[HN Gopher] Not-a-Linux distro review: SerenityOS is a Unix-y lo...
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Not-a-Linux distro review: SerenityOS is a Unix-y love letter to
the '90s
Author : trashburger
Score : 208 points
Date : 2021-08-18 11:28 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| By the way I believe many retro-lovers would also appreciate a
| 2-panel commander-style file manager.
|
| And as I always thought it doesn't actually have to be a separate
| app. It could be enough to make a standard file browser window
| aware of a the nearmost window of the same class and send files
| there on F5/F6 press.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Compiled and (admittedly briefly) tested yesterday. It's small,
| and fast although run virtualized. There are some quirks here and
| there, but for an OS in its infancy it's normal. Not an easy
| task, however I'd like one day to see it ported to ARM platforms.
| All those small and cheap Pi-like boards or TV boxes seem just
| the right platforms for it.
| klaussilveira wrote:
| Not related, but related: I could definitely use a consistent,
| coherent, pixel-perfect Windows 95 theme package for Linux. QT,
| GTK, DE does not really matter, as long as they blend in
| properly. Something like the adapta-project.
| anthk wrote:
| Check Chicago95
| klaussilveira wrote:
| The problem with Chicago 95 is that it is not consistent.
| Check the padding/margin on these buttons:
|
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/master.
| ..
|
| Now compare to these:
|
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/master.
| ..
|
| Or here:
|
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/master.
| ..
|
| Everything is off. Compare to the real thing:
|
| https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2F4...
|
| https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
|
| Or compare to SerenityOS. That's good UI work.
| theandrewbailey wrote:
| Those Chicago95 screenshots might be a bit out of date.
| Some of the systems I use have the latest Chicago95 on
| them, and it either doesn't bother me, or I'm so focused on
| doing things in applications (or on anything but the UI
| theme) that it doesn't bother me.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I also wouldn't mind (and would certainly donate to) a
| "consistent, coherent, pixel-perfect" (and also kept up-to-date
| to be easily installable on recent distros, covering Qt, GTK
| and GTK3) themes imitating the actual SerenityOS, as well as
| Windows 98 (not a radical Windows 95 fan), Windows XP, Windows
| Vista (it was shitty but pretty), MacOS 9.2, QNX6 Photon, Haiku
| and Swing[1]. Perhaps even Windows 3.11 (OMG I loved its
| Control Panel icons). And I've once seen a picture some other
| exotic retro UI which I found beautiful but I could never find
| it again and don't know which platform it was (I thought it was
| some modern Amiga but apparently it wasn't, some sort of Unix
| perhaps, but no Unix screenshots I found actually looked like
| that).
|
| Needless to say the themes would have to be extended to
| accommodate the features of the relevant toolkits like GTK3
| complex window titles and KDE's optional always-on-top and
| always-on-bottom buttons (I actually want every stacking window
| manager to have these two, I use both of them a lot).
|
| And I would also want these for Windows 10 (and 11 obviously),
| not just Linux. Themes for some actual apps (e.g. Firefox) also
| needed.
|
| I wonder if there already is enough of aging millennials
| appreciating retro GUIs to form a market.
|
| [1]
| https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37069_01/html/E37073/figures/ide...
| BoxOfRain wrote:
| My favourite ever OS theme was Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger", that
| period of Aqua was just so cheerful and friendly compared to
| everything before or since. I'd love to be able to skin
| modern macOS back to Tiger's theme but the best I can do is
| giving Firefox a brushed metal theme!
| pessimizer wrote:
| I'm entirely in support of this entire thread. It would
| really murder the soul of change for change's sake Linux UI
| people if users were allowed to stay on Windows XP UI
| forever, but with modern features and bugfixes.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > It would really murder the soul of change for change's
| sake Linux UI people if users were allowed to stay on
| Windows XP UI forever, but with modern features and
| bugfixes.
|
| If you're used to the other side of the fence, CDE [0][1]
| is 28 years old and perfectly usable on modern systems, not
| as a theme or recreation, but simply as the _same_ software
| that once dominated the Unix desktop scene. Sometimes I
| enjoy running it when I get fed up with the "modern" world
| and just want to work on a system that's nigh-
| indistinguishable from decades ago.
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Desktop_Environment
|
| [1] https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| What begs to emerge in the SerenityOS world is a form-centric
| visual RAD IDE like Delphi/VisualBasic/VisualStudio-WinForms.
| Powered by a higher-level (than C++) language preferably. And
| high-level (automatic memory management, first-class Unicode
| strings) languages don't have to be heavy, VisualBasic did quite
| well on 486s. But I don't actually mind C++, I enjoyed Borland
| C++ Builder (a Delphi clone I used because I never learned
| Pascal) and QNX PhAB and had no problem with C++ (but I didn't
| really enjoy MS VisualC++ MFC which required you to code the UI
| manually).
|
| I hope the actual GUI toolkit is engineered with potential
| support for visual designers in mind.
|
| It is also interesting to note how well do legacy Windows
| controls integrate with the system so old Windows apps running on
| modern Windows versions enjoy seamless support of modern user IO
| facilities which didn't exist when they were born
| (autocompletion, spell checking, dictation, screen reading, etc).
| jcelerier wrote:
| > Powered by a higher-level (than C++) language preferably.
|
| Yet C++ allowed them to write literally all that OS in a
| ridiculously small amount of time.
|
| Anyways, with Qt support
| (https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/9362) you can
| likely soon use Qt Creator for your RAD needs.
| pjmlp wrote:
| 1990's C++ frameworks like Powerplant, OWL and VCL were
| great.
|
| Qt is the only one left carrying that flag.
|
| C++ has all the tools to make it as easy as VB/Delphi kind of
| development, yet too many spoil it by sticking to what I
| would call C+.
|
| I was quite disappointed to the way XAML C++ has become, but
| apparently the teams that used WRL seem to be happy, more to
| them, rest of us are sticking with C# now.
| KronisLV wrote:
| On this note, is there any modern RAD solution like that,
| that's not essentially in maintenance mode, slowly dying or
| abandoned altogether?
|
| The closest that i can think of is Lazarus for FreePascal:
| https://www.lazarus-ide.org/
|
| It allows for native applications for a variety of platforms,
| is open and free and isn't constrained to a single OS like
| WinForms are. Things might improve with the new .NET versions
| somewhat and Java is also passable (with either Swing or
| JavaFX), but at least Java doesn't really feel native and needs
| JDK, as does .NET.
|
| Is Electron one of the only modern options (that isn't native
| though, only cross platform), or am i missing out on a whole
| class of lovely tools out there?
| pjmlp wrote:
| Delphi and C++ Builder, Qt, .NET, and XAML C++ (alongside
| WinUI) could still be an option if powers that be at
| Microsoft finally starting listening to feedback.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Glade for Gtk+ is another one, but it does seem to be
| unsupported these days. Gtk+ devs are apparently expected to
| write down their UI design by hand, with no visual or RAD
| workflow.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| IIRC Glade was just a standalone UI designer (not an IDE),
| wasn't it? I actually tried QtDesigner + PyCharm and liked
| both but lack of the integration feels itchy. Very usable
| but not nearly as pleasant as VisualStudio with WinForms.
| foldr wrote:
| As I remember it, Glade would output an XML document
| structure representing the UI which could then be loaded
| via libgtk. It seemed like a nicer model than code
| generation, though I don't remember much about how it
| worked.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > As I remember it, Glade would output an XML document
| structure representing the UI which could then be loaded
|
| QtDesigner does exactly this for Qt (and you have to run
| a command to generate the Python code from the XML then).
| Good enough, better than nothing but still not an actual
| IDE where you can just click on the button you drawn and
| jump to the code seamlessly or select a function you
| already wrote to be an event handler right in a control
| properties window.
|
| This adds an extra step of actually "building" the UI
| which prevents you from changing things on the fly.
|
| This may sound unimportant but when you have it the
| actually integrated way like in the VisualStudio WinForms
| Designer, building an app actually feels like painting
| with Bob Ross - satisfying and productive. And doing the
| UI and the code in different apps feels like having
| separate kitchens (rooms) for cutting the food and for
| roasting it.
|
| In fact I imagine my ideal app dev tool as cross-platform
| VisualStudio WinForms with WPF-like bindings and
| programmed in F#. Oh boy that could be a pleasure I would
| pay some month salaries of mine to get.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >still not an actual IDE where you can just click on the
| button you drawn and jump to the code seamlessly or
| select a function you already wrote to be an event
| handler right in a control properties window
|
| QtCreator does work like that.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > On this note, is there any modern RAD solution like that,
| that's not essentially in maintenance mode, slowly dying or
| abandoned altogether? > > The closest that i can think of is
| Lazarus for FreePascal: https://www.lazarus-ide.org/
|
| Well, Lazarus is exactly what you are asking for. Its GUI
| designer is leaps and bounds ahead pretty much every other
| GUI designer for desktop applications and the IDE integration
| with the underlying framework is second to none. The project
| isn't only under active development but has more developers
| than it ever had.
|
| The WinForms you mentioned feels like some abandoned beta
| that barely provides Delphi 1 level functionality in terms of
| "RAD-ness" and other frameworks abandon the entire RAD idea
| altogether, regressing back to glorified resource editors
| like you'd see in 16bit Windows back in 80s.
| javajosh wrote:
| IntelliJ includes a Swing builder (and is itself written with
| Swing).
|
| The product that I miss for little SMB projects is Access. It
| was the best option for building single-user CRUD apps with a
| really thoughtful bundle of features. (It totally fell over
| with multi-user, and every user needed a license for the
| runtime (with some exceptions) and VBA had some major warts,
| but in terms of DX it was great)
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > The product that I miss for little SMB projects is
| Access. It was the best option for building single-user
| CRUD apps with a really thoughtful bundle of features.
|
| Try Gupta Team Developer. It's an SQL-centric binding-
| driven visual RAD tool where you draw the controls visually
| and basically bind them to SQL queries. It was pleasure and
| fun to use the last time I tried. To me it felt way better
| than Access.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > IntelliJ includes a Swing builder
|
| Nice to know. I thought they deprecated soon after they
| added it.
|
| > and is itself written with Swing
|
| Is there a way to configure it to look like actual
| Swing[1]?
|
| [1] https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37069_01/html/E37073/figure
| s/ide...
| javajosh wrote:
| It's been a while, but Swing has a "Pluggable Look and
| Feel" (PLAF) where the default is Swing. See https://docs
| .oracle.com/javase/tutorial/uiswing/lookandfeel/...
|
| BTW here's a link to the component - it's called GUI
| Designer. https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/components-
| of-the-gui-de...
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I know and that's why I ask. I mean I would like to
| configure an existing pre-built non-free Swing app (a
| JetBrains IDE) to use the default Swing PLAF (the PLAF
| NetBeans used the last time I tried it) instead of the
| one the original developer has bundled.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Lazarus is rather cool but even after you learn Pascal (which
| is rather alien to modern programming) the built-in not-so-
| smart code editor feels somewhat painful to use after
| VisualStudio and IntelliJ. These 2 entry barriers make it
| feel overly vintage and demotivate from using it.
|
| As for Electron - the idea of learning the web front-end
| stack and designing UIs from scratch (rather than composing
| them from common controls), just to produce insanely
| heavyweight executables compatible with a limited set of
| platforms (e.g. Lazarus is much more cross-platform, it can
| even run on Haiku) doesn't sound inspirational at all.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > built-in not-so-smart code editor feels somewhat painful
| to use after VisualStudio and IntelliJ
|
| What is missing from Lazarus' editor? I never used IntelliJ
| but from my experience with Visual Studio (up to 2019 IIRC)
| i've found Lazarus' editor to actually be more featureful
| than VS in pretty much everything i tried: syntax
| completion (ctrl+space), code completion (automatically
| writing code for missing declarations, syncing interface
| and implementation, implementing abstract methods,
| overriding parent class functions, etc), code navigation,
| etc.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > What is missing from Lazarus' editor?
|
| Perhaps it actually is good, I probably just didn't
| dedicate enough time to discover all its features. Or
| maybe all the cool stuff was added right after I tried it
| (it's been some years already). I mostly mean context-
| aware completion suggestions, refactoring and code
| navigation. I already can't remember what exactly was
| missing (I didn't find) when I tried.
|
| > I never used IntelliJ but from my experience with
| Visual Studio
|
| VisualStudio + ReSharper [?] IntelliJ.
| trashburger wrote:
| There used to be a visual form builder. Nobody used it to build
| applications, so it was eventually removed. Nowadays, GUI stuff
| for most applications are written in the GML language, which is
| Serenity-specific. You can look through the source code to see
| examples.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Why did it have to be removed? Why not just put it in
| maintenance mode without adding new features if there is not
| enough demand?
| akling wrote:
| I built it, believing it was going to be useful. In the
| end, it was not. There's no point in keeping unused
| features around, since the system is just for ourselves.
|
| Since then, we've built a markup language for interface
| design (GML) which has made GUI development significantly
| easier, so that's what we're focusing on instead. If
| someone wants to build a visual design tool on top of GML,
| they are obviously free to do so, but as with everything
| else in SerenityOS, people work on what they themselves are
| interested in. :)
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I see. Thank you. I will try the GML.
|
| PS: By the way, do your neighbours know you are a genius
| developer superhero? :-)
| dleslie wrote:
| Gambas exists and has regular updates still, is an open source
| Visual Basic clone.
|
| http://gambas.sourceforge.net/en/main.html
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Thats begging to emerge just generally! Nothing has really
| filled the gap VB left.
| pjmlp wrote:
| On a side track, MFC C++ is the best offer current on MS stack
| for C++, as rediculous as it may seem.
|
| They introduced a C++ Builder like with C++/CX for WinRT, but
| apparently too many people inside Redmond wasn't happy to have
| it around, so now you get to use its replacement (C++/WinRT) as
| back on Visual C++ 6.0 and ATL.
|
| Pity that C++ RAD tooling similar to C++ Builder is seen as not
| for real developers.
|
| So the trend to write GUIs by hand on C++ is the only path
| known to many devs.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Porting a modern browser like Firefox or Chromium to an
| entirely new operating system is arguably as difficult as writing
| one from scratch
|
| Sadly this sounds quite obvious. But, out of curiosity, does it
| have to be? Let's imagine we actually write a modern web browser
| from scratch. Can't we design it the way it would be easy to port
| to other OSes because it would implement all the actual HTML and
| CSS features in a platform-independent logic layer on top of a
| portable renderer layer?
|
| Remember how many platforms did the original Opera support back
| in the days. I remember running it natively on QNX. And it was
| the most modern and standard-compliant browser.
| pram wrote:
| I love the idea, and I love strong visions, but why not something
| closer to Motif/CDE? In my mind at least, when I think of 90s
| workstations, I don't think of Windows 95.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| Motif would probably be a little too much. I always perceived
| Motif as the ugliest GUI toolkit I've ever seen. Now as I age I
| started to appreciate retro GUIs and began seeing some charm in
| Motif but it certainly requires some intentional "will to
| love". Or maybe it is just an acquired taste like surstromming
| or something like that.
|
| And someone related to the SCO Group can probably patent-troll
| you if you use it. There are no giants like RedHat and Novel to
| protect SerenityOS in such an event the way they protect Linux.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I'm not aware that SCO ever owned _patents_ , just claimed to
| have copyrights, and Motif has been open source for years.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > Motif has been open source for years.
|
| So has Linux, yet SCO didn't hesitate to spend enormous
| amount of lawyer-hours attacking it.
|
| AFAIK even simple scroll bars and double clicks are
| patented, the patent holders (Microsoft and Apple, IIRC)
| just have generously allowed the GNU/Linux community to use
| them.
| majewsky wrote:
| More current-day developers are nostalgic for Windows 95/NT
| than for Motif because of sheer exposure. It's the same for me:
| Windows NT UIs have a vibe of "good old days" for me, whereas
| Motif UIs feel like ancient history that is unrelated to me
| personally.
| anthk wrote:
| It depends. NT users with Linux (specially Slackware) with
| FVWM and a bunch of Lesttif/GTK1 tools for sure they are
| nostalgic on Motif and even Athena. At least a bit.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I've never used a pre-OSX Mac but still find the screenshots
| lovely. I've even styled my Linux window decorations after
| MacOS 9.2. I find it an optimal middle between heavily retro
| and modernly sleek themes.
| the_only_law wrote:
| Not a MacOS type UI, but I like WindowsMaker, which tried
| to emulate NeXTSTEP.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| By the way, what's the difference between WindowMaker and
| AfterStep?
| skywal_l wrote:
| I encourage anyone to look at the code. It's clean C++, you can
| get into it pretty easily. The author encourage code clarity and
| the fact that the whole OS (kernel, libraries, userland) is all
| in the same repo makes it easy to navigate and understand.
|
| I think the objective of the author is not to make the most
| complete, fastest, shiniest OS ever, but have something that
| works, that's usable, fun to work on and educational to look at.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| > I think the objective of the author is not to make the most
| complete, fastest, shiniest OS ever, but have something that
| works, that's usable
|
| There already are enough of OSes which work and are usable. To
| me it seems the goal here is just beauty in all the possible
| aspects.
| 1_player wrote:
| I would like to contribute, but modern C++ looks positively
| alien to me. I am an experienced developer and know C like the
| back of my hand, any pointer on how to learn to write 2010's
| C++ without going through the absolute basic tutorials?
| the_only_law wrote:
| C++ is the one language that actually scares me. I've seen
| several people say things along the lines of "I've been
| learning C++ for 10 years" and I have trouble finding
| introductions to the language that actually teaches all the
| features added over the years , and not just as "C with
| classes".
| pjmlp wrote:
| C++ is undoubtedly a complex language, however I think most
| disregard how complex others also are.
|
| For example, when checking the feature list of latest
| versions from Python, Java, C#, F#, Typescript as a couple
| of examples.
| the_only_law wrote:
| I suppose I agree, I lost track of Python and C# recently
| myself.
| stephen82 wrote:
| There you go https://github.com/AnthonyCalandra/modern-cpp-
| features
| ImprobableTruth wrote:
| Stroustrup basically wrote a book for people like you, called
| A Tour Of C++, directed at experienced C/'old school' C++
| programmers who want to learn modern C++. It's pretty short
| too (only like 200 pages) - can easily be read in a weekend.
| paulirwin wrote:
| The other link posted here is great info but might be a bit
| overwhelming. Some of the highlights of modern C++ to look
| into:
|
| Lambda functions
|
| Smart pointers = less need for *
|
| Move semantics = less need for pointers, efficient
| pass/return-by-value
|
| Type inference with `auto`
|
| `nullptr` = strongly-typed null pointer type sans macros
|
| `constexpr` = compile-time programming sans macros
|
| Deleted functions = can prevent things like accidental copies
|
| Range-based `for` = very similar to Java's for-each
|
| That should mostly catch you up from C++03 to C++11-ish
| (language features only; there's plenty more to explore with
| library changes). C++14 and 17 had some refinements to those
| items so review the above in a current context for additional
| enhancements to them. C++20 adds some major things like
| concepts and modules, but starting there might not be the
| best idea to get up to speed.
|
| (I'm a C++ amateur and hobbyist, so I might not be using 100%
| correct terms above! I'm also a very, very minor SerenityOS
| contributor.)
| ryanianian wrote:
| I was in a similar situation to yours when work required me
| to become a C++17 expert practically overnight.
|
| Bjarne (inventor of the language) has a "blue book" that is
| very good and pretty comprehensive (if a bit dry and
| academic). I read it cover to cover in a couple days - not
| really retaining everything but learning what I didn't know.
| Then I read Scott Meyers's Effective Modern C++ to get up to
| date on the latest thinking and really nail down some of the
| finer points.
|
| YMMV but this worked well for me to get a good feel for C++
| the language. Mastering the STL and/or Boost is a journeyman
| job, though, as is mastering (any) build system. Of course
| there is no substitute for firing up the editor and writing
| real code.
| faraaz98 wrote:
| I haven't worked with c or c++ in a long time but I found the
| repo so beautifully usable it's great
| throw0101a wrote:
| > [...] _it does borrow a couple of concepts from FreeBSD--its
| license (2-clause BSD), and a "ports tree" software management
| system similar to FreeBSD's._
|
| If anyone wants a third-party software repository for their OS
| project, it's worth checking out NetBSD's pkgsrc:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pkgsrc
|
| It's multi-platform (Linux, BSD, macOS, Solaris, AIX, QNX, etc),
| and so has a lot of infrastructure for portability already set
| up:
|
| * https://www.pkgsrc.org/#index4h1
| rbanffy wrote:
| > It's multi-platform (BSD, macOS,
|
| I absolutely love MacPorts. It's packages done right.
| plextoria wrote:
| pkgsrc support is worked on by a dev:
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pull/9268
|
| I also gave a go at cross-compiling pkgsrc for SerenityOS. Will
| resume if I find some free time in the future.
| boricj wrote:
| I'm indeed working on it (meta-issue progress tracking is
| over there:
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/issues/8605). However,
| bootstrapping pkgsrc is a stressful test of reliability,
| stability and POSIX-compliance for any operating system, let
| alone a hobbyist one. I've yet to have a pkgsrc bootstrap
| finish successfully without hitting a bug, deadlock,
| coredump, kernel panic or some combination thereof. It's like
| repeatedly stubbing one's toe on a sharp POSIX edge.
|
| That's not counting actually building packages inside
| SerenityOS (pkgsrc doesn't support the kind of cross-
| compilation we'd need to build packages on a Linux host for a
| SerenityOS target), which will probably expose lots of other
| bugs, race conditions and limitations.
| rbanffy wrote:
| > "we imported four or five C standard library functions from
| NetBSD or something like that. But those were gotten rid of over
| time. We're free of third-party code now, with the exception of
| the build process."
|
| I'm scared of whatever is their crypto support...
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Surely you could've expressed your concerns in a more
| constructive way?
|
| In any case, according to their GitHub page, they use libtls,
| which is also apparently associated with OpenBSD.
| akling wrote:
| LibTLS is our own original code [1], it has nothing to do
| with OpenBSD (or any other library that happens to share the
| name.) :)
|
| 1. https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userlan
| d/...
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| Oh, my mistake. There also exists a libtls that is part of
| https://www.libressl.org/ which is a fork of OpenSSL that
| is associated with OpenBSD, so it seemed like a reasonable
| assumption that they are the same.
| rbanffy wrote:
| So, they aren't "free of third-party code now" after all.
| Good for them.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Go fix it then. That's the point of the project.
|
| Or are you just throwing out comments without even looking at
| it?
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Not them, but this is the one place where that attitude seems
| reasonable: I am not a crypto expert, and therefore _can 't_
| audit their crypto code, and _the_ refrain is "don't roll
| your own crypto (unless you _really_ know what you 're
| doing)", so unless one of the devs _is_ a crypto expert then
| it is 100% reasonable to both be rather worried that they 're
| rolling their own and also unable to do anything about it.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| Serenity is not really designed for everyday use, but more
| for enjoyment and as a learning experience for the
| developers. It's not really reasonable to be worried about
| it from that point of view, as of course it's not
| professional crypto, it's written by someone who wanted to
| learn more about it, and figure out how it'd work in a
| modern system.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I fix the software I use. Random commenters are not entitled
| my time and attention. I've learned to avoid rolling out my
| own crypto and suggest others learn it too. One shouldn't be
| proud of reinventing the wheel unless it's significantly
| better wheel.
|
| So, is it?
|
| edit: they use libtls, so I guess they aren't "free" from
| third party code after all.
| tristan957 wrote:
| That is not the libtls you are thinking of. That is a
| homemade library.
| somethingor wrote:
| Serenity's LibTLS is Serenity-specific code.
| qwerty456127 wrote:
| I've taken a look at the screenshots and discovered the fact
| SerenityOS supports theming. This makes me want to share my
| opinion on this: big light elements in the dark theme (like the
| display frame in the display settings) and big dark elements in
| the light theme (like the terminal) are annoying (in addition
| dark terminal also can be very hard to read when the sun shines
| straight into your display). Although both of the examples I have
| given look this way because this is the classic way for them to
| look, I'd love to see an option to automatically style
| _everything_ (the terminal specifically, the display settings
| decoration doesn 't matter much but it can also be fixed just to
| make it perfect) them in accordance with the system theme gamma.
|
| In fact this is why I don't use (on Linux and Windows) dark
| themes actually: because there are many apps which don't support
| dark themes and look like huge white bulbs when your system is
| dark (and most of the apps which do support dark themes still
| require manual re-configuration every morning/evening instead of
| just complying to the OS-level switch).
| tuckerpo wrote:
| : ^ )
| klaussilveira wrote:
| It's not just nostalgia, but good, efficient design work:
| https://twitter.com/tuomassalo/status/978717292023500805
| NoGravitas wrote:
| "If this desktop doesn't look hauntingly familiar to you, you
| either didn't live through the '90s, or perhaps just didn't live
| through them _right_. "
|
| In fact, I used OS/2 through the early '90s, and Linux through
| the late '90s and early 2000s, so I missed this era altogether,
| and I don't think I lost anything through it. It wasn't until
| 2006 I had a job that required Windows, so I didn't use anything
| between 3.11 and XP.
| severak_cz wrote:
| I think that SerenityOS would benefit from porting to something
| like RaspberryPi. That would give them usable hardware support.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| As Andreas himself routinely says in Q&As - If you're
| interested in it then build it. This is an OS for developers.
|
| They don't have a 'plan' for hardware support. They work on
| what each individual developer is interested in working on. If
| you want to add compatibility with the pi then fill your boots!
| severak_cz wrote:
| I know. However my C++ skills are almost non existent. :-(
|
| But I keep to throw this idea over over. Maybe someone adopt
| it one day (and I will definitely beta test that later).
| bla3 wrote:
| Lots of discussion of SerenityOS yesterday on
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28206840 too.
| KronisLV wrote:
| The author also has a YouTube channel, where he posts more of the
| development process:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasKling/videos
|
| Personally, it's very interesting to see both someone so
| positive, but also so technically capable. It feels like that's
| an optimal situation for both building something nice, as well as
| developing a small and interesting community around it.
| nickelcitymario wrote:
| I'm impressed by everything about this project, but the idea of
| re-writing everything from scratch would seem to doom this
| project to obscurity. No?
|
| How can any open-source project compete if it doesn't lean on
| other open-source projects? Am I missing something?
|
| This approach seems to guarantee that they can do a handful of
| things better than anyone else (because they control the whole
| stack), but not enough things to ever be truly complete OS for
| any given market segment.
|
| Unless 1000 developers fall in love and choose to participate and
| compensate for the absence of other OS code, I don't see how this
| can grow sustainably. I'd love to be wrong, though.
| lawl wrote:
| > How can any open-source project compete if it doesn't lean on
| other open-source projects? Am I missing something?
|
| It doesn't want to compete. It's a system for them, by them,
| based on the things they like.
| Deukhoofd wrote:
| You'd be surprised by how many developers fell in love and
| chose to participate.
|
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/pulse/monthly
| michaelgrafl wrote:
| This project feels more like a lover-letter to me than an
| attempt to compete against other operating systems.
|
| I really dig it, although I don't expect to ever use it
| productively. And I love that the development is documented on
| YouTube.
| Santosh83 wrote:
| From what I understand, they _are_ porting some established
| software like Qt and GCC, and presumably if there is enough
| interest and volunteers, more applications. However they also
| aim to write a core set of apps specially for Serenity from
| scratch, so it seems like the best of both worlds to me: a set
| of native, integrated programs designed to showcase the OS 's
| specialities, with ports of popular FOSS programs, and since
| Serenity does aim to be "Unix-like", it shouldn't be too hard.
|
| The incumbents in the field are absolutely overwhelming in
| their existing functionality, which makes it an extremely steep
| slope to climb for an upstart, unless they aim to fulfil a
| specialised niche. Linux struggled for years with lack of
| drivers. That's always the one of the chief roadblocks. If the
| OS can drive a broad range of hardware, then automatically
| users and ports of software will happen, but if it can only
| recognise a few generic devices then it will remain hobbyist.
| But thanks to the complexity of modern hardware, the task of
| even _adapting_ Linux 's drivers would be an enormous
| undertaking.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| > _Unless 1000 developers fall in love and choose to
| participate_
|
| They're already half way there :)
|
| Plus the goals of this isn't to be another Linux or Windows or
| whatever. It's to be an opinionated platform that's personal to
| the developers. That means even as long as there is just one
| developer on it, then the project is succeeding in its goal.
| breakfastduck wrote:
| Compete for what?
|
| It's an OS being build from scratch born from the desire to do
| it, and to have all things in it built from scratch. The
| project has immense activity.
|
| I absolutely HATE this kind of comment, with it being
| especially annoying to read on hacker news. Why the hell does
| everything have to be about gaining a market segment. Why can't
| something be for the joy of it.
| incanus77 wrote:
| This. Linux wasn't made to compete, either. Nor was PHP. Or
| even Perl. Serenity hearkens to a time when people made --
| and shared -- things out of passion and the drive to create
| and refine. It's what drew me to software development in the
| first place -- an internet-enabled open playground of
| passion, trial and error, learning, and making.
| [deleted]
| city41 wrote:
| I totally agree with you, don't get me wrong. But I can't
| help but feel a little sad knowing SerenityOS will never be
| my daily driver. I feel the same way about Haiku OS.
| ThrowawayR2 wrote:
| > " _... the idea of re-writing everything from scratch would
| seem to doom this project to obscurity. No?_ "
|
| I'm sure the same was said of Linux 0.01 in the '90s, which was
| also the golden age of proprietary UNIXes. " _From small
| beginnings come great things_ ", as they say.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's named "serenity" OS after the serenity prayer recited in
| AA meetings, because the developer started this as a way to
| keep his mind occupied to overcome alcoholism. I think it has
| been a wild success for that purpose and is one of the more
| beautiful examples of using software for the promotion of
| personal excellence rather than commercial excellence.
| Obscurity is not an impediment to accomplishing this goal.
| natechols wrote:
| I too was reading the article and wondering "why..." until I
| saw the mention of addiction. This is an excellent reason to
| write a complete operating system from scratch,
| congratulations to the author.
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