[HN Gopher] RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD
___________________________________________________________________
RavynOS Finesse of macOS. Freedom of FreeBSD
Author : cable2600
Score : 204 points
Date : 2023-12-01 11:29 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ravynos.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (ravynos.com)
| ianai wrote:
| This looks very promising! Thinking of putting it on something.
| cable2600 wrote:
| MacOS App support isn't there yet. It supports only a few apps.
| Test out a copy and give them feedback please, thank you.
| ianai wrote:
| It's a really good idea since apple is abandoning its x86
| software. It's an opening for FOSS to pull in new GUI
| frameworks/features. Could really help gain userbase.
| cable2600 wrote:
| They use FreeBSD and Darwin open-source code. Darwin is the
| core of MacOS with the XNU/MACH Kernel. So they are doing
| nothing wrong that Apple can sue them over it. The trick is
| writing the code that does what the Non-Open-Source code of
| MacOS does to run the Mac Apps.
| steve1977 wrote:
| > The trick is writing the code that does what the Non-
| Open-Source code of MacOS does to run the Mac Apps
|
| And that is where the magic happens.
|
| GNUstep has been trying to provide a useful open source
| alternative implementation of OPENSTEP for more than 20
| years now I believe. I don't see that happen to be
| honest.
| ungamedplayer wrote:
| I think when brew works nativelu it will be much more
| functional and fun to use.
| BossingAround wrote:
| Why? Brew is a workaround for not having a proper package
| manager on macOS. Can't you use the native package manager
| instead?
| JoBrad wrote:
| I have used brew on Linux for dev tooling, because it's so
| easy to switch versions.
| rubyn00bie wrote:
| I realized Brew was released for Linux a while back, and
| my jaw dropped because... why? Brew is simply awful
| compared to most Linux package managers. It has gotten
| better over the years but I still couldn't ever imagine
| preferring it over the installed out of the box package
| manager in quite literally any Linux distro.
| latexr wrote:
| Sometimes you can't use a distro's package manager (e.g.
| shared hosting) but Homebrew will still work.
| jckahn wrote:
| Homebrew is my preferred package manager on Linux. It
| just seems to work more simply than apt or Flatpak for
| me, and it's less context switching when I need to use
| macOS.
| JoBrad wrote:
| For standard apps, I agree. But being able to change the
| default version of Python, NodeJS, etc. just by running
| brew install is a lot easier than using apt/apt-get. They
| just aren't made to support that kind of scenario.
| latexr wrote:
| > ravynOS (previously called airyxOS)
|
| Subjectively, I find both names terrible. There's zero chance
| I'll vocalise either to someone and they'll know how to spell it.
| The current one in particular is bound to have people typing
| "ravenous".
|
| But the idea is interesting, and even though the screenshots
| don't yet inspire confidence (the typeface is too thin, folder
| icons are too square, ...) I wish the team the best of luck in
| making their vision come to light.
| cable2600 wrote:
| It is still in pre-release and being worked out. It doesn't run
| in VirtualBox or VMWare because there is no driver for video on
| it for the virtual machines.
| Erratic6576 wrote:
| Can't you tell VMware that it's a FreeBSD installation?
| Bad_CRC wrote:
| tragedeighOS
| lakpan wrote:
| a-aronOS
| zogrodea wrote:
| The default user in SerenityOS is called anon which made me
| think along similar lines to you.
| no_wizard wrote:
| reference to this, I assume:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQaLic5SE_I
| lakpan wrote:
| That's right, En Oh Wizard
| krylon wrote:
| I don't like either name as well, but if it does what it is
| meant to do, I won't mind.
| latexr wrote:
| It's not just a case of _liking_ names, they should also be
| _functional_ 1 in terms of spreadability. If this OS
| eventually does what it is meant to do, I will want to tell
| people about it and get them to try it.
|
| When making a recommendation in a social setting, there's a
| tiny window to get the other person interested in whatever
| you're suggesting they watch/play/try. If the name is hard to
| understand, difficult to remember, or they have to take out a
| phone to write it down, it's causing friction that makes them
| less likely to follow through.
|
| 1 A sign of good design.
| tw04 wrote:
| I think you're going a bit overboard. Telling someone
| "raven with a y instead of an e" isn't THAT difficult to
| convey or remember.
| latexr wrote:
| > I think you're going a bit overboard.
|
| I am not. I speak from vast experience of trying multiple
| approaches.
|
| Maybe English is the first language wherever you live.
| That's not the case for the majority of the world. Even
| if my friends and I have a good grasp of the English
| language, switching mid-sentence causes a delay in
| understanding. It's not just "raven with a y instead of
| an e"1 but "raven, as in <raven in my language>2, but
| with a y3 instead of an e", which is several
| transformations to do. I _guarantee_ that would need to
| be repeated multiple times, with the other person having
| to take out their phone and asking questions in the midst
| of typing, and I'd still have to check and they'd have it
| wrong first time.
|
| 1 And you're ignoring the part of "then the letters O and
| S, without spaces".
|
| 2 Which itself causes complications, because most people
| will recognise "crow" as a translation but we don't make
| a distinction for "raven" so it's a word even people with
| an understanding on English may not recognise.
|
| 3 Which is a letter we don't use in any native word.
| tw04 wrote:
| We can agree to disagree. By your logic every small open
| source project needs to hire a marketing firm to ensure
| their naming convention is easy to understand and
| inoffensive in every language on the planet. I think
| that's overboard.
|
| The project is clearly being built by someone that speaks
| English and is targeting English speakers. Notice their
| website and documentation is all in English?
| latexr wrote:
| > By your logic every small open source project needs to
| hire a marketing firm to ensure their naming convention
| is easy to understand and inoffensive in every language
| on the planet.
|
| That's a straw man. It's not what I said _at all_.
| fkyoureadthedoc wrote:
| >I guarantee that would need to be repeated multiple
| times, with the other person having to take out their
| phone and asking questions in the midst of typing, and
| I'd still have to check and they'd have it wrong first
| time.
|
| Definitely not. I'd just tell the raven os and let them
| google it. Google would find it anyway.
|
| Which I know you didn't even try before writing this
| italics laden diatribe because the bigger issue is that
| the name is already taken (albeit abandoned).
|
| https://github.com/raven-os
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Think about virulence. If you are near a threshold, the
| slightest decrease can stop the contagion.
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7853563/
| computershit wrote:
| If the product slaps, the product name is immaterial.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| I agree with you in this instance, as early adoption for a
| project like this relies on people being able to find it
| and the more people who do and try it, the more testing is
| done to improve the entire project. I'm reminded of my time
| on helpdesk when getting people to click on the browser bar
| was nearly impossible and it basically didn't matter how I
| asked them to do it. Either they would click into their
| search bar or they would somehow append the URL to their
| homepage URL. I learned that my intentions and efforts to
| do something a certain way don't matter at all if someone
| else is incapable of doing something I think they can do.
|
| This name is the same way. If someone searches for RavenOS
| there's another project named that[1]. If they don't see
| that, they will probably be redirected to RaveOS[2], see
| "ah cryptocurrency mining" and then back out. Finally, if
| they miss both of those, there is an Android ROM called
| Raven OS[3] they might also find. No matter their
| intention, if people can't find it easily after it being
| mentioned in conversation it will be harder to grow.
|
| 1. https://github.com/raven-os 2. https://raveos.com/ 3.
| https://techkaran.co.in/2022/02/20/official-
| android-12-raven...
| ghc wrote:
| I did a double take when I saw the name because ravynMS was the
| name I chose for my "company" as a 12 year old developer in
| 1997.
|
| 12 year old me would have given the name two thumbs up.
| finnh wrote:
| that's so ravyn
| jaboutboul wrote:
| This comment wins
| hallway_monitor wrote:
| It's not a joke that one of the hardest problems is naming
| things. So many promising products and businesses shoot
| themselves in the foot by choosing a name that hurts adoption.
| bikingbismuth wrote:
| My personal example of this is the security company
| "Thycotic". They could be greatest InfoSec company in the
| world, but I really hate their name. It looks like the word
| psychotic said with a lisp.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Thycotic merged with Centrify to form ... ThycoticCentrify?
| CentrifyThycotic? I forget. Anyway, the merged entity is
| now called Delinea.
| simonebrunozzi wrote:
| > The current one in particular is bound to have people typing
| "ravenous".
|
| I'd guess it was probably intended, and that makes things
| worse.
|
| I know - as someone else was commenting - that naming things is
| hard, but for something like this, finding a name that is easy
| to pronounce, and easy to spell, should be a high priority.
|
| Off the top of my head, playing with the fact that it is an OS,
| it runs on a Mac, and is based on FreeBSD (where BSD stands for
| Berkeley Software Distribution [0]), a couple of quick
| suggestions:
|
| - BerkeleyOS (let's honor Berkeley)
|
| - FinOS (a play on finess - easy to spell?)
|
| - SteveOS (obvious reference - might be disliked by many - but
| is it Jobs or Woz? Perhaps WozOS would be better?)
|
| - BillOS or JoyOS (Bill Joy founded BSD in 1976)
|
| - JordanOS (Jordan Hubbard coined the term FreeBSD)
|
| etc.
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Software_Distribution
| latexr wrote:
| JoyOS is particularly good. It's short, has a clear cadence
| that helps to identify its parts (joy-o-s) as has multiple
| positive reads. At first you'll just assume "it's a joy to
| use" (which could be a slogan) but then has the historical
| reference that makes the name even better and more meaningful
| once you learn it.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| And if we say it fast, it sounds like Joyous - something
| most people would consider "good" to be!
| mod50ack wrote:
| > is it Jobs or Woz?
|
| I prefer to read it as an homage to Steve-O.
| rafram wrote:
| > Perhaps WozOS would be better?
|
| Maybe, but I genuinely would not be surprised if Woz held and
| enforced trademark rights on his name. It's his brand - see
| Woz U.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Well done for runining my weekend! I will give it a try. However,
| still struggling with NVidia drivers on FreeBSD. For the life of
| me I can't get them to work.
| JoBrad wrote:
| I'm honestly not sure why they would stick to BSD. The first
| thing many folks do when they start a Mac is install Gnu Tools
| and other things to make it more like Debian.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| This is why I went to Fedora.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Well yeah but FreeBSD is not Linux, and I don't see the
| connection with your comment. I also use a Linux distro as a
| daily driver, but I love playing with FreeBSD every now and
| then.
| hedora wrote:
| This is why I switched to AMD video cards. NVIDIA was always
| flaky under Linux. I finally got a working setup, and then they
| stopped backporting new OpenGL features to the binary blob
| drivers for it, breaking all sorts of stuff.
|
| CUDA is a big advantage for NVIDIA, but I don't use it.
| Similarly, NVIDIA hardware tends to be a half a generation
| ahead. Whatever. The AMD drivers are open source, in kernel
| tree, and reliable over time.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Hm ok but this is freebsd not linux.
| IWeldMelons wrote:
| Frankly I think these days a Linux based emulator like Wine would
| be a smarter decision .
| krylon wrote:
| I vaguely recall reading about a project trying to achieve just
| that on HN a while back. Unfortunately, that is all I remember
| about it. Back then, it apparently was not quite there, yet,
| but that must have been at least five years ago, so the
| situation might be a lot better today.
| jdiff wrote:
| Unfortunately not. Darling [0] is still at the point that it
| can only run command line applications. Only the most basic
| GUI applications are supported. That's still a massive
| accomplishment that I don't want to diminish, but it's
| nowhere near the point that WINE was at even quite a long
| time ago.
|
| [0] https://www.darlinghq.org/
| krylon wrote:
| I would imagine with Wine the number of people interested
| to see Windows applications run under Linux/BSD/etc is
| significantly larger than with macOS/Darling.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Really goes to show the demand of exclusive MacOS software.
|
| To be fair, if something is on Mac, it is usually on Linux.
| Windows is a bit different.
| yakubin wrote:
| _> To be fair, if something is on Mac, it is usually on
| Linux._
|
| That's true only for CLI apps. My most frequently used GUI
| apps on Mac:
|
| - MailMate
|
| - Affinity Photo
|
| - ACDSee Photo Studio
|
| - NetNewsWire
|
| - ApolloOne
|
| - Textual
|
| - Transmit
|
| - iA Writer
|
| None of them are available on Linux. Most of them are Mac-
| only (i.e. no Windows version either).
| n9 wrote:
| that's a pretty wild assertion. I'm immediately thinking of
| music software: 99% of all plugins, the #1-4 DAWs, drivers
| for 2/3 of all hardware, at least... not on linux.
| n9 wrote:
| Also... Preview is not available on any other platform and
| is, imo, the single best executed application of all time.
| Xerox9213 wrote:
| Absolutely. It's the only PDF editor that holds a candle to
| Acrobat Pro.
| steve1977 wrote:
| I can see the freedom of FreeBSD part, but not the finesse of
| macOS. And without that, why not just use FreeBSD?
| blackhaz wrote:
| What is an OS finesse?
| steve1977 wrote:
| In the case of macOS, for me it's for example things like
| automation via AppleScript, a coherent UI for native apps,
| the ,,polish" of the interface if that makes any sense
| fragebogen wrote:
| My interpretation would be that it's about the same level of
| polish ux/ui-wise as macOS. As with OP, unfortunately I don't
| see it either - the screenshots show some resemblance with
| macOS but without any of the finesse.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| It's not completed yet. The features are listed under the
| section "project goals" and the download button has a note
| calling it a developer preview image.
|
| In my experience with some Linux distros goals alone don't
| necessarily work out, but the approach with trying to be
| compatible with actual Mac OS apps is already more notable
| than an Ubuntu reskin.
| steve1977 wrote:
| It will never be completed. GNUstep has been failing at
| that for decades already.
| henriquez wrote:
| It appears like they've aped some of MacOS design language,
| but it's clear they're engineers, not designers. There's
| enough "uncanny valley" between this OS and actual modern
| Apple UI design that it comes off a bit like all those
| versions of KDE that tried to look and act exactly like
| Windows XP and always felt a bit "off." Their screenshots
| page is a Frankenstein mess of poor font quality and Apple
| themes mixed together dating back to OS X.1
|
| I think it's better when a team actually has designers
| working for them and comes up with their own real UI
| standards, (see Pop!_OS). IMO Apple's UI design isn't
| particularly good so it's not like some holy grail we should
| copy and paste to Linux.
| 9dev wrote:
| > IMO Apple's UI design isn't particularly good so it's not
| like some holy grail we should copy and paste to Linux.
|
| It may not be perfect, but it's pretty darn good - as
| especially visible when comparing to this effort presented
| here. There's a lot of detail and polish in MacOS interface
| design and UX people don't realise until it's missing.
| steve1977 wrote:
| And that's exactly what I would call ,,finesse"
| steve1977 wrote:
| > IMO Apple's UI design isn't particularly good so it's not
| like some holy grail we should copy and paste to _FreeBSD_.
|
| Fixed that for you...
| bjelkeman-again wrote:
| Apple's UI design certainly has flaws. I really don't
| understand why they changed the way the System Settings in
| Ventura/Sonoma(?) now looks like and behaves more like iOS,
| as an example.
|
| However, as someone who has used GUIs from SunView/Irix
| Desktop/DECwindows to iPadOS/MacOS, via Windows
| 2.0/3.0/95/NT/etc. I am of the opinion that Apple is still
| the most consistent and easy to learn GUI. Even my 80-year
| old mother manages quite well with her Mac and iPhone.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| To me that is kind of the key strength and why Apple has
| such a good UI story. Its not necessarily that they
| perfected the UI. There are certainly parts I dislike.
| But, its consistent. I have to use Windows 11 at work. It
| is amazing how some windows have been brought up to date
| with the new design language of Windows 11, but I open up
| the Windows Event viewer and still has like the Windows 7
| design language.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| Yeah, its just a nod to their fellow Apple believers.
|
| Its fascinating to watch their members behave.
| scythe wrote:
| One moderately frustrating thing about using FreeBSD is that
| it's always been treated as sort of a second-class citizen by
| GNOME, and therefore Gtk, and therefore most of the Linux
| ecosystem which depends on Gtk. So probably the most popular
| desktop environment is KDE, and it's nice, but it is a _certain
| kind of interface_ which doesn 't appeal to everyone.
|
| Meanwhile, OS X shares a little code with FreeBSD and was
| partially derived from it around 30 years ago. And the design
| philosophy of OS X is roughly the opposite of KDE. This
| situation has engendered at least half a dozen projects over
| the years, most of which are never really complete, to make a
| FreeBSD-first DE/UI that works like Mac. And if it can run Mac
| applications, so much the better!
|
| Unfortunately, this is really hard. Cocoa is a moving target,
| and contra Wine, Apple is not as pertinaciously obsessed with
| backwards compatibility as Microsoft. Even much less ambitious
| (in my estimation) projects like enlightenment 17 and Wayland
| have struggled to replace major components of the desktop from
| the ground up.
| bityard wrote:
| > OS X shares a little code with FreeBSD and was partially
| derived from it around 30 years ago.
|
| The first release of FreeBSD was 30 years ago, OS X a little
| over 20.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Well Rhapsody was released 25 years ago. So you're both
| right, now go back playing ;-)
| scythe wrote:
| OS X is derived from NeXTSTEP, first released in 1989 and
| based on 4.3BSD-Tahoe. Meanwhile, this was updated to
| 4.3BSD-Reno and ported to the x86 as 386BSD, from which
| NetBSD was forked in early 1993; it was subsequently
| reorganized to become FreeBSD in late 1993. NeXTSTEP and OS
| X later imported a few system components from FreeBSD,
| while replacing others, particularly replacing parts of the
| kernel with Mach.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Not only is Cocoa a moving target, it's deep and wide. The
| amount of functionality it offers is staggering and extensive
| enough that for many types of apps, a dev may not need to
| import any third party libraries if they don't want to, with
| no negative impact on the quality of the final product.
|
| That's extremely difficult to reimplement, even if you lock
| compatibility to a particular macOS release.
| replete wrote:
| Because its still in major development? Huge refactors are
| going on still under the hood. It's a project with a small team
| working in their free time with a big goal and its some way
| off. I mean, a BSD-based open source OS binary compatible with
| mach binaries ... it's very cool IMO and I hope more people get
| involved
| steve1977 wrote:
| Apple's secret sauce is not mach binaries but Cocoa. And tons
| of resources. And clear leadership.
|
| We have decades-old projects like GNOME, KDE and GNUstep and
| none of them come close to macOS in terms of ,,finesse".
| Despite some of them having corporate backing.
|
| So I just don't see that happening for a project with a small
| team working on it in their free time. Far too ambitious,
| I've seen projects like this fail too often in the last two
| decades.
| bionsystem wrote:
| What about hellosystem ? Ravyn focuses more on compatibility with
| MacOS I guess ?
| hnlmorg wrote:
| Maybe this is just me but I never considered Apples approach to
| software installs to be elegant. And I'm not a fan of their
| unified menu bar (or most aspected of their desktop environment
| for that matter).
|
| What I'd love to see would be a whole new desktop environment for
| macOS (homebrew has its warts but is a "good enough" package
| manager for my day to day needs)
| major505 wrote:
| I do like it. Its easy to explain to my mom how this work
| because is what most users would consider a software install.
| hnlmorg wrote:
| That makes it simple. It doesn't make it elegant. And I
| certainly wouldn't be getting anyone non-technical to run a
| FreeBSD/macOS hybrid that doesn't support either platform
| fully.
|
| Not taking anything away from this project, it's looks really
| interesting. But it's definitely not a mom and pop friendly
| platform.
|
| Besides, since when have app stores been difficult to use?
| Package management doesn't have to be CLI based.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| I don't mind the idea of installing applications by dragging
| the icon to the folder. The problem is that many applications
| simply don't have the Application folder show up in that
| window. Seems like Apple relies on developers to make this
| interaction consistent, which obviously doesn't work.
| torstenvl wrote:
| When a mounted DMG is the foreground window, Finder should
| slightly adjust the .app handler. The default action will be
| "Install Application," which will pop up a confirmation
| window and, if confirmed, copy the application to
| /Applications.
|
| The "Open" option should still be available for people who,
| for whatever reason, want to run an application directly from
| a DMG.
| n9 wrote:
| click on app, command-c, shift-command-A, command-V
|
| if you find yourself looking for faster routes to an end,
| MacOS almost always has several levels of shortcuts waiting
| for your muscle memory.
| gspencley wrote:
| I was forced to use a Mac for work and almost resigned because
| of it. I happily concede that a lot of it is what you are used
| to, but to me I need to be able to configure all aspects of my
| UI / DE ... including things like universal font sizes (which
| was my biggest issue due to my eyesight and finding that their
| fonts gave me headaches on my external monitor).
|
| For people who are not "power users" then I suppose I can see
| the appeal. But the "it's our way or use something else"
| philosophy doesn't work for me. I will use something else (the
| problem is when you're forced into a system with that mindset).
| The computer is a tool, I am the master of the machine
| (especially as a programmer), and I can't stand feeling like
| there are barriers between me and how I want the system to
| behave. "Finesse" to me is the ability to install a completely
| different desktop environment if I so choose. To type "rm -rf
| /" as root and not have the machine question my command (very
| dangerous for the non power users I admit).
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Meh
|
| macOS is more than shiny traffic lights buttons on your windows,
| global menus, and dock.
|
| It's also a clipboard that works everywhere and not like "oh you
| cannot do this because X11 this or wayland that", it's also human
| interface guidelines (the old ones, the new ones are unparseable
| shit) that make bloody sure that the OK/Cancel buttons appear
| where you expect them to appear.
|
| It's also some bloody keyboard shortcuts that work everywhere the
| same and not every bloody app bringing in their own and their own
| little ways to configure them or none at all. Yeah chrome, I'm
| looking at you.
|
| It's also that the most used system stuff can be configured
| pointy-clicky and that stuff that the system can figure out on
| its own is what it bloody figures out on its own, without me
| having to drop down to command line (although it is an avenue
| too, and command line and GUI must be in sync).
|
| It's also that it's accessible out of the box. Try blindfolding
| yourself, inserting your installer usb stick, and installing your
| thing and using it successfully. Come on. OS X could do it since
| Leopard, I think, which was in... 2007?
|
| In other words, macOS could abandon their Aqua looks and go for
| industrial NeXTStep looks, and still be ahead of almost
| everything else in terms of consistency, accessibility, and
| general lack of fuckness.
| hospitalJail wrote:
| > Try blindfolding yourself, inserting your installer usb
| stick, and installing your thing and using it successfully.
|
| I don't understand this.
|
| Are you saying its hard to install Linux? Has this ever been
| true? Usually you smash the Next button. There is a partioning
| screen, but that is some serious changes you are going to make.
|
| I don't care what OS religion you follow, I'm taking the
| blindfold off during partioning.
| BSVogler wrote:
| Yes. You need to be very technical. E.g. there is a keyboard
| selection thing with multiple ambiguous options while on Mac
| you have to press like one key to identify it. Even windows
| somehow works without requiring a PhD in keyboard layouts.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| On modern distros the installer will already have the right
| one selected if your keyboard layout matches the system
| language (which is true for 99% of computer users). I'm
| pretty sure Fedora doesn't show you the list of layouts
| unless you want to manually change it.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| But this also means you're fucked if you're blind and taking
| blindfold off doesn't make any difference.
|
| This is not about religion, man. This is about accessibility.
| n9 wrote:
| they are saying that you can literally install the OS start
| to finish it (and configure it for sightless use to boot)
| without being able to see at all. As in blind. This was part
| of the point they were making about accesibility features and
| UI consistency in MacOS.
| hedora wrote:
| You are describing MacOS 9.
|
| The ribbon had all the settings for the OS, and was always a
| click away. Finder worked out of the box. These days, copy-
| paste is hit or miss, and the window manager can't be reliably
| controlled via the keyboard.
|
| Also, even in first party apps, keyboard shortcuts are
| completely inconsistent. Command-0 no longer reliably restores
| the main window. In maps, Command-L doesn't focus the location
| bar like it does in safari; it repositions the map to your GPS
| location.
|
| Even the keyboard is a shitshow. Notes aggressively
| autocorrects technical terms to random words on the latest
| MacOS, but nothing else does, and I can't find the second "turn
| off autocorrect" setting that it must be using instead of the
| OS-wide one (which is definitely disabled).
|
| Current OS X's UI and filesystem layout are a cruel parodies of
| OS 9. It's like a bunch of Shoggoths or an army of slightly
| better LLMs tried to recreate OS 9, borg-style.
|
| Apple mostly adds software features by acquiring stuff,
| storyboarding UIs, demoing a prototype to an exec, and then
| shipping it, so I guess that's how it got so weird.
|
| Anyway, I wouldn't say the result has finesse.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| Now imagine that the thing in the OP has even less finesse
| than what you call a bunch of Shoggoths. More like putting
| lipstick on a earthworm.
|
| All those projects, hellosystem, this one, I guess I've seen
| one or two more before -- all of them are just kind of
| missing the whole point.
|
| I would say the current KDE Plasma is somewhat starting to
| approach any amount of finesse at all. Hope they continue, at
| least they've learned from the whole KDE4 kerfuffle.
| n9 wrote:
| sure, there are inconsistencies, but with some global
| shortcuts in your muscle memory and a few years of using
| spotlight under your belt... OSX out of the box is fast and
| efficient as hell.
|
| But I will relent and acknowledge that your arguments ring
| very true. How _do_ I get my Messages window back if I
| accentally close it? Very good point.
|
| The ribbon though? I think your memory is optimistic. It was
| in my memory ugly, clunky, slow and had some, but few system
| settings. But I must admit that in my heart OS 7.1 was the
| high water mark of usability and I resented all subsequent
| innovations... which it sounds like you might be able to
| empathize with.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Huhh this is really cool. Never heard of it. And FreeBSD is
| actually my daily driver.
|
| So apparently it can run macOS apps? More or less. Cool. It'll be
| hard to find those compiled for intel though going forward. But
| we'll see.
|
| I'm actually quite happy with KDE on FreeBSD but perhaps their
| compatibility work can also be applied to vanilla FreeBSD. The
| only thing I really miss from macOS is Pixelmator.
| ffgjgf1 wrote:
| > More or less
|
| I think much less than less for most practical purposes.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| > We've got your apps covered
|
| No you dont, RavynOS and HelloSystem are mediocre wrapper
| projects.
|
| Put your efforts towards GNUStep, don't run with it and making
| something pretty.
|
| If GNUStep worked, it could be ran on Unix like systems people
| actually use like Ubuntu.
|
| This project is going to fail with "finesse".
| sunshine-o wrote:
| I remember 20 years ago Gnome or even KDE were toys compared to
| the very structured but slow moving GNUStep. GNUStep was also
| hard to install (no rpms), ugly but very snappy.
|
| But nobody big put any money or devs on GNUStep. Even Sun
| invested in Gnome (!), what did not made sense at the time
| because they had invested in OpenStep & the whole thing was
| Java friendly (I believe Java was a first class citizen in
| early releases of Mac OS X).
|
| I always wondered if it might have been because there were some
| legal risks...
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| > I always wondered if it might have been because there were
| some legal risks...
|
| What was in it for Sun to invest in GNUStep? Jobs was always
| resistant towards supporting other platforms. So it's clear
| OpenStep was the last attempt at making use of the dying Next
| line.
|
| I could maybe imagine a sales pitch scenario like "port your
| Mac apps to Solaris". But when OSX came around, Cocoa was
| steered more towards the consumer market, not workstations.
| echelon_musk wrote:
| Not a chance this gathers any traction.
|
| You can just hear: can I run 'popular macOS application' on it?
| No.
|
| The average user, for starters, doesn't use a computer (most
| consumer tasks are done on a phone), and won't know how to
| install a different OS even if they do.
|
| Run FreeBSD on the server and use the macOS Terminal to connect
| to it over ssh.
| afavour wrote:
| They do mention implementing Cocoa APIs so there is a
| theoretical future where it can run some macOS apps. But that
| would be a very heavy lift (not quite ReactOS heavy but still)
| for little reward. And you'll probably find everyone is using
| SwiftUI by the time it's complete.
| grey_earthling wrote:
| I know some of this is personal taste, but to me macOS really
| doesn't feel finessed. It feels confusing, distracting and
| annoying. I suppose a large part of the problem is that I want a
| useful tool, whereas macOS is designed to be a lifestyle.
| empthought wrote:
| I think you find macOS confusing, distracting, and annoying
| because it hasn't had strong design applied to it in over a
| decade.
|
| It does get features to sustain people's interest in Apple
| hardware and services, which I guess is a lifestyle. But it's
| an "Apple lifestyle" not a MacOS one.
|
| A lot of commentators don't really seem to appreciate how Apple
| is a consumer electronics manufacturer now, and still evaluate
| it like people did ca. 2003. Apple could shut down their
| desktop/notebook computing division entirely and still make a
| bundle. (They probably would lose phone market share, though.)
| hedora wrote:
| My main problem with MacOS is that, on careful inspection,
| almost everything is buggy or clunky.
|
| I wish someone would just clone the headline features and app
| UIs (not the UI toolkit) but apply more attention to details
| like regression testing.
| zamalek wrote:
| It just doesn't look that great either. If you glance at a
| screenshot then, sure, it looks slick - but you'll routinely
| run into developer UIs (for example, the settings app prior
| to Ventura - which has now become pretty to the degree of
| uselessness).
|
| It's nice from far, but far from nice.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| I get the impression that MacOS is kind of like Gnome in that
| they aren't really designed with multitasking in mind. On
| MacOS, the green button in the corner of the window expands the
| app to fullscreen. Opening an app in Gnome likewise goes
| fullscreen.
|
| There are some workflows where that would be OK, but to do my
| job I have to be in and out of multiple windows constantly. I
| gave up on Gnome when I was trying to find one of 5 different
| terminal windows in the exploded window view and it was clear
| that they'd rather I cycled through them all one at a time
| instead of what I do on XFCE which is scroll up on the terminal
| icon in my dock, which quickly cycles through them and brings
| them to focus.
|
| Personal preference for finesse will always differ so I tend to
| focus more on the usability aspect of it and accept any finesse
| that comes along for the ride as a kind of luxury experience
| lol
| jwells89 wrote:
| It's designed to multitask, just not in the Win9X-ish style
| that most people are accustomed to at this point. There are
| plenty of Mac users who juggle tasks users all day long
| without issue.
|
| It's designed around letting windows that are sized to fit
| content overlap and be at least partially visible if they're
| relevant in any way. If there gets to be too many windows to
| manage (which happens in other desktop environments too; the
| usability of Windows alt-tab for instance scales incredibly
| badly as the number of open windows increases), that's when
| you start tossing windows into another virtual desktop
| ("space" in Mac nomenclature), perhaps organizing windows
| into desktops based on task.
|
| To opt out of fullscreen on the green button, hold down
| Option/Alt before clicking it. The behavior of the button in
| that situation is defined by the developer of the program
| you're using though so YMMV. Maximizing windows is possible
| by double-clicking their titlebars, except in Electron apps
| that have replaced the system titlebar with a fake one that's
| missing functionality.
|
| As for GNOME, I'd say it compares to iPadOS much more closely
| than macOS due to missing or oversimplified functionality. It
| feels like it's more oriented towards tablets and small
| laptops than desktops or even midsize-to-large laptops.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| Thanks for the tips :) I believe you pout into words the
| reason I don't like GNOME - it fell victim to "let's make
| it touchscreen friendly" at the expense of the way people
| have been using computers for a long time. Again, it has
| uses (iPads are perfectly functional and easy to use) but
| you feel the limitations a lot more when you try to do more
| advanced things.
|
| My opinion that MacOS wasn't "designed" for multitasking is
| heavily biased by how I multitask (as you mentioned it's
| the Win9x style, stemming from using Windows for my
| formative computing years) so I am not trying to discount
| MacOS at all - I use it for my music production because
| Core Audio is _rock solid_. But then, that 's a relatively
| singular task and as a result I treat it as though its only
| job is running Ableton at the time.
|
| Multitasking is also different now, since so much of what
| we do is in the browser anyway.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Same here. I don't see the finesse in macOS. Half the time I
| have to fight the window manager to get what I want, the other
| half I have to use 3rd party tools. It doesn't even have very
| basic stuff like a volume mixer.
| whalesalad wrote:
| This is incredibly awesome. I would love to see a lot of this on
| Linux, too. Apple has always had the best compositor in the
| business.
|
| The marketing page is a little more generous to this project than
| the actual screenshots though, lol.
| apozem wrote:
| Yeah, I had the same thought viewing the screenshots. I like
| that this project exists, but they've got a long way to go with
| those Windows 95-esque buttons and scrollbar.
| rollcat wrote:
| It's nice that more people in the FOSS community take note of
| macOS's design and (historically, at least) attention to detail.
| However, this project (judging by the screenshots, which is how
| everyone is going to judge you if you claim to be inspired by
| Apple's work), they're already making serious (but fixable)
| mistakes:
|
| <https://ravynos.com/images/ravyn_0.4.0_pre_desktop.png>
|
| - What the actual heck is that window border around the terminal
|
| - Horizontal spacing on the fonts is too dense, the text
| rendering is absolutely awful - maybe it's just the font but I
| wouldn't suffer through reading a full paragraph
|
| - The buttons in the installer dialog look like a cheap knockoff
| of Windows 95
|
| - Different colors for window background, title bar, dock, but
| somehow the window background and menu bar are the same
|
| - The 3 visible dock icons mix 3 different art styles, the fourth
| icon is an empty space?...
|
| - Where's the shadows to tell stacked windows apart? Windows did
| this in the late 90s
|
| <https://ravynos.com/images/firefox_global_menu.jpg>
|
| - The padding of the window controls is all messed up, with
| different offsets on all 3 sides; no unified window/tab bar in
| the browser (even though Firefox under both X11 and Wayland can
| do it just fine); again different window frame and background
| colors
|
| - Bright white window borders (absolute worst aspect of the Big
| Sur redesign), although I'll give them credit for going a notch
| below #ffffff
|
| - Very poor way to show off the transparent menu bar (the choice
| of wallpaper + no blur), visually distracts from the contents of
| the menu bar itself; note that all macOS default wallpapers have
| a pretty uniform sky color across the top, so the transparent
| menu bar can be a bit less of a mess
|
| Again, this is all fixable, but the real problem is that half of
| these things are trivially improved by changing the font, the
| color, or the padding. But it's this _lack_ of attention to
| detail (and the fact that despite these glaring issues they 've
| still decided to use these screenshots) that speaks about the
| project's commitment to details.
|
| It's pretty cool that you've got AppImages or an ObjC compiler,
| but you're not allowed to use the word "finesse" and make these
| mistakes!
| creatonez wrote:
| What should WIP software look like? There was a time when the
| 1998 beta for macOS, called Rhapsody, looked horrible and
| disjoint.
|
| There was also a time when the iPhone looked like this -
| https://i.imgur.com/wwH2UoF.jpg
| steve1977 wrote:
| Rhapsody looked pretty decent IMHO...
|
| http://toastytech.com/guis/rhap.html
| creatonez wrote:
| Yes, but it only devolved from Mac OS 9 by adding a bunch
| of unpolished NeXT GUIs, and the development necessitated
| the temporary removal of features and apps that were
| already polished.
| steve1977 wrote:
| I've never really worked with Rhapsody, so I couldn't
| tell. I came to Mac OS X from NeXTSTEP and FreeBSD, the
| first version I actually used as a daily driver (with the
| odd boot to Mac OS 9 for some stuff) was the public beta
| in 2000 (which was Aqua already of course).
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Rhapsody was an unholy mix of NeXTstep implementation
| with a bastardized version of Apple's Platinum theme,
| which wasn't designed to support NeXT's UI and display
| technologies. Steve hated it and continued to use
| OpenStep on a ThinkPad.
| Affric wrote:
| Therein lies the raison d'etre of Apple and Mac.
|
| I thought Rhapsody looked good.
|
| 95% of it is the fonts. Apple always does well with the
| fonts.
| rollcat wrote:
| You don't advertise WIP software as "built with finesse"; and
| even if you do, you must at the very least put said finesse
| into the choice of screenshots you present.
| oneplane wrote:
| That looks like it's SwitchBoard, not iOS. Users do not have
| access to the internal Apple test software.
|
| As for Rhapsody, that looked decent, it had a similar vibe to
| A/UX where it looks like Mac OS Classic but runs Unix.
|
| Perhaps you are referring to Kodiak or Cheetah, but those
| were pretty GUI-consistent at that time. Granted, up to
| Panther it was just Aqua and getting it to work consistently
| and performant, but I don't think it was ever in the state
| that this RavynOS is. That's mostly because NeXTStep as a
| foundation already had an existing GUI that was consistent.
|
| RavynOS is having a bad presentation because it looks like
| some sort of odd partially-done theme based on CDE/Motif.
| barbariangrunge wrote:
| The aspiration to be on par is cool and over time, hopefully
| they pull it off. But it probably comes down to them having
| some dedicated graphic designers and Ux designers (and an audio
| person would be nice too), and foss projects have historically
| done poorly at recruiting those people.
| rollcat wrote:
| Agree, it's right in the FAQ:
|
| > I don't code but this looks awesome! Can I still help?
|
| > Absolutely! There will be art, documentation, testing, UX
| and UI work, [...].
|
| I read this and immediately think the project sees UX as "I
| can't write code ell oh ell". You need to treat a UX role the
| same way you treat a kernel hacker role - it's a specialist
| whose input you must respect, or be left to deal with the
| consequences.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I think you're reading too much into it. Saying "if you
| aren't a programmer you might be able to help in various
| ways, including UX" isn't the same as saying "UX doesn't
| require any particular skills".
| replete wrote:
| Do you think operating systems look polished early in
| development? Of course they didn't. Most of the work going on
| isn't visible in a UI. From what I gather in the discord there
| have been some quite large refactors going on under the hood
| gjsman-1000 wrote:
| Abandonware? Last release was June 2022.
| maipen wrote:
| Most of OS are doomed from the start. It's a waste of
| everybodys time, except for those that build these systems and
| learn about OS development.
|
| We don't need a new OS, much less one trying to compete with
| Mac (lol, no chance).
|
| What we need is for the popular ones to continuously improve.
|
| Windows 11 is better than 10 and 7 and vista and xp... (yes I
| skipped 8)
|
| Most people that work in tech use Mac or windows, some use
| linux but they are small yet mighty.
| I_Am_Nous wrote:
| I read a comment once that enumerated all the ways even
| spinning your own linux distro is doomed to fail. It's far
| more work to properly develop a distro for security and if
| your distro is just "Ubuntu minus stuff I don't like" then
| you aren't really maintaining anything that couldn't just be
| a script you have people run on base Ubuntu.
| Klonoar wrote:
| I suspect most people in this thread haven't gone deeper than
| the website.
|
| The project creator is actually very capable - what they've
| done so far is very impressive on a technical level. The
| project has an effective bus factor of 1, though: I've lurked
| in the Discord for the past year (since it was called Airyx) or
| so and plenty of people come in but don't contribute much.
|
| Unless that changes I'm not sure it'll work out long term.
| fithisux wrote:
| Why not build on PureDarwin?
| cristeigabriel wrote:
| It just looks bad. You want to be MacOS? Actually go and copy it,
| as close to pixel perfect as you fancy.
|
| I've personally experimented with replicating UIs using just a
| "device" object to a graphical API, so I know very well that it
| is possible. What prevents this project from just... going out
| and actually doing what they're trying to achieve? Take high
| resolution screenshots, carefully understand what's going on, and
| re-implement it.
|
| The hardest part would probably be compositing (if they do it
| from scratch), but even before getting there, there's so much
| wrong already. This really does not have the same finesse of
| MacOS, has anybody even looked at the screenshots picked by the
| developers??
| tiltowait wrote:
| This screenshot[1] is a great example of what you're talking
| about.
|
| * Awful typography (especially bold text)
|
| * Ugly gray background in foreground window
|
| * Windows 95-era buttons in the foreground window
|
| * Weird left padding in the (ugly) dock
|
| * Terminal window has window controls on the right for some
| reason, and they look like they're from Windows?
|
| All that said, it's still in preview (v0.4pre4), and these
| things can all be corrected. But I think they'd do well to slap
| "early preview" all over the place so people don't write it
| off.
|
| [1] https://ravynos.com/images/ravyn_0.4.0_pre_desktop.png
| cristeigabriel wrote:
| I think there is a critical error in the judgement you make
| here, we can see that they advertise[0] the finesse of macOS.
| But what does this really mean? Let's think about it.
|
| But before that, they clearly must be aware that... it's just
| bad (lightly put), yet it comes off very clearly that they're
| trying to _copy_ [1] visual elements of Mac. So what does the
| author think finesse mean?
|
| For my perspective, I'll quote the first definition I get on
| a Google search, "impressive delicacy and skill." We can
| argue that Mac does provide this (I believe it does, the
| experience is very opinionated (which also leads to stuff
| being _intentional_ ) and seamless across their devices,
| consistent (more than just the _potential_ for consistency,
| which is what Windows provides), and so on, and so forth.
|
| But, this is nothing like what we see in the current RavynOS.
| Nothing feels intentional. The advertising is misleading, and
| I don't think that it's something solvable in the future
| unless the person responsible for advertising and
| guaranteeing the presence of this "finesse" update their
| understanding of the word and clearly defines what that
| should mean in practice.
|
| Update1: to add to my previous points, if _my_ perception of
| the word "finesse" is correct, for something to have the
| "finesse of macOS," it wouldn't even have to look like it,
| but just achieve the same goal in it's own way (or Apple's
| way, that's "fine" but leaves a bad taste.)
|
| [0] - https://ravynos.com/ "Finesse of macOS. [...]"
|
| [1] - https://ravynos.com/screenshots
| OnlyMortal wrote:
| The buttons look like NeXTStep IMO.
| frankhhhhhhhhh wrote:
| This desktop is just screaming for some drop shadows.
| layer8 wrote:
| A pixel-perfect copy would raise copyright issues.
| cristeigabriel wrote:
| Sure, but I don't think _that_ is the issue here.
| layer8 wrote:
| I'm not defending their current approach, it looks pretty
| bad, but the approach you suggest also isn't viable.
| cristeigabriel wrote:
| Whilst I agree, it was just a development on what I
| perceive to be their vision. I address this particular
| point in another comment in this comment thread.
| donatj wrote:
| I mean your complaint was literally that they didn't copy
| it pixel by pixel. That's _your_ issue here, as stated at
| the very least.
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| _> Actually go and copy it, as close to pixel perfect as you
| fancy. _
|
| That's what they appear to be doing, but they're only about
| halfway there so far. It's still just in beta, not even version
| 0.4 yet.
| LeFantome wrote:
| At the pace they are going, they are years from a usable
| system. The screenshots you are looking at are from an
| abandoned approach to doing the GUI tech.
|
| The level of polish that you are advocating seems completely
| premature to the current level of development.
|
| This is not just a visual design shell. They are proposing a
| macOS mimic much more deeply at the OS level.
| cristeigabriel wrote:
| To advertise "finesse of macOS", you should deliver on that
| viraptor wrote:
| You advertise what you're aiming for, not what you've just
| achieved. Do you really want some alpha level software with
| description "an app that draws some windows and sometimes
| doesn't crash", or do you want to know what the author has
| in mind for when it's finished?
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I would rather they just use KDE and make a nice skin that has
| a similar scheme to Apples. KDE looks sleek on its own, and
| then make keybindings as close to Apples as possible. Heck,
| KDE3 used to have a wizard that asked if you were more
| accustomed to Mac, Windows or Linux, and set your key bindings
| that way.
|
| You can get insanely close with KDE, and KDE apps all follow a
| standard UI approach and the theming will transfer over. I'm
| pretty much convinced that the best DE is KDE for something
| full feature. If I had an OS with only the apps made for their
| respective Desktop Environments, KDE would be the winner for
| me, everything from games to code editors, browser(s?), and
| what have you.
| MaximilianEmel wrote:
| How does this differ from helloSystem?
|
| https://hellosystem.github.io/
| titaniumtown wrote:
| RavynOS aims for partial binary compatibility with macOS.
| dubcanada wrote:
| What does that mean? It can partially run some trivial macOS
| apps? The amount of effort just to get basic programs working
| seems like a ton of effort, for a end project that is just
| buggy implement of a moving target.
|
| Unlike Windows, MacOS has no problem ignoring backward
| compatibility. So Wine works be rewriting older APIs and
| Microsoft always works on backward compatibility, MacOS does
| not do that. It just works or it doesn't.
| michaelmrose wrote:
| What about something like winapps which transparently runs
| apps in a VM. I know you can't legally run MacOS in a VM on
| a non mac but it would be hard to enforce against a
| software project that merely provides the capability so
| long as it doesn't provide the copyrighted software itself.
| confd wrote:
| IS there Something that I'm not getting about the Shortcut
| "SHIFT-S" that'S Shown on the page?
| Nilrem404 wrote:
| It is the shortcut to type the commonly used special character
| "S" /s
| butterisgood wrote:
| My basic opinion is that there are really no great desktop
| operating systems currently being made anymore. Mac OS used to be
| it but started losing me after Snow Leopard to be completely
| honest.
|
| I feel both desktop producing companies that actually matter (can
| run all the productivity apps I need to do my job) have put this
| space on the back burner for cloud (Microsoft) or consumer
| electronics (Apple).
|
| No year has ever been the year of the Linux Desktop and all the
| Desktop stuff for Linux is too Linux specific to work well
| portably on FreeBSD.
|
| All I can say is I hope Apple makes iPads able to run full
| development suites because the desktop appears to be dying a slow
| death in general.
|
| Or, maybe I'm wrong (would love to be) and things start getting
| better again.
| sharts wrote:
| Indeed seems like post-Snow Leopard was the beginning of the
| end.
|
| Desktop seems to be converging to tablets. Which is just
| another way of saying, dumbing down of the UI and restricting
| what can be done, and offloading to the cloud.
|
| Development suites will all move to containers in clouds just
| like VSCode does today.
| sharts wrote:
| Don't these projects seem to come and go every several years?
|
| While a nice idea wouldn't it would be more efficient to improve
| virtualization and have something akin to Parallel's "seamless"
| mode?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| So much awful. Bad font rendering. Icons look pixelated. White
| semi-transparent things look weird. Active and inactive windows
| look too similar. Instead of just coloring in the window buttons
| greying the text there should be some more obvious visual change
| to the actual header. Curve in top of window is pixelate. Very
| rounded top and share hard rectangle is jarring. Dock is
| perfectly rectangular with no border. Icons are bad.
|
| On the interface side the global menu is not only a mediocre UI
| when universally implemented its unlikely to be properly
| implemented in countless apps making impossible to make
| consistent.
| ThinkBeat wrote:
| I dont entirely understand what this is.
|
| I think this is an effort to create a skin, or graphics layer /
| window layer to FreeBSD that looks and feels like Apple.
|
| But then it says the project uses the Mach kernel. Does that mean
| that they have a version of FreeBSD running on top of the Mach
| kernel? That sounds cool.
|
| Are they creating a clone of Cocoa that will have the same
| interface as the original? Or is Cocoa a open sourced from Apple?
|
| Near the top it reads:
|
| ""RavynOS aims to be compatible with macOS applications""
|
| Ok well that sounds cool.
|
| Then farther down:
|
| ""Trivial macOS and Darwin applications may run directly on
| ravynO""
|
| I guess it can be a goal that is a long way off still. I dont
| know why they would bother with Linux compatibility. FreeBSD and
| Mac has to be the most important ones?
| major505 wrote:
| You know, I have and old macbook pro (2009) that I can make macos
| work for the life of me after the original hard disk died, and I
| had to replace it.
|
| Might as well try this, since is currently running linux mint.
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