always figure it out tho.
Re: Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
#79I took an OS in college in 2006 and the big project that my prof required us to do was to make modification of visopsys. The software was primitive at that time but still had UI interface. I emailed the author to ask some questions in my project. The author had connection with my prof and informed my prof about this. My prof told me that I was not allowed to ask the author regarding this project. So I had to figured…
Reading your post until the end was like watching a movie...
Re: Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
#80I took an OS in college in 2006 and the big project that my prof required us to do was to make modification of visopsys. The software was primitive at that time but still had UI interface. I emailed the author to ask some questions in my project. The author had connection with my prof and informed my prof about this. My prof told me that I was not allowed to ask the author regarding this project. So I had to figured…
Sounds like an insane ride xD