[HN Gopher] I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS...
___________________________________________________________________
I'm forking Ladybird and stepping down as SerenityOS BDFL
Author : zmodem
Score : 613 points
Date : 2024-06-03 09:22 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (awesomekling.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (awesomekling.substack.com)
| getwiththeprog wrote:
| BDFALAISM
|
| Beneficial Dictator For As Long As It Suits Me
|
| :)
| guilherme-puida wrote:
| As Long As it Suits the Community, I guess. I might be naive,
| but the reasons he gave for his decision don't strike me as
| selfish.
| arp242 wrote:
| Yes, that is always implied. Even Guido, the original BFDL,
| stepped down. Linus will probably retire at some point (I hope,
| considering the alternative would be death before retirement at
| a relatively young age). Etc.
| btschaegg wrote:
| > considering the alternative would be death
|
| Which is exactly what happened to the first "dictator for
| life" (without the B) ;-). Even at more or less the exact age
| where one would expect someone to retire today.
|
| See also: Julius Caesar, Ides of March
|
| Edit: Just to make this clear, I also find the "I'm doing
| this as long as it works out and makes sense" to be the only
| useful approach to the "title" of BDFL.
| qalmakka wrote:
| I guess SerenityOS is somewhat doomed now? I never saw this kind
| of move ending well, honestly. Even when not involved, having the
| original around is always a great boon to the popularity of a
| project.
|
| I for one would love to see the SerenityOS GUI ported to Wayland
| on Windows. It's precisely what I ask for from an OS honestly.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yeah it's hard to see this not as the beginning of the end for
| SerenityOS
| tete wrote:
| I don't know, there's quite a few open source projects where
| the original author stepped down and it's thriving. Take Arch
| Linux for example. Before that Gentoo - and there I think the
| main "problem" with popularity is that self-compiling fell out
| of fashion.
|
| There's also tons of software projects where this happened,
| just more quietly. Usually when there is no drama, nobody
| reports about it. So I'd assume it's usually more a problem, if
| there is drama, but even here I can think about projects
| surviving despite it. See OwnCloud/NextCloud.
|
| Honestly, I can't think of projects where this did not end
| well. Given that SerentyOS is still a thing, despite Kling
| pulling out a while ago (in the sense of only working on the
| browser) it really doesn't sound like the project is on its
| last breath now.
|
| Given the history of getting people into OS development - even
| more so than Haiku, which also did a pretty good job at that I
| think Kling leaves with a multitude of people stepping in.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Define 'doomed'. As far as I can tell, SerenityOS did
| everything (and much more) than Andreas ever hoped it would.
|
| It was never meant to be a 'mass-market' general purpose OS,
| but could still turn into one (or be the basis that one is
| built from) if the right maintainers steer it that way. But
| even if it doesn't I'm glad that it existed, and that it
| spawned Ladybird is pretty crazy and awesome.
| pawelmurias wrote:
| If it is something people hack on for fun why would it be
| doomed because of one guy leaving or their web browser getting
| forked?
| nextaccountic wrote:
| > Ladybird now targets Linux and macOS. The SerenityOS target is
| dropped.
|
| Why dropping the SerenityOS target??
|
| Does this mean that SerenityOS's Ladybird will need to
| continually pull patches from the new Ladybird project in order
| to keep development?
|
| Also: is it really a fork if the new project gets to keep the
| name "Ladybird"? Will SerenityOS's browser need to be renamed, or
| there will be two diverging Ladybird projects with the same name?
| (Maybe a qualifier would help, like SerenityOS Ladybird vs Open
| Ladybird or something?)
| trashburger wrote:
| > Does this mean that SerenityOS's Ladybird will need to
| continually pull patches from the new Ladybird project in order
| to keep development?
|
| It will probably mean that Ladybird becomes a port. As for what
| happens to the LibWeb that's in SerenityOS right now, that's
| still undecided.
|
| > Also: is it really a fork if the new project gets to keep the
| name "Ladybird"? Will SerenityOS's browser need to be renamed,
| or there will be two diverging Ladybird projects with the same
| name? (Maybe a qualifier would help, like SerenityOS Ladybird
| vs Open Ladybird or something?)
|
| SerenityOS' browser will probably go back to being called
| "Browser", like it was before.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Yeah that's a little bit concerning, honestly. It really sounds
| more like an abandonment of SerenityOS, rather than a shift in
| emphasis
| squeek502 wrote:
| SerenityOS's browser has never been named Ladybird AFAIK, it's
| always been just Browser.
|
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Userland/...
|
| Ladybird was the name used for to the cross-platform version of
| the browser.
|
| https://awesomekling.github.io/Ladybird-a-new-cross-platform...
| dither8 wrote:
| Would it be fair to assume this means the SerenityOS
| maintainers will have to pull LibWeb/LibJS changes in from
| Ladybird?
| easton wrote:
| SerenityOS' browser began identifying itself as Ladybird last
| year or the year before in the UI, the folder was always
| called Browser.
|
| It'll probably just be renamed back, or the "port" of
| Ladybird will always be built as part of the base system
| (which would make sense, so Serenity could continue getting
| updates to LibWeb and LibJS)
| vincentkriek wrote:
| I think the fork has to do with the following item:
|
| > Unlike SerenityOS, Ladybird will have a relaxed NIH policy
| (instead of "no 3rd party code!"), and will leverage the
| greater OSS ecosystem.
|
| SerenityOS wants to be an OS from scratch, to see how to do
| things better from existing implementations. When ladybird
| wants to target that OS as well, using 3rd party libraries
| would make it hard to stay compatible. Which is easier to do on
| just MacOS and Linux.
| spookie wrote:
| Ok this makes perfect sense. Thanks for pointing it out.
| nasso_dev wrote:
| my understanding is that serenity will focus less on the web
| browser in the first place. it might just go back to being a
| simple html viewer with rudimentary js support?
|
| my hope is that they take this as an opportunity to come up
| with a purpose built "web" stack for serenity? use it as an
| excuse to reinvent the web and "fix" the mistakes that were
| made? maybe by actually Putting Scheme In The Browser rather
| than js?
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| because the main focus on serenityos is writing code. hence no
| 3rd party code policy. the fork is mostly to make the browser
| use 3rd party code, hence it is now no better than just porting
| Mozilla. i think this will fork both forever
| samanator wrote:
| As mentioned by Andreas, it's because SerenityOS does not
| depend on third party libraries and part of the new ethos of
| Ladybird is to decrease "not invented here" syndrome.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40561408
| stuaxo wrote:
| SerenityOS already has Ports directory for 3rd party software,
| I guess ladybirds will go there.
|
| I'd say ladybird moving out is a big incentive to get a
| packaging system up and running.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > Ladybird now targets Linux and macOS. The SerenityOS target is
| dropped.
|
| Aww :(
|
| I can understand forking the browser from the OS, but I'm a bit
| sad about this. I hope SerenityOS can have a first-class browser
| in line with the OS philosophy.
| tete wrote:
| To be fair though. SerentyOS given the size of its user base
| has a ton of ports already and since even super niche projects
| like NetBSD can pull off having one of the best (and certainly
| the most portable) ports collections out there I'd assume that
| SerentyOS will be able to pull off keeping a browser compatible
| that was originally made for this OS - if there is interest of
| course.
| trashburger wrote:
| Sad to hear. Hacking on SerenityOS together with Andreas was some
| of the most fun I've ever had. Wishing him the best of luck with
| Ladybird, and hoping he will come back once in a while (become
| the TYVC? :).
| fao_ wrote:
| This is one of the kindest "I'm forking xyz" posts I've ever
| read. The whole thing is some level of heartwarming, and unlike a
| lot of the other posts in the same range actually makes me
| consider contributing to either Ladybird or SerenityOS!
| bayindirh wrote:
| Because it's not done because of anger, or anything similar.
| Instead it's observed that a small project became a big one,
| and started the cannibalize the bigger project.
|
| So the developer decided to take the growing project to its own
| space and let the other project thrive, too.
|
| It's done out of love, if nothing else.
| skilled wrote:
| Make sure you check out the Andreas Kling channel on YouTube
| also,
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@awesomekling/videos
|
| Where he does a monthly update on developing Ladybird. You can
| learn about the things he's overcome, but also the problems he's
| having.
|
| Most recent updates,
|
| _Ladybird browser update (May 2024)_
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4YBMjlGWRc)
|
| _Ladybird browser update (Apr 2024)_
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBl-fa-YJFE)
|
| _Ladybird browser update (Mar 2024)_
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKHopzDtElY)
| lyu07282 wrote:
| Damn I was worried for a second there, fearing some sort of
| falling out with the community. But this is awesome news!
| Ladybird is a far more important project to focus on imho.
| zadler wrote:
| Given that it dropped serenity as a target, it does seem there
| is something more to this story...
| ZiiS wrote:
| _Unlike SerenityOS, Ladybird will have a relaxed NIH policy
| (instead of "no 3rd party code!")_
|
| This requires that it becomes a Port rather than a core part
| of Serenity.
| tete wrote:
| Wondering about that too, but to be fair, he probably doesn't
| use it as his primary OS (none of the developers does I
| think), so with Serenty mostly being a development project
| and the interest shifting (back to) developing web browsers
| it seems logical to focus on these targets.
|
| I've been working on projects myself where the primary target
| switched, because I noticed it's a bit draining to keep
| supporting something "just" because I love it. Dropping a
| target usually doesn't mean it cannot be used there anymore,
| but simply that you don't feel comfortable guaranteeing
| support.
|
| I don't know if that's the case here, only that it doesn't
| necessitate bad feelings.
|
| Given that it was also stated that it won't be self-contained
| anymore that's also a very good technical reason. And I
| totally get that if you want to create a new browser with a
| new layout engine not wanting to re-invent every audio,
| video, image decoder, not wanting to reinvent all the wheels
| makes it already a huge project and I'd assume it's hard to
| guarantee all of these things will also work and compile on
| Serenity, which despite doing an amazing job at porting might
| get stuck here and there. I mean, see the OpenBSD and
| Rust(up) story.
| worble wrote:
| Possibly that for Ladybird to move forwards more quickly, it
| needs access to OS API's or Graphics stuff that Serenity
| can't yet provide? (I'm just spitballing here, I don't know
| much about OS development)
|
| To take it a step further, due to the fact that Andreas is
| being sponsored to work on Ladybird full time by a few
| companies, if it's inherently also tied to the development of
| Serenity (since its a primary target) that might make him
| concerned that there's a clash of responsibilities there - he
| might not want any sponsors pulling out or arguing that he's
| spending their money on Serenity instead of Ladybird.
|
| This is all just assumptions however, and regardless of the
| reasons I think he's doing the right thing.
| awesomekling wrote:
| There really isn't anything more to it. :)
|
| By dropping SerenityOS as a target, Ladybird is free to make
| use of 3rd party libraries that don't currently work on
| SerenityOS. And keep in mind, SerenityOS would be unable to
| integrate Ladybird in this new state anyway, since SerenityOS
| has a strict "no 3rd party code" policy.
|
| (Also nice: it stops being necessary to wait 30+ minutes for
| multiple CI runs on SerenityOS every time you post a browser
| engine pull request!)
|
| In time, I'd love to see Ladybird come back as a port on
| SerenityOS.
| stuaxo wrote:
| It does have ports though, so for people who want ladybird
| there is a route to running it.
| p9fus wrote:
| I'm seriously impressed by the amount of progress this project
| has made (and its apparently helped with finding issues in the
| various specs that constitute a modern browser) so I wish him all
| the best in this new direction
| lemper wrote:
| yo andreas, it takes a lot of courage to acknowledge the
| situation and i truly applaud you for that. i will keep on
| cheering you from the sideline.
| 1GZ0 wrote:
| Ladybird has garnered a level of mainstream attention that
| SerenityOS never really managed to.
|
| The browser has the potential to impact many more people, and the
| project is well funded by large investors.
|
| It makes sense that Andreas would shift his focus to LadyBird at
| this point.
|
| While Safari is busy being Safari and Firefox is busy eating glue
| in the corner, I'd love to see LadyBird become a real contender
| in the browser market.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I agree (apart from the popular hate on Firefox). Ladybird is
| promising and has a much bigger chance to make an impact than
| SerenityOS.
|
| But it's a bit disappointing to see that it's still pretty much
| a one-man project. Especially to have a chance to get close to
| the performance of Chrome and Firefox, it will need a large
| investment.
|
| The amount of engineering resources poured into just making
| JavaScript fast is mind-numbing. But even "just" providing a
| light, mostly standards-compliant browser with a sorta-good-
| enough performance would be great.
|
| Edit: Just saw a video from a few days ago talking about JS
| performance. Apparently the target is reaching JavaScriptCore
| performance, without JIT enabled. Disappointing, but
| understandable.
| 1GZ0 wrote:
| Have to admit the Firefox hate is mostly irrelevant. its from
| a place of disappointment with Mozilla more than hate really.
|
| I agree that the amount of work and competition LadyBird is
| facing from Chrome alone is staggering, but at the same time,
| I'll always root for the little guy in tech, since imo thats
| where real innovation comes from.
| hurutparittya wrote:
| I think the Firefox hate is completely justified. At this
| point the only positive thing about Firefox is that "at least
| it's not Chrome".
| nacs wrote:
| As a Firefox user, this exactly.
|
| The amount of things that now need to be toggled off on a
| new install are approaching Windows "telemetry" levels:
| disable sponsored shortcuts on homepage, disable
| experimental "Studies", sponsored suggestions in search
| bar, "suggested extensions", Pocket, and the list goes on.
|
| I really need to look into a privacy friendly fork of FF..
| worble wrote:
| I don't use it myself, but Librewolf is a pretty popular
| fork that attempts to be private out of the box and is
| usually updated pretty quickly.
| Propelloni wrote:
| Yes, or Waterfox [1].
|
| [1] https://www.waterfox.net/
| nacs wrote:
| Thanks. Finally got around to installing Librewolf and it
| works great.
|
| Sensible defaults as Firefox should be.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I will definitely second this. I moved over to librewolf
| last year and love it. I'm glad Mozilla is staying in
| business though. I know not every organization has my
| beliefs and I can live with that
| HeckFeck wrote:
| > I really need to look into a privacy friendly fork of
| FF..
|
| I'd love to make the jump too, just that I rely upon FF
| sync too much. It's handy getting your bookmarks and
| other details on mobile devices. The other forks look to
| be desktop only.
| metasaval wrote:
| FYI, you can use a desktop fork and mobile Firefox with
| Firefox sync.
|
| source: I do that with floorp and Firefox for android.
| metasaval wrote:
| also just realized that waterfox does have an android
| version [1], if you want you use the same fork on desktop
| and android
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.waterfo
| x.a...
| MrAlex94 wrote:
| Not to hang around like a bad smell every time they come
| up, but just think it's worth noting they are not open
| source anymore, instead being "source available". Really
| gives me the old school "greenwashing" vibes Microsoft
| used to do with their Shared Source licenses. Poor
| showing considering they used others work to get to where
| they are, then shut the door when others started doing
| the same.
|
| I would say feel free to give Waterfox a try - I've tried
| to strike the balance of useable web and privacy, with
| the added enhancement of Oblivious DNS enabled by
| default.
| cassepipe wrote:
| True, it's very handy... but can't Chrome do it with a
| Google account ? (I really don't know)
|
| To me the really seeling point of firefox is being able
| to switch off search suggestions. Now the bar only
| searches opened Tabs, history, bookmarks and I can tab
| into them quickly. If nothing turns up, pressing Enter
| will still launch a search. Being able to do casual
| navigation without having to go through a search engine
| is a killer feature (and it's better for the planet).
|
| Not only tab but you can search directly into opened
| Tabs/history/bookmarks with the right %/^/* symbols !
|
| EDIT : Almost forgot, it only really shines with that
| extension that prevent searches to turn up in your
| history --> https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/history-autod...
| skeaker wrote:
| This is an extremely uncharitable view of Firefox and an
| outrageously generous view of Windows. The things you
| listed take 2 checkboxes in a new tab window, 2
| checkboxes in settings (which has a search bar that takes
| you right to them by just searching "studies" or "data
| collection"), 2 checkboxes in settings (search
| "suggestions"), 2 clicks (right click the pocket button
| and click hide)... The only tricky one is the recommended
| extensions but that's tucked at the bottom of a page
| nobody uses anyways (everyone just googles the extension
| they want and grabs it from the web), but even that takes
| like 15 seconds once you know what setting it is in
| about:config. I actually don't even disable the two
| telemetry checkboxes because they're transparent about
| the data they take and what they do with it, so I'm happy
| to share it. You can easily do all of this in one or two
| minutes and it won't roll itself back.
|
| With Windows you would be lucky to even have a supported
| method to disable their telemetry, and if you do get one
| it will probably be through an obscure series of registry
| edits that will ultimately get rolled back during a
| system update.
| Aurornis wrote:
| > This is an extremely uncharitable view of Firefox and
| an outrageously generous view of Windows. The things you
| listed take 2 checkboxes in a new tab window, 2
| checkboxes in settings (which has a search bar that takes
| you right to them by just searching "studies" or "data
| collection"), 2 checkboxes in settings (search
| "suggestions"), 2 clicks (right click the pocket button
| and click hide)... The only tricky one is
|
| It's wild to me that this is being presented as if it's
| not a big deal.
|
| Shows how far the goalposts have moved in this
| conversation.
| adastra22 wrote:
| I cannot tell if this is sarcasm or not.
| bambax wrote:
| On recent hardware, how much "performance" do we really need?
| Wouldn't almost any compliant browser be basically good
| enough?
| spookie wrote:
| One would think so, but some browsers do not handle well
| repaints or do it prematurely. I've been testing a
| fediverse platform against a plethora of browsers, and I'm
| always surprised at the differences. It's not terrible, but
| some do take their time.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| LadyBird author posted a couple of days ago a demo of
| twitter and he himself admitted that it's painfully slow.
| Kiro wrote:
| As someone developing web games, my answer is no.
| jerf wrote:
| There's several decades-old sayings to the effect of what
| Intel giveth, Microsoft taketh away, or similar
| observations about the software side of computing spending
| all the hardware improvements and more.
|
| To this general principle you can add browsers and
| websites; what the browser giveth, the websites taketh
| away. You may think browsers are slow... they really
| aren't! There's a staggering, even arguably _insane_ ,
| amount of optimization in there. But then we write websites
| that are barely adequate, and load them up with ad scripts
| that aren't even barely adequate, and blame the browsers
| for being slow.
|
| Write yourself an old-school 1998-style static website
| without a big pile of fancy features, give yourself solid
| .css and .js caching and use it judiciously, and the
| browsers can blast content to the screen blazingly fast,
| for all the work it is doing.
|
| If you even could feed a 2024 web site to a 1998 browser,
| you'd probably be able to eat a meal while it was trying to
| render facebook.
| bambax wrote:
| > _You may think browsers are slow_
|
| I don't. I use uBlock Origin which blocks "ad scripts"
| and the like. My everyday machine is an old PC (older
| than 10 years) still on Win7, and everything is running
| just fine.
|
| I also use a top of the line, recent PC on Ubuntu, mostly
| for development. Websites there feel instantaneous. I
| sometimes wonder what a subpar browser would feel like on
| that machine.
|
| Maybe I should just try to run Ladybird on this to see
| how it goes.
| skissane wrote:
| So many apps have low-hanging fruit performance issues
| that don't get addressed because they are judged to
| perform adequately in practice. Addressing them takes
| developer time, and not all developers have the skill set
| to do so (especially in a methodical way).
|
| But, what if we had an AI agent dedicated to improving
| performance? It doesn't need to be capable of solving
| every problem, but it could address the low-hanging fruit
| problems which aren't hard to solve but nobody has time
| to look at.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| As an embedded developer it always makes me sad to see
| physicists and engineers pushing the limits of physics to
| make faster hardware, just for devs to squander that power
| with lazy programming.
| luplex wrote:
| No, that's actually the point of faster chips: To make
| software development less challenging and cheaper.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Exactly. What people also miss that the complexity grew
| considerably because of the need to cover many more
| "edge" cases. 30 years ago, you could assume a rough
| display size (fixed layouts) and DPI (no scaling needed),
| assume ASCII / ISO-8859-1, assume that the user is able-
| bodied and doesn't need accessibility features, target
| just DOS etc.
|
| There is also a lot of accidental complexity which you
| might be able to get rid of only by BC breaks,
| unfortunately.
| bgribble wrote:
| > But it's a bit disappointing to see that it's still pretty
| much a one-man project.
|
| I don't know much about this project and I have never used
| it. But in my experience as a developer and user of software
| I couldn't disagree more.
|
| The longer something can stay a one-person project, the
| better! Nothing kills creativity, innovation, and velocity
| faster than having to make every decision by committee.
|
| Big communities are great when a project is in its maturity
| and mostly needs tending and slow evolution. They mitigate
| the risk of a single developer getting bored and walking
| away, or turning into a murderous wacko, or attempting to
| monetize the project to death. Not naming any names.
|
| But when something is being built from scratch? Give me a
| single developer with a fat internet connection, alone in a
| cabin in the woods with a shed out back full of Red Bull :)
| The_Colonel wrote:
| > The longer something can stay a one-person project, the
| better! Nothing kills creativity, innovation, and velocity
| faster than having to make every decision by committee.
|
| One person can get surprisingly far, but there's a limit
| beyond which no single human will scale. Getting to the v8
| performance is IMHO such an example. You might be OK with a
| browser which has a noticeably subpar performance, but it
| will likely stifle mainstream adoption (which again, might
| be OK for you and that's fine).
| tredre3 wrote:
| > Getting to the v8 performance is IMHO such an example.
|
| There's no doubt in my mind that Andreas could achieve
| that by himself. He's worked professionally on webkit,
| and implemented a JS interpreter, a JS bytecode
| interpreter, and a JS JIT all by himself after all. Also
| let's not forget that V8 is open-source, all their
| optimizations are available for others to see and
| implement.
|
| But to be clear this isn't a one man project, he hired a
| few contributors to work full time on it. Sure, it's a
| small team, but as said in sibling comments a small team
| has much more velocity.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| Seems like Andreas doesn't have the same delusions of
| ridiculing the army of (pretty smart) Chrome/V8 devs by
| doing the same job just on his own. His own goal is to
| achieve the performance of non-JITed JavaScriptCore -
| i.e. an optimizing interpreter.
| sterlind wrote:
| Matching V8's perf would be infeasible, but couldn't a
| small team get within an order of magnitude of V8's perf
| for a decent chunk of websites? How much slower is
| Fabrice Bellard's QuickJS?
| materielle wrote:
| Andreas isn't targeting V8's JIT performance. The goal is
| to be roughly in line with WebKit's performance with the
| JIT turned off.
|
| The theory is that JS JIT compilers don't actually
| improve real world performance on the majority of
| websites. This was apparently per the advice of the
| authors of Chrome's and Safari's JITs.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > The amount of engineering resources poured into just making
| JavaScript fast is mind-numbing. But even "just" providing a
| light, mostly standards-compliant browser with a sorta-good-
| enough performance would be great.
|
| We're long past the time that we should be using one type of
| app for text plus a bit of Javascript and another for running
| apps that are hosted on a remote server. I would definitely
| use a fast, lightweight, privacy-oriented browser for sites
| like HN or viewing local HTML files.
| kelnos wrote:
| I don't think that was intended to be hate on Firefox itself,
| but hate on the general mismanagement of the project by
| Mozilla. Firefox itself may not be in the corner sniffing
| glue, but it often feels like much of the decision-making at
| Mozilla is glue-sniffing-fueled.
|
| (Happy Firefox user here; I still don't understand why anyone
| who cares even the tiniest bit about privacy or an open web
| is using Chrome.)
| nottorp wrote:
| > and the project is well funded by large investors.
|
| Hmm, why is there no mention of that in the splitting
| announcement?
|
| Did said large investors trigger the drop of SerenityOS because
| they don't want to waste their resources on a niche hobby
| platform?
| awesomekling wrote:
| Ladybird does not have investors, only sponsors/donors. We
| have received some really generous donations in the past, for
| example $100,000 from Shopify in 2023 which allowed me to
| hire a few of our contributors to work full time on the
| project. :)
|
| Sponsors have no direct influence over the project, but I
| obviously feel a strong moral obligation to put 100% of the
| funds towards improving Ladybird and nothing else.
| nottorp wrote:
| 100k is not "well funded by large investors" anyway :)
| lukan wrote:
| Sadly it is, when we are talking about independent open
| source projects.
| ykonstant wrote:
| That could fund my research for 5 years :(
| 1GZ0 wrote:
| Apologies, I did mean "well sponsored" not well funded, my
| mistake :') You're doing awesome work and I'm really
| excited for you and the project! All the best :)
| teekert wrote:
| Yeah I agree. Would be nice to see a browser option that is not
| 20+ years old. People say it's not doable but this here is a
| real opportunity.
| rascul wrote:
| > Would be nice to see a browser option that is not 20+ years
| old.
|
| Chrome is less than 20 years old.
| ZiiS wrote:
| KHTML+KJS released in 1998, via WebKit from 2001, in 2008
| it gained the Chrome name, but the code has more than 20
| years of legacy.
| rafram wrote:
| There's very little WebKit / KHTML code left in Chrome.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| There's very little NT 3.1 code left in Windows, but it's
| still clear how old _that_ project is.
| trustno2 wrote:
| All unixes are descendants of original Unix from PDP-7
| days. Why does it matter?
|
| ...ok the /bin /usr/bin nonsense still stays after
| decades, maybe you have a point
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > KHTML+KJS released in 1998, via WebKit from 2001, in
| 2008 it gained the Chrome name, but the code has more
| than 20 years of legacy.
|
| Why do you want the oldest code to be less than 20 years
| old? Why is that "nice"?
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Because 20 years is like half the history of modern
| computing. A lot has changed in a small amount of time
| robertlagrant wrote:
| So what? Code doesn't rust.
| chx wrote:
| It doesn't but it accumulates cruft and since then new
| libraries emerge which you might be able to reuse instead
| of writing your own thing. Just as an example: Boost
| first appeared in 1999 so very likely at least early on
| no one used it.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Of course you could do that, but the existence of a bit
| of code that's survived that long within a project that's
| been around for 20 years doesn't mean nothing new has
| happened. Mozilla invented a whole language to make it
| easier to write browser in; I don't think they won't have
| considered using Boost or whatever much less radical
| approach we might come up with here won't have been
| considered and invested in.
| svnt wrote:
| The last time a major browser originated, RAM was
| measured in MB, CPU freq in MHz, and the iPod was the
| thing that the one trend hunter your friend knew was
| about to buy.
|
| The major browser platform today, smartphones, did not
| exist. PDAs did not even have wireless internet yet.
|
| The basis for the functionality of the browser is due for
| a reimagining.
| KwanEsq wrote:
| Chrome forked from Webkit, which forked from KHTML, which
| apparently dates from 4th November 1998, so Chrome's base
| is 25 years and 7 months old tomorrow.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| KHTML was born in 1998 and became the foundation of Chrome
| and Safari. All major browsers are over a decade old, or
| just skins of decade+ old engines.
| culi wrote:
| > I'd love to see LadyBird become a real contender in the
| browser market
|
| At this pace it would likely take decades just for them to be
| complete enough to show up on MDN or wpt.fyi
|
| But I agree. With Microsoft ditching their independent Edge and
| becoming Chromium-based and Opera doing the same we're really
| down to 3 real engines. The best fourth option we can get are
| Goanna-based browsers like Pale Moon which are themselves just
| an early fork of firefox
|
| A completely new and fresh often can go a long way in
| safeguarding the openness of the web. Even if there's not a
| powerful company behind it
| Zetaphor wrote:
| > At this pace it would likely take decades just for them to
| be complete enough to show up on MDN or wpt.fyi
|
| The important thing to keep in mind with this announcement is
| that the glacial pace was previously a restriction of being
| attached to SerenityOS. Everything needed to be built from
| scratch with no reliance on third party libraries. Now that
| they're detaching from Serenity they can start reaping the
| benefits of the existing work in the FOSS ecosystem, which
| should enable a faster pace of development.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I'm confused, what is the project management structure of
| SerenityOS now, then?
| awesomekling wrote:
| SerenityOS is now controlled by the same group of maintainers
| that have been managing it for the last couple of years.
|
| What happens next is up to them & the community to decide. :)
| codetrotter wrote:
| Thank you Andreas for creating both of these projects and for all
| your work on both of them and for all of the videos you've been
| making along the way while working on them.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| I fully respect these reasons, they are logical and well said.
| But hopefully interest in SerenityOS doesn't taper off due to
| this. Kling was great at garnering interest with his YouTube
| videos where he'd go deep into bug fixing and feature
| development.
|
| Certainly, the browser has the most potential and even immediate
| necessity for the sake of the open Web, but I would still like to
| daily drive SerenityOS some day. Its aesthetics and holistic
| architecture are a dream realised.
|
| Windows is going down the toilet fast, and Linux lacks the
| holistic element, so having something that combines the greatest
| visual design language - mid to late 90s interface guidelines -
| with the powerful Unix shell would be a huge boon for desktop
| computing. (Yes OSX has great albeit _modern_ UX with the Unix
| underpinnings but isn 't OSS or affordable to the masses).
| prox wrote:
| Oh yes, a MacOS like design but open with Unix, that would be
| amazing!
| projektfu wrote:
| That was the plan for Etoile but it didn't get traction for
| some reason.
| boxed wrote:
| macOS is unix...
|
| And he seems to not want macOS type design. Unless you mean
| System 8/9.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Modern macOS design is reasonably consistent but with fewer
| visual cues - still a step above Windows post-7. And yes, I
| meant the bezels and skeuomorphism of earlier design -
| exemplified by Windows 9x-2k and System 8/9, while NeXT and
| IRIX also deserve a shout.
| pjlegato wrote:
| MacOS _is_ Unix -- a BSD-derived Unix operating system called
| "Darwin" underlies the user interface.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
| dexwiz wrote:
| MacOS is only as good as its hardware integration. Lifting
| and shifting MacOS UX to another system would only be skin
| deep. Much of the simplicity (and ire to many technical
| users) of MacOS is because its deep vertical integration.
| wk_end wrote:
| Haiku?
|
| https://www.haiku-os.org/
| M95D wrote:
| Linux (kernel I mean) is good enough. There were some
| scheduling problems with audio, but it's mostly resolved. The
| problem is GNU style. We need another GUI and that doesn't mean
| just replacing X with/or Wayland protocol. It means replacing
| GTK and QT too.
| lukan wrote:
| ChromeOS seems very polished under the hood.
|
| It is fast and open source. But very tightly integrated into
| google and so I doubt, this will ever become a solid base for
| a new linux desktop.
| f1refly wrote:
| Chromeos under the hood is just Linux
| lukan wrote:
| And ... what is just linux?
|
| They use a custom kernel. A completely different display
| manager, process scheduling, startup etc.
|
| But yeah, rsync works the same.
| packetlost wrote:
| Isn't that basically ElementaryOS? Or is that not a group up
| rewrite?
| isr wrote:
| Not really. Pantheon, elementary's desktop environment, is
| forked from gnome. So in that sense, it's very much a
| traditional linux desktop distro (not to belittle it, as
| they have put in a lot of worthwhile work into pantheon &
| the assorted apps)
| packetlost wrote:
| Ah, I thought it was it's own thing. Oh well. I do think
| we're due for a commercial desktop Linux distro. Yes I
| think it should be paid. Something needs to take the
| place of Windows that isn't tied to specific hardware
| (MacOS) because Windows is getting unusable.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| The penguin kernel is indeed very nifty and boots nearly
| everywhere. Most importantly it is replete with battle-tested
| drivers.
|
| Maybe the bold solution would be to port the Serenity
| userland + UI stack across to Linux and be very staunch about
| what gets into it. Essentially grafting the Linux kernel in
| place of the Serenity one, and using its UI Kit and
| WindowServer instead of GTK/QT/X/Wayland.
|
| Maybe it might even be possible to preserve the logic and
| non-UI libraries of many applications, even if the UI
| required a complete rewrite.
|
| A bit fantastical but just putting it out there.
| panick21_ wrote:
| That exactyly what PopOS is doing. Cosmic is a new Desktop
| Envoirment for Wayland written in Rust using a toolkit named
| Iced.
| safety1st wrote:
| People talk about Linux as if it's a monolithic OS and one team
| in some OS team sport. It's not. It's a kernel.
|
| We've got lots of OSes built on top of that kernel: ChromeOS,
| Android, and all the distros that are largely different flavors
| of a GNU/GPL'ed user space, including Fedora, SteamOS etc.
|
| This is fine. If you want a new OS with a "holistic" user
| space, well Linux is probably the easiest kernel to build it
| on, but you can't count on it being as free as the GNU user
| space, because it's still going to be expensive as hell to
| build, and whoever does it is going to want to recoup their
| investment many times over.
|
| I think the chance that the GNU user space ever morphs into a
| "holistic" consumer operating system is basically zero due to
| how it's licensed, and the key is to understand that this is
| both fine and necessary.
|
| If you want some other kind of more consumer friendly user
| space... I guess that starts with convincing some VCs they can
| make money off of it. They are not going to fund it out of the
| kindness of their hearts.
|
| Personally I lost interest in consumer operating systems that
| are designed to limit freedom for the sake of profit, and
| became an exclusive Debian/Ubuntu/Mint user long ago. If you
| can be a programmer you can run these operating systems. The
| tradeoff is you lose the "holistic" and you gain freedom. The
| two are fundamentally incompatible I'd say so you have to make
| your choice.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > Windows is going down the toilet fast, and Linux lacks the
| holistic element, so having something that combines the
| greatest visual design language - mid to late 90s interface
| guidelines - with the powerful Unix shell would be a huge boon
| for desktop computing. (Yes OSX has great albeit modern UX with
| the Unix underpinnings but isn't OSS or affordable to the
| masses).
|
| You might want to look at helloSystem.
|
| https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/
| trustno2 wrote:
| I tried Ladybird browser for fun, and it looks more stable than
| when I ran it for the last time, which is great!
|
| It doesn't properly load the given substack (it seems to stop
| loading it in the middle), but it _looks_ fine. :)
|
| Surprisingly, loading Google Maps even work, but I can't seem to
| do more than move the map around. Github even works!
|
| So far it seems better than Servo in throwing random sites at it,
| but I last tried Servo years ago so it's not fair. I guess I will
| try Servo now for the heck of it
|
| edit: yeah Servo still seems worse, _but_ it loads the whole
| substack post :)
| rjh29 wrote:
| > Github even works!
|
| Unsurprisingly github is one of the developer's most frequently
| used sites when dogfooding the browser so it'll probably always
| work :)
| vrotaru wrote:
| So, in order to write a new browser you first have to write (as a
| training exercise) a new OS.
|
| Not the fastest way, but it seems to work. Best wishes to
| Andreas.
| orlandrescu wrote:
| I really hope Ladybird will become the browser that will put
| HaikuOS on the map of desktops!
| doublerabbit wrote:
| OSX and Linux but no FreeBSD? Shameful.*
|
| Edit: Should of been "disappointing". Leaving for intergity.
| awesomekling wrote:
| It should be fairly straightforward to get it running on any
| mainstream *nix system. I only called out macOS and Linux
| specifically because we have developers actively using those
| systems day-to-day. :)
| spookie wrote:
| I'm sure someone will come and help with the port! It's just
| a matter of time (:
| doublerabbit wrote:
| I know my comment comes out negative. Shameful wasn't the
| right word. It's disappointing that there is no target for
| *BSD.
|
| I'm very respectful for you to attempt such a project. In no
| way am I dismissing your work but I see more and more
| projects becoming very mono orientated where it becomes a
| struggle for other OS's to adopt.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Why FreeBSD and not one of the other BSDs?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Good point. Going forward noted to not miss the others.
|
| I've used all three but freebsd has so far been the only
| one that has stuck.
| brettermeier wrote:
| I hope there will be also a Windows port someday :P
| suby wrote:
| The audacity to call this shameful is striking to me. If you
| feel strongly enough that this free, open source, extremely
| limited resource project (working on one of the largest problem
| spaces..) doesn't support FreeBSD, port it yourself instead of
| casting shame on others for not doing it. Hopefully your
| comment is more lighthearted than I'm giving it credit for.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Stop acting like *BSD shouldn't catered for. I'm stick of the
| attitude of who feel that $OS should be treated as a third
| wheel.
|
| That attitude is the reason why we live in such a
| monopolistic world. If your developing an application you
| should be catering to all systems otherwise we end up in the
| exact stalemate we have now.
|
| Its great to say "do it yourself" but when every package is
| "do it yourself" -- it more resourceful then as if the
| developer targets the OS themselves.
|
| If I am to port it myself and encounter a bug, I then need to
| engage with the developers which then takes time off their
| hands as if they were to develop for the OS themselves,
| resources wasted on both parties. And that's if the developer
| will even participate in aiding.
|
| Then when the package is available you then have whole
| rounded application. It may take longer but heck we're not
| making a Netflix series here.
|
| I hate the IT space we live in.
|
| Linux has become the new Windows.
| rafram wrote:
| FreeBSD once _peaked_ at a 0.01% desktop market share.
|
| https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-
| share/desktop/worldwide...
| doublerabbit wrote:
| So? You should still develop for.
|
| Why? For this whole reason. What does it matter? You
| should target all audiences.
|
| Why not?
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Why BSD and not Haiku?
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Yeah, why not.
| zellyn wrote:
| What about TempleOS?
|
| I think if you care, go help them make Ladybird work on
| your OS. People who make software for fun and give it
| away for free owe all of us precisely nothing: I believe
| that's a very important principle, otherwise they'll just
| burn out as their hobby project turns into a grind.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| What about TempleOS?
|
| There's practically and not so practical.
| nickitolas wrote:
| > Why not?
|
| Because it's extra work.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| More work than having to push a bug to the developer when
| making a custom package than the developer fixing the bug
| natively for that package?
| adamrt wrote:
| > You should target all audiences.
|
| Here is a list of OSes[0]. Where do you draw the line on
| supporting these? Should every new project try to support
| all of these? Do you, doublerabbit, get to decide which
| OSes are important enough for support?
|
| Or do you think the person who created the project and
| does all the work should be able to decide where to spend
| their free time?
|
| [0]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_operating_systems
| doublerabbit wrote:
| > Where do you draw the line on supporting these?
|
| Where those are still in active development. Where those
| exist you should attempt at least for. It's partly why
| they failed in the first place.
|
| > Should every new project try to support all of these?
|
| As said above, attempt. My projects in Perl work most
| places, my TCL programs do too. C and C++ all have been
| universes. Heck even Python.
|
| It's only new fangled languages like Rust and Go that
| make an ball ache.
|
| > Do you, doublerabbit, get to decide which OSes are
| important enough for support?
|
| Yeah why not, at least allowed to voice an opinion. I'm
| so sick and tired seeing the world of IT on repeat. See
| it get abused, capitalised and freedom sucked from it. I
| give Linux five more years before it will be smothered in
| corporate.
|
| After working as an sysadmin from the age of 13, to 35. I
| wish I could call done but other opportunities are not
| feasible at this time. The amount of bug reports I've
| submitted across the board is more than a dozen. Hand
| crafted brittle configuration files, been there done
| that. This isn't just me being edgy.
|
| For more the past twenty years we've only dominated one
| bloody OS. Only then do we all bitch at each other
| because of fanboi or whatever cliche is at the moment.
| Systemd comes to mind.
|
| I am so bored of the neo-Linux crowd and I've been
| working with it for it since 2.x kernel.
|
| Only when you jump off the bandwagon do you see how
| clunky it really is.
|
| First HN was shouting at me how a new browser could never
| be made and now HN is jumping up and down because one has
| yet won't acknowledge that other OS exist and that I
| personally feel developers should catered for.
|
| Is this like to real for everyone or something?
| arp242 wrote:
| Make a patch for FreeBSD if you care about it. Pick up
| maintainership to ensure it keeps working. That's how
| this works. Andreas is not your bitch.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| Oh look at you on your high horse, maybe get off it for
| once and touch the grass.
|
| No he's not, but it would be customary to cater for such.
| arp242 wrote:
| People like you is why people burn out from open source.
| Can't create anything without random nobodies who spend
| zero effort on anything shouting at you and hurling
| insults at you. You're being a completely toxic asshole.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| No, it's not me at all. People like you are the reason
| why I suffer from burn out.
|
| The burn out is because your working on an single
| platform and refusing to even attempt for another
| project, or OS for this matter. That's how I find it.
|
| Lets reinvent the wheel for the same OS where the wheel
| has already been reinvented. Yet lets not reinvent the
| wheel for another OS.
| imadj wrote:
| It's not out of carelessness or spite. The developer(s) can
| only support something they use at least semi-regularly.
|
| Many developers who use Windows don't support Linux for
| example (and vice versa). Even if the code were cross
| platform. They simply can't claim to support something they
| don't use themselves or have resources to test extensively
| because it'll requires continous support and there can be a
| lot of incompatabilities even among different linux distros
| or environments.
|
| That's why, in OSS, support for different platforms is
| usually done by having a separate engineer as maintainer
| for each platform, e.g: Linux drivers, gcc (for different
| CPU architectures), etc. These maintainers are each experts
| in their respective platforms and responsible for
| supporting it.
| hurutparittya wrote:
| I might sound jaded, but I'd be more excited for a Chromium fork
| that focuses on hackability instead of a brand new browser
| that'll take somewhere between years to [?] to be even remotely
| useful. I get why that'd be less fun to work on though.
| nicce wrote:
| Isn't there already quite many Chromium forks? They all have
| the same issue - the more your code diverges, more additional
| work it will be. And security patches start lagging.
| 59nadir wrote:
| There are plenty of Chromium forks, you can go use those. Or
| just make your own.
| rgreekguy wrote:
| Qutebrowser, Nyxt even better for hackability.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| Why not directly fork WebKit, as the Orion browser did?
| mythz wrote:
| Feels like an end of an Era, I used to enjoy Andreas's SerenityOS
| YouTube videos as he dropped down and implemented different
| features of the OS during a video coding session, adding code
| from UI, emulators, game ports, JS & Jakt programming languages,
| JITs all the way down to the kernel. SerenityOS was unique in
| that regard with the entire code-base maintained in a single
| source tree.
|
| I expect interest in SerenityOS will now taper off as a result of
| this, especially now that SerenityOS is no longer a target for
| Ladybird.
| dither8 wrote:
| It was a journey for sure. I never contributed code, but color
| schemes and emojis. But I always enjoy Andreas' Serenity
| videos, even some coding videos were good (I cannot code).
| These are special and will forever live in my heart.
| squarefoot wrote:
| This could be a good move, if it frees resources that would then
| be allocated for the OS itself. To me SerenityOS as a x86 OS is
| interesting but redundant, while to me would immediately catch
| attention if ported to ARM or RISC-V and other embedded
| platforms. Many companies already use sluggish Android or web
| based solutions to build instrumentation screens and other
| vertical applications where one needs to show GUI primitives, and
| to me a native, fast alternative is _badly_ needed. SerenityOS
| doesn 't bring all the cruft that would be completely unnecessary
| in those systems, hence my idea that in some cases it could
| become the right tool for the job.
| tredre3 wrote:
| SerenityOS has (partially) working ports for both ARM and
| RISC-V already:
|
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Kernel/Ar...
| pessimizer wrote:
| Ladybird looks amazing and is moving quickly. Without the linkage
| to SerenityOS, I even feel like looking at the source and seeing
| if I can get a handle on what's going on.
|
| Looks like the idea of writing a new browser engine, or of
| forking Firefox, wasn't an absurdly impossible thing that would
| require billions of dollars. If this inspires somebody to take up
| that charge again, or to pick up Servo from the table, that would
| be wonderful too.
| ssernikk wrote:
| > [...] pick up Servo from the table, that would be wonderful
| too.
|
| I would love to see a servo-based browser in near future!
| materielle wrote:
| I think it would be interesting to understand why Servo seems
| to have moved so slow compared to Ladybird.
|
| I suspect Ladybird's success has a lot to do with Andreas
| himself.
| hawski wrote:
| I guess that also means that Jakt language will also stay within
| SerenityOS realm.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I feel like this should've been done a while ago. Community was
| quite split by two projects and it felt like SerenityOS was
| dragging Ladybird development down, both from sponsor and
| developer point of view.
|
| I'm glad Andreas had committed to this, for the best to both
| projects.
| luke-stanley wrote:
| The web is eating everything. Maybe every app could be structured
| as if it's a web app or worker service to do everything people
| expect while being minimal? It's interesting that the OS layer
| could be even thinner than SerenityOS. With 'Local first'
| capabilities and the expanding role of web technologies, this is
| not only possible but could be a good idea. The new Ladybird
| project will be really interesting; it could be a real
| alternative browser people want! Being able to boot a good
| browser on multiple operating systems, such as a minimal BSD, a
| minimal Linux from scratch style OS, or even a stripped-down
| SerenityOS variation, is exciting. This could be more secure and
| easier to innovate with because it has a better level of
| abstractions to draw upon. The bootable web OS projects like Palm
| webOS, the booting Gecko/Firefox OS projects, and Chrome OS could
| offer interesting lessons for Ladybird. Running a browser in a
| VM, on metal, or on an existing host OS like BSD or Linux is very
| useful. This approach could be secure and powerful enough to
| attract users for security, speed, or powerful user-centric
| reasons (not corporate/adware-centric). Kling and the community
| he's assembled is "at risk" of helping solve some serious use-
| cases for people and industries while having fun! Google's OS
| development with Android, Chrome OS, and Fuchsia may seem
| complicated compared to what a Ladybird OS could do. Android is
| complicated and advanced, but in practice, it's bloated and
| error-prone with terrible complexity. For example, Pixel users
| miss calls due to bugs, and there are problems calling emergency
| numbers. Think about the array of Android and iOS exploits. The
| attack surfaces and codebases are too big! Given its complexity,
| I can see Google switching to working on Ladybird or a Go/Rust
| variant. Maybe even Apple will consider this. LLMs are now
| capable of semi-automatic porting with their large context
| windows. I think things could change fast, and maybe we'll have
| secure devices in our pockets one day. I wonder what Alan Kay and
| his fellow researches would have to say about this.
| replete wrote:
| It makes sense if he wants to make a useful web browser and
| leverage third party technologies for it, Serenity is totally
| from scratch. This should mean more time being spent on better
| problems in the web browser through reinventing fewer wheels and
| probably speed up the development of a new browser engine, which
| seems pretty interesting to me.
| losvedir wrote:
| Oh, this is interesting. As a GitHub sponsor of Andreas for a
| while now, what does that mean for sponsors? Are we funding
| exclusively work on LadyBird? (Had we been, for some time
| already?) Does the SerenityOS project have a GitHub sponsor?
|
| I personally had grown more interested in the browser anyway, so
| I'll just keep sponsoring Andreas, I suppose, unless this all is
| a prelude to VC investment or a big company acquisition or
| something...
| awesomekling wrote:
| Thank you so much for sponsoring me! :)
|
| As I wrote in the announcement, I've already been working
| primarily on Ladybird for ~2 years already, so you have indeed
| been sponsoring Ladybird development by sponsoring me.
|
| SerenityOS doesn't have a GitHub Sponsors itself, but it does
| use Polar to allow anyone to directly sponsor work on specific
| issues. See https://polar.sh/SerenityOS
|
| And don't worry, there won't be some VC investment or big
| company buyout.
| dormento wrote:
| > And don't worry, there won't be some VC investment or big
| company buyout.
|
| I fell for that trick 27 times already, you can't fool me!
| j/k
|
| Thanks for the ride, wish you the best of luck.
| aeyes wrote:
| Would you finally consider publishing nightly binaries?
|
| With SerenjtyOS you always had the "build it yourself" approach
| which was probably meant to only attract technical users.
| jiripospisil wrote:
| What's the plan for Jakt, the programming language? Does it fall
| under the SerenityOS umbrella? Will LadyBird continue to use C++?
| The blog post doesn't mention it.
|
| https://github.com/SerenityOS/jakt
| robryan wrote:
| It has come up from time to time. From the perspective of
| LadyBird it is an experiment that ran its course and LadyBird
| will likely just be c++.
|
| From the perspective of serenity os it is still there and
| mostly compatible if someone is interested to come along and
| push it forward to be used in the os.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Given that the main author is looking into another language,
| maybe not much left anyway.
|
| https://www.sophiajt.com/search-for-easier-safe-systems-prog...
| hypeatei wrote:
| Pretty sure it has been dead for a while. I personally never
| saw the point but I suppose the whole mantra of Serenity was
| developing everything from scratch.
| MaximilianEmel wrote:
| Have you considered doing a rewrite (or a partial one) now that
| third-party libraries can be used? To take all your learnings and
| new opportunities and use them to rearchitect things.
| chrismsimpson wrote:
| I think this is likely to kill both projects
| low_tech_punk wrote:
| Can we interpret this as good news of Ladybird but bad news for
| Serenity? If Ladybird drops support for SerenityOS, what would be
| its built-in browser?
| segasaturn wrote:
| I never got to try SerenityOS due to the developer's bizarre
| insistence that users compile the OS instead of just providing a
| precompiled ISO or IMG file. Shame because I appreciated the
| workhorse 9x aesthetics it had.
| skeaker wrote:
| You talk like the project is dead, but the blog post
| emphatically says that it isn't.
| hypeatei wrote:
| This is really surprising but also not at the same time.
| Developing a browser engine from scratch is a huge task. I think
| the writing was on the wall when some big donations were made
| from various companies (including Shopify) and Andreas hired a
| full time dev.
|
| This will probably mark the beginning of the end for SerenityOS
| but I guess we'll see. Really enjoy watching the development
| videos from Andreas' YouTube channel.
| jll29 wrote:
| Andreas is a fantastic coder and also a great shepherd of geeks
| (community builder).
|
| The split makes sense for practical reasons - I also sense he is
| personally perhaps more passionate about browser hacking than OS
| hacking (his own contributions were more to Ladybird than to the
| OS for about a year as he himself writes). Smart as he is, he may
| have recognized that he is in a unique position to be able to
| contribute a cross-platform browser that competes with the big
| tech companies, where as SerenityOS is essentially more of a toy
| OS (32 bit, 1990s look and feel, not compatible with important
| other operating systems, no radically new OS concepts) - without
| wanting to dimish the contributions of its amazing developers.
| IMHO, SerenityOS is more about the process of writing code from
| scratch than the resulting software itself. Its purpose appears
| to be 1. to prove it is possible despite the naysayers ("only
| large tech companies can build a browser", "no-one can build an
| OS from scratch") and 2. to enjoy the coding itself.
|
| As other commenters have already stated, the only issue will be
| taking as much from Ladybird over to SerenityOS as possible.
| refulgentis wrote:
| Having watched this over years, and deleted every single
| comment I've written on it thus far, I'm challenging myself to
| be honest and forthright.
|
| There's another way of looking at, that is confirmed by the
| same set of facts.
|
| There was an OS project run by an awesome dude with a great
| story that was seen as in a unique position to compete with big
| tech companies.
|
| It needed a web browser.
|
| A web browser project was created.
|
| Now, the web browser is in a unique position to compete with
| big tech companies. This means it needs to fork itself, and
| drop support for the OS. That is because the OS project is now
| a toy.
|
| My last deleted comment mentioned my deep respect for Andreas,
| and that my next milestone for the browser is downloadable
| builds and/or moving from pre-alpha to alpha (the downloadable
| builds was listed as a warning it was in pre-alpha).
|
| I don't like appearing negative, hence all the deleted comments
| over the years, but it's very important to me to make sure
| there's an accurate signal of what working on your own project
| looks like, as well as the progress rate on things that sound
| awesome to work on, like an OS or web browser.
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