[HN Gopher] The 4th Year of SerenityOS
___________________________________________________________________
The 4th Year of SerenityOS
Author : crecker
Score : 317 points
Date : 2022-10-10 14:12 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (serenityos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (serenityos.org)
| [deleted]
| nonbirithm wrote:
| I think there is more behind SerenityOS that elevates it above
| being just another OS project. They've attracted hundreds of
| contributors and have instilled a unique sense of culture within
| their community (as an example, going as far to devote an entire
| GitHub repository to documenting a list of "yak-shaving" yak
| emojis[1]).
|
| I think that kind of social endeavor isn't something a lot of
| maintainers can accomplish, not even those with the skills to
| work on such a project all by themselves.
|
| [1] https://github.com/SerenityOS/yaksplained
| chillfox wrote:
| Super welcoming community + a clear and strong vision to guide
| the project.
|
| Other OS projects I have seen either lack vision (same as x,
| but written in y), or they are just for the personal learning
| of the developer who started it.
| edgyquant wrote:
| 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
| hacker culture I grew up in. Anything is possible and even if a
| problem ends up being more than you can handle at least you
| learned a ton along the way.
|
| Now days searching for how to code leads you to a ton of
| tutorials about gluing modules together. I feel sorry for young
| people with that thirst who won't be satisfied thanks to the
| commoditization of learning to code.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| 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.
| phist_mcgee wrote:
| Ironically, by using modern tools.
| jbirer wrote:
| Modern tools are good, but the culture around it is
| pretty toxic, and in my own opinion, cringy. 10 years ago
| you would get booed for saying things like "Unused RAM is
| wasted ram, so let's build this in Electron". I am happy
| to see a pushback.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| I think revisiting vintage technologies with better
| modern tools = Win.
|
| It takes advantage of sharp hindsight and correct what
| was bad, and more importantly keep what worked.
| beeman wrote:
| I found out about SerenityOS because of the post about Ladybird
| here on HN a few weeks back.
|
| I have since watched hours of his stream and found it super
| inspiring. To the extend that I now want to learn some C++ and
| make some contributions to the project.
|
| It's really refreshing to see people code for fun and build
| whatever they feel like.
|
| I think a lot of profesional devs lose that when they go all in
| on their work (which is understandable) so it's awesome to see
| something like this!
|
| Congrats on the 4 years! Looking forward to what's next!
| pjmlp wrote:
| It is a great project and who knows, one day might come as
| standard in some OEM system.
|
| Happy birthday.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Is this ever getting GPU acceleration?
| cies wrote:
| Not sure why downvoted... I searched Github for you and found
| this:
|
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/...
|
| See also LigGPU and LibSoftGPU in the same folder.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| LibGPU seems to load the soft GPU, doesn't seem to do all
| that much. Which is perfectly understandable, GPUs are their
| own special part of operating system programming (messing
| with firmware, boot timings, etc.).
|
| If it'll ever get GPU support, I'd expect it to be based on
| QEMU/libvirt GPU acceleration rather than any direct hardware
| support.
|
| Unless someone knowledgeable and motivated enough has a crack
| at it and writes a driver forttheir GPU, of course That's an
| immense task, though, so I wouldn't expect it any time soon.
| Maybe an Intel engineer will get bored or something.
| cies wrote:
| See this also from the birthday announcement:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yLESYN4_5w
| asddubs wrote:
| just to clarify potential misunderstandings: this is for
| opengl compatibility using CPU rendering. although obviously
| having this sort of thing will be useful for transitioning to
| gpu support independently of having drivers written
| bpye wrote:
| I think all the BSDs got GPU acceleration by adding a compat
| layer around Linux's DRM subsystem. I'm sure someone could do
| that for SerenityOS if they were so motivated...
| asddubs wrote:
| my personal guess is probably, although andreas always insists
| that there is no plan in response to these sort of questions,
| so don't expect official confirmation or a timeline
| adamrt wrote:
| They don't plan ahead for features typically. They add stuff
| when someone wants to do the work.
| akling wrote:
| Happy birthday, SerenityOS! :^)
| codetrotter wrote:
| Congrats Andreas, on building such a cool project and
| community! SerenityOS is a wonderful project, and the world is
| better for it existing :)
|
| And also all of your wonderful videos that you've made about
| the development of the system over these years. That's the most
| valuable part of it all for me.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| What an amazing project, first heard about it here when it
| launched.
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| 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.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Well, there's tons of room for improvement over that tools that
| exist on other OSs/platforms, so why not?
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| For many people a web browser and an office suite is all they
| use a computer for. If anything an office suite should be
| expected.
| armchairhacker wrote:
| this is actually mentioned in the article, by one of the quoted
| people.
|
| It works out because of loose coupling + many contributors.
| People will work on the web browser and others will work on the
| main OS, and there aren't too many conflicts or places where
| each team has to coordinate.
|
| It also works because making a basic OS or web browser or
| programming language is not hard, 90% of the work goes into the
| final 10% of perfection. You can a) make minor improvements to
| the base OS, or b) create an entirely new program and a burst
| of seemingly-rapid development; SerenityOS is a passion
| project, so many people choose b.
|
| Furthermore, many of the people working on the OS are still
| doing so, and some of the people working on the web browser may
| not have joined without it. So maybe it's slowing down progress
| on the main OS but not by too much, the main OS is still
| improving.
|
| Honestly I kind of predict people will start to branch off and
| work on a Serenity office, and Serenity painter and Serenity
| DAW and Serenity calendar and Serenity game engine. This is
| basically what KDE has done.
| trashburger wrote:
| Feature creep kinda defines the project. It's not a bug, it's a
| feature. :^)
| aliqot wrote:
| while endearing, it does endanger the trajectory of the main
| feature. 'how many paid FT devs are being added per feature'
| is what should be asked.
|
| People asking "Is it fun" are missing the point.
|
| Don't 'fun' yourself into a job under terms you didn't get to
| negotiate, state your requirements and adjust your work
| funnel accordingly. I've witnessed a lot of 'fun' projects
| manifest themselves into serious projects that fall apart
| because this forethought was neglected.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I'm not sure what the financials of the SerentiyOS project
| look like. It sounds like he streams the development. If
| that's his primary source of income, then doing the fun
| stuff seems like it enhances the revenue stream?
|
| (edit: based on other comments, it sounds like donations
| rather than streaming revenue are the major source of
| income, although I bet the goodwill from having such an
| open development process help with the donations).
| mynameisvlad wrote:
| > how many paid FT devs are being added per feature
|
| Well, considering this is a fun project being worked on by
| volunteers (some of whom are sponsored by the community),
| I'm going to go out on a limb and say the answer to this
| question will always be "zero".
| Huh1337 wrote:
| The only question that should be asked is "is this fun?"
| wtetzner wrote:
| > People asking "Is it fun" are missing the point.
|
| Are they? I thought the whole point of the entire project
| was fun.
| russtrotter wrote:
| Absolutely agreed. I've watched lots of his long-form videos
| on all those topics and initially I was always scratching my
| head as to why he'd want to reinvent all these wheels from
| the molecules up, but as I watched more, I realized that he's
| a journey guy, not necessarily a destination guy. To his
| credit, he's attracted a similarly-minded following of
| contributors along the way.
| chatterhead wrote:
| Would it still be feature creep if the number of competent
| volunteers/workers increases in equal measure? Couldn't we just
| call that a more robust feature fulfillment pipeline?
| esprehn wrote:
| You missed GML, the compile time markup language for the UI:
|
| https://man.serenityos.org/man5/GML-Introduction.html
|
| Ex.
|
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/master/Userland/...
|
| In general the scope creep is because Kling and co are all
| about fun and code beauty. And to their credit, the code is
| beautiful. :)
| nurbel wrote:
| Well, there's been a spreadsheet app for a while :^)
|
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/...
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Just need a MacWrite-grade app that can export to PDF and
| SerenityOffice can be sold in a nice big box with a pile of
| floppies.
| bombcar wrote:
| An OS without a web browser is hardly an OS anymore; Microsoft
| won on that regard (credit to Bill for recognizing that).
|
| But in general if you have something like this, it's often
| better to let it go where it wanders, even if it never attains
| the success of Linux, etc. Forcing a restricted scope often
| leads to burnout which kills it even faster.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| > An OS without a web browser is hardly an OS anymore;
| Microsoft won on that regard (credit to Bill for recognizing
| that).
|
| Sorry, but no, just no.
|
| MS (correctly) recognized the threat that browser poses to OS
| through webaps. They bundled IE with Windows, however their
| bundling was a simple and effective (and monopolistic)
| strategy to take away market share from the then-leading
| browser, Netscape.
|
| Yes, OS needs a browser. No, MS and Bill had nothing to do
| with that (and they artificially slowed down web the best
| they could - hello IE6!).
|
| I do agree with the rest, but to credit MS that every OS
| needs a browser nowadays... Just no.
| moreira wrote:
| It seems like you -are- crediting MS for bundling a browser
| with an OS.
|
| Their reasons are irrelevant.
|
| OSs didn't come with browsers. Microsoft bundled IE with
| Windows. Now every OS comes with a browser.
| bornfreddy wrote:
| Of course they did, or if they didn't, browser was one of
| the first things installed. Windows was nothing new in
| this regard.
|
| What was new was that OS was _deeply_ connected to
| browser, so that uninstalling it was not an option. But
| that is not what GP claimed, and that is of course not a
| rule with newer OSs.
|
| But anyway, let's talk about this great new SerenityOS
| instead. :) Over and out.
| [deleted]
| breckinloggins wrote:
| Some of the comments demonstrate that there are a lot of people
| here who have never encountered programming in an artistic
| context before.
|
| That is a sad (though understandable) state of affairs.
| rvense wrote:
| Well, our prophet pg did write somewhere that the reason to
| join a startup was to get rich. These people aren't coding for
| the lambos? Seems immoral to me /s
| fuckstick wrote:
| Which comment specifically, because I didn't see one.
| sph wrote:
| Even though I agree with you, there are no such comments that I
| can find, or not enough to warrant your knee jerk reaction.
|
| No need to build a straw man.
| [deleted]
| djbusby wrote:
| Here http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
|
| And here: http://www.paulgraham.com/richnow.html
|
| First DDG results for "Paul gramm get rich"
| simonh wrote:
| Neither of those are comments here.
| openthc wrote:
| Above reads "pg did write somewhere"; the links provided
| are somewhere.
| rvense wrote:
| They weren't referring to my dumb joke, but to the claim
| that there were negative comments. I thought I saw one or
| two as well, maybe they were deleted.
| breckinloggins wrote:
| A couple look like they were, yes.
| rewgs wrote:
| 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 staying power.
|
| That said, I'm fully with Andreas that having fun and simply
| building something because you want it to exist are valid goals
| in and of themselves. Couldn't be happier for him and everyone
| who contributes to the project.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| He streams regularly, check it out and support if you can:
| https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasKling/videos
| bee_rider wrote:
| Where does the money for this project come from?
|
| I kinda wonder if "streamer who develops code" could be a
| viable open source business model, haha.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Mostly donations. See:
| https://awesomekling.github.io/I-quit-my-job-to-focus-on-
| Ser...
| Huh1337 wrote:
| Sponsorship via Github is the primary stream AFAIK
| akling wrote:
| That's right, as of May 2021 I'm working on SerenityOS
| full time, supported by donations. :)
|
| I posted this about it at the time:
| https://awesomekling.github.io/I-quit-my-job-to-focus-on-
| Ser...
| BirAdam wrote:
| 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.
| abiloe wrote:
| > we are in a world where open source is the way.
|
| I think you're in a bubble. The world still runs primarily on
| closed source and proprietary software and services.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Linux, Nginx, Apache, PHP, MySQL, WordPress, Chrome,
| Firefox, various open source NoSQL DBs, NodeJS, Python,
| RoR... most software is definitely open source. There are
| the Oracles, z/OS, and MS products and some SaaS stuff, but
| open source is eating the Earth.
| layer8 wrote:
| Most software that is written commercially is closed
| source.
| sneak wrote:
| Is this a viable daily driver on bare metal or does everyone who
| uses this run it in a VM?
| vkoskiv wrote:
| It's still in rapid development mode. Can be booted on bare
| metal, but it's not ready for prime time yet.
| timc3 wrote:
| Congratulations to SerenityOS! Quite amazing seeing the progress
| over this relatively short time.
| miki123211 wrote:
| 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 the point of
| replacing C++'s std with their own library, AK, which might make
| stripping it for parts more difficult, but it's certainly not
| unimaginable.
|
| If Serenity's web engine gets good enough, I can even imagine
| some EU government sponsoring an independent competitor to the
| Google / Apple browser duopoly.
| varajelle wrote:
| Fun fact: Andreas contributed to KHTML
| https://github.com/KDE/khtml/blob/41057a9a8e491b72c8296bf5ed...
| aeyes wrote:
| I think he worked on the browser at Nokia before Apple took
| over.
| cardanome wrote:
| 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.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Which is why I wish they would use a less liberal and more
| copy-left license to stop this scenario from happening.
|
| Huh? You wish SerenityOS's browser engine was not a viable
| competitor to the Google/Apple browser duopoly? Kind of a
| weird POV, if you ask me.
| andrepd wrote:
| How on earth is that what you extract from that sentence??
| jbirer wrote:
| Putting words in his mouth to try to save his argument.
| cardanome wrote:
| I am saying it can only be a viable (user-freedom
| respecting) alternative to the browsers of the tech
| monopolists if it enforces copy-left and manages to keep
| the greedy hands of these and other monopolists out if it.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| I want to become powerful enough to contribute to SerenityOS.
| cies wrote:
| Shave a few Yaks :)
|
| No, kidding... But their Jakt[1] language will make it much
| easier to contribute than in arcane reality of C++.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/SerenityOS/jakt
| thom wrote:
| This will hopefully be true, but Serenity is nevertheless one
| of the most pleasant C++ codebases to read that you're ever
| likely to come across.
| boricj wrote:
| Just do it.
|
| Seriously, you don't even have to know programming to
| contribute. Writing documentation, porting software, trying to
| boot on real hardware, trying out websites with the web
| browser, looking for bugs in the user interface... There's no
| such thing as a barrier to entry with SerenityOS as long as
| you're motivated to learn.
| chatterhead wrote:
| Thank you for saying this!
| akling wrote:
| You are already powerful enough! Some of our most active
| developers today didn't even know C++ when they started. If
| you're interested, look for something small that annoys you,
| and then see if you can't figure out enough of the code to fix
| it. :^)
| kramerger wrote:
| Andreas, you are underestimating the complexity of C++ for
| mere mortals.
|
| Maybe you should take a break from SerenityOS and write a
| book about the useful/practical subset of the C++ language??
| robryan wrote:
| 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.
| DustinBrett wrote:
| Andreas and his project SerenityOS was a huge inspiration for me
| to start my side project daedalOS
| (https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS) which I've almost been
| doing for 2 years now. I really enjoy watching his monthly
| updates on his channel.
| ianbutler wrote:
| I follow Andreas on twitter and he is a big inspiration for me
| when I go look at more challenging problems now.
|
| I have an addictive personality, so far cigarettes are the only
| thing that got me and only for 4 years, but I largely stay away
| anything else now because I see how it effected members of my
| family and how easily someone like myself could go the same way.
|
| Because of that I very much appreciate channeling yourself into
| something as ambitious as an operating system instead. It's
| actually the same way I've built any of my best work and how I've
| gotten even this far in my career. The line I say is: programming
| keeps me sane.
| QuackyTheDuck wrote:
| Thank you for writing this, I can heavily relate.
| robbocodes wrote:
| The vibes of SerenityOS, Andreas, and the community are
| tremendous. I wish them many more years!
| seti0Cha wrote:
| > The original Jakt prototype was written in Rust by myself and
| JT over a couple of weeks before we made it public. I wrote a
| post introducing Jakt and the motivations behind it. And JT made
| a video about the creation of Jakt as well. The Rust-based
| compiler is now long-gone, and Jakt is fully self-hosted with the
| Jakt compiler being written in Jakt itself.
|
| It's always humbling for me to read updates from SerenityOS :)
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| This is good for Jakt but why another language?
| rvense wrote:
| Why another OS? Why does anyone ever do anything?
| [deleted]
| cardanome wrote:
| I haven't yet used it but from what I can tell seamless
| integration with existing C++ code might be quite a killer
| feature.
|
| Plus everything immutable per default is pretty sweet.
|
| And no borrow checker, so simpler than Rust.
|
| Honestly I could see that language take off even outside of
| SerenityOS.
| kramerger wrote:
| It's all part of Andreas' grand plan for serenity OS.
|
| Ask him about "the plan" next time he goes live :)
| ndiddy wrote:
| This post goes over his motivation:
| https://awesomekling.github.io/Memory-safety-for-SerenityOS/
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >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.
| zppln wrote:
| I was a bit skeptical of Jakt at first. I thought using a new
| language I'm not familiar with would add a layer of indirection
| to my entertainment (i.e. watching the streams). But I've since
| warmed up to the idea, and seeing how the existing community
| deals with this if deployed widely in the codebase is one of
| the more exiting aspects going forward. From my arm chair
| perspective, that is.
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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...
| efficax wrote:
| I believe it works on aarch64, there's even a raspberry pi
| target. Don't know the state though.
| rcarmo wrote:
| After reading this I clicked through to their Discord and
| it's reached the point where it's crashing QEMU on the host,
| and discussions are from October 1st.
|
| Would love to see this boot on a Pi.
| danjoredd wrote:
| If you have the time, that might be a good project!
| robryan wrote:
| There are a number of people actively pushing ARM support
| forward.
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| 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 still haven't fully
| grasped.
|
| Congrats, good luck, and carry on!
| stavros wrote:
| > 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.
| yardshop wrote:
| 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?
| stavros wrote:
| 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.
| [deleted]
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