The 4th Year of SerenityOS • Hacker News Board

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#81

Post by varajelle » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:11 PM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #74

I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, some commercial project adopts a part of Serenity and turns it into a huge hit, even outside of tech. Such things have definitely happened in the past.. Not many (average) people have heard of KDE or its web engine, KHTML, but almost everybody these days uses Chrome, which, through Apple's WebKit, is descended from KHTML itself. Serenity uses its own libraries everywhere, to…

Fun fact: Andreas contributed to KHTML https://github.com/KDE/khtml/blob/41057a9a8e491b72c8296bf5ed...

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#82

Post by phist_mcgee » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:12 PM UTC

systemvoltage wrote: post #71

edgyquant wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s that most people are doomers and/or are defeated by doomerism. Most people think it’s impossible to build an OS or a web browser (and are told this when they ask for help building one.) In reality engineering is straightforward, you just need someone to show you how to properly write data structures and algorithms and to break problems down. Andreas showed these kids this, reinvigorating the web based ha…

One of the comments on Kling’s YT stream read: “Wish we could go back to 2004. Modern web has become toxic af” which embodies the spirit of this community pretty well I think. Andreas Kling is the messiah that is leading a group of people that are fed up with modernity.

Ironically, by using modern tools.

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#83

Post by robryan » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:22 PM UTC

emptyparadise wrote: post #9

I want to become powerful enough to contribute to SerenityOS.

One nice thing for a new contributer is there is so much low hanging fruit everywhere.

Can just open any app and you will see little things that would make for a good first PR. The codebase is also full of Fixmes, many of which are very approachable for a beginner.

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#84

Post by robryan » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:24 PM UTC

rcarmo wrote: post #26

I played around with this a few months back and really wished they were targeting ARM. I wonder if that will ever be on the cards...

There are a number of people actively pushing ARM support forward.

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#85

Post by yardshop » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

stavros wrote: post #73

low_tech_punk wrote: post #66

This project embodies Donald Knuth's principle of being the author of software, rather than just consumers of other's APIs. Yes, it takes patience and chutzpah, but I can also imagine how satisfying it is to build something from scratch and see all the pieces coming together into a working OS. And if you put your heart (and time) to it, you can build anything from scratch. A lesson the newer generation of developers…

> This project embodies Donald Knuth's principle of being the author of software, rather than just consumers of other's APIs. I feel that this comment unfairly criticizes people who build on other things. This OS runs on hardware, which is someone else's API, and is a hobby project, as far as I can tell. If someone wants to build something cool that uses others' APIs as a hobby project, more power to them.

It's not criticizing anything at all, just suggesting an alternative. We're all always using products that are other people's work, why not ALSO work on something where you author and build your own system?

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#86

Post by BirAdam » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:29 PM UTC

rewgs wrote: post #33

This is just so cool and inspiring to me. I check out pretty much everything Andreas puts out. I wonder if we're watching something comparable to the birth of Linux. I'm not insinuating that Linux would go away or die or anything -- that's absurd -- but I just mean perhaps over time SerenityOS will become more and more used as a "real" OS. For what purpose(s)? No idea. But the whole project really seems to have stayi…

I think this is similar to the birth of Linux, but with two very major differences.

(1) we are in a world where open source is the way.

(2) it’s somewhat a reaction to the state of modern software, both in UI paradigm and in increasing cartelization.

To me, it’s hope.

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#87

Post by stavros » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:31 PM UTC

yardshop wrote: post #85

stavros wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This project embodies Donald Knuth's principle of being the author of software, rather than just consumers of other's APIs. I feel that this comment unfairly criticizes people who build on other things. This OS runs on hardware, which is someone else's API, and is a hobby project, as far as I can tell. If someone wants to build something cool that uses others' APIs as a hobby project, more power to them.

It's not criticizing anything at all, just suggesting an alternative. We're all always using products that are other people's work, why not ALSO work on something where you author and build your own system?

Ah, I thought you were talking about projects that make something novel vs projects that glue together APIs to create something new. I see what you mean now, sorry.

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#88

Post by BirAdam » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:32 PM UTC

gjsman-1000 wrote: post #4

Fantastic progress. My only concern is looking at it... I can't help but worry slightly about feature creep. We went from an OS, to an OS + Web Browser, to an OS + Web Browser + Programming Language. Next year it might add an Office Suite at this rate. Edit: I don't mean this as a bad thing, just that it would be a shame to get so large that everything becomes half-baked and overwhelming to finish.

Well, there’s tons of room for improvement over that tools that exist on other OSs/platforms, so why not?

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#89

Post by forgotpwd16 » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:42 PM UTC

ndiddy wrote: post #79

forgotpwd16 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is good for Jakt but why another language?

This post goes over his motivation: https://awesomekling.github.io/Memory-safety-for-SerenityOS/

>I have nothing bad to say about other languages. This is simply the option that makes the most sense for SerenityOS, which is fundamentally about having fun and implementing everything ourselves.

Kinda was expecting this but would've also liked see some critique of other languages.

Re: The 4th Year of SerenityOS

#90

Post by cardanome » Mon, Oct 10, 2022, 9:53 PM UTC

miki123211 wrote: post #74

I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, some commercial project adopts a part of Serenity and turns it into a huge hit, even outside of tech. Such things have definitely happened in the past.. Not many (average) people have heard of KDE or its web engine, KHTML, but almost everybody these days uses Chrome, which, through Apple's WebKit, is descended from KHTML itself. Serenity uses its own libraries everywhere, to…

Which is why I wish they would use a less liberal and more copy-left license to keep the tech monopolists out.

It is a huge problem that a certain tech monopolist controls the most popular browser in the world and a shame that this browser was build using the free labor of naive volunteer contributors that just wanted to help out an open source project.

Linux would have never been so successful and kept being a free operating system without its GPL license. And even that turned out to be not enough protection, as the user-hostile Android system proves.