[HN Gopher] Dusk OS
___________________________________________________________________
Dusk OS
Author : GTP
Score : 155 points
Date : 2025-05-13 19:44 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (duskos.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (duskos.org)
| 90s_dev wrote:
| > https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/io/kbd...
|
| I don't know forth. Is this a driver? How does it talk to the
| hardware?
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Forth is usually kind of like a macro later on top of Assembly
| or even machine code in the case of very simple CPUs, although
| it can be written on top of anything (example: Python). I think
| a layer on top of C is pretty common these days as the
| processors keep getting crazy complicated. Another important
| note is that although there are some conventions, almost
| everyone rolls their own Forth, so they're all unique in a lot
| of ways. The old saying is if you've seen one forth, then
| you've seen one forth. There is an ANS standard, but it isn't
| used a whole lot to my knowledge.
|
| So I assume it talks to drivers like you would with Assembly?
| That's just a guess and probably a bad one.
| kjander79 wrote:
| It's just an event loop, watching for status changes in a
| memory location. Talking to the hardware just occurs when the
| keyboard changes the values in memory.
| skupig wrote:
| The USB host code is in fs/drv/usb:
| https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/drv/us...
|
| Not that I can read any of it... Forth looks unlike any other
| language I've ever seen o_O
| Calwestjobs wrote:
| Mandatory question for all OSes - Does it run EMACS or does it
| run inside of a EMACS?
| luqtas wrote:
| only Vi, the resource collapse resistant branch /j
| tensility wrote:
| VI runs EMACS?! I knew the opposite to be true, but...
|
| ;-p
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Tbh I agree with _almost_ every word there, but I can 't believe
| this OS would be of any help in such a situation.
|
| In dusk of our civilization it will not be possible to boot this
| OS from any modern computer. Those things nowadays don't even
| have CD. everything is dependent on internet, our data is being
| disowned by us and put into cloud. In case of broken internet the
| knowledge is going to be lost.
|
| And how we're going to connect to this site using http? Via
| dialup?
| GTP wrote:
| I think the idea would be to prepare beforehand and have your
| own copy, alongside your own Wikipedia dump.
| etskinner wrote:
| You don't need a CD drive to boot an OS. A humble USB stick
| does the trick. And nearly every computer made in the last 10
| years has a USB port and the ability to boot from it
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Sometimes it's only usb c. But... We're speaking about dusk
| of civilization. Pendrive don't live as long as CDs
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| I have a stack of CD drives. I'll trade you one for food
| and medications.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| What kind of apocalyptic event that wipes out all computer
| manufacturing capability would let USB drives (and compatible
| computers) survive? And how would you power that thing?
| jollyllama wrote:
| Seems like a wishful thinking about the first stage portion of
| collapse. You're going to be more interested in running some
| obsolete version of Windows that controls some proprietary
| infrastructure hardware, not running calculations of whatever
| kind or building things from scratch.
| markstos wrote:
| But if you an need an OS for which no viruses or exploits have
| been develop yet, you may be in luck!
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Would be funny to finally find an undamaged computer, boot it
| up and see a ransomware notice.
| Mainan_Tagonist wrote:
| While it is most likely a very fanciful pet project borne out
| of post-apo fantasy doomporn, there is one fatal fly in the
| ointment: In a post apocalyptic situation, who will have THE
| TIME (nevermind the resources) to dedicate to "operating" one
| such OS? Apocalypse is generally synonymous with population
| collapse. Many less humans to interact with means a greatly
| diminished division of labour and rebuilding civilisation will
| require first and foremost food production, 14 hours of daily
| work in the fields, scavenging, hunting, etc....
|
| Taking one worker away from these (tedious) activities would
| likely be considered an investment that requires significant
| returns, results, be it only to justify this to other workers
| who would also like to be sat in front of a computer. Hard to
| justify having swapped a hard days work for some code on a
| computer screen.
|
| For that kind of scenario, a lightweight Android rom with some
| ham-radio driver would probably be more appropriate.
| vdupras wrote:
| See https://collapseos.org/why.html , under "Aren't there
| more important things to do than an operating system?"
| oneZergArmy wrote:
| Depends on the level of collapse, and say you get
| infrastructure up and running (temporarily, mind you, without
| manufacturing..) - what then? That's what this is for. Cobbling
| together the pieces left over.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| That's assuming you can find the proprietary software that is
| needed. In some cases you're better off just cutting the
| proprietary bits out entirely and hooking straight into the
| motor controllers... or whatever else is more immediately
| upstream of the "business end" of the thing you're hacking.
| os2warpman wrote:
| >Its primary purpose is to be maximally useful during the first
| stage of civilizational collapse, that is, when we can't produce
| modern computers anymore but that there's still many modern
| computers around.
|
| Any event or series of events that removes mankind's ability to
| produce modern computers is a global extinction-level event and
| rather than dicking around with computers one should really be
| considering suicide to avoid a slow, painful, inevitable death in
| a hostile world surrounded by misery.
|
| People act like computers are complicated. They are but they also
| aren't.
|
| Any moderately-sized US state university can (and some have)
| build one from scratch: as in from fucking sand to "Shall we play
| a game?", all in one go.
|
| The state university nearest to me has a complete nanofab that
| can make-- and package!-- ICs (somewhere around 14nm-ish), a
| different lab that can make wafers from scratch, a chemistry
| department where undergrads could make the plastics, and all of
| the software guys you can shake a stick at.
|
| The loss of the ability to make many things, including computers
| but also other more important things like the industrial process
| for making ammonia, globally, simultaneously, is the end of
| humanity.
|
| The knowledge and ability is so widely globally distributed that
| taking it all out is death.
|
| Do not mistake the centralization of consumer goods assembly with
| the centralization of the knowledge needed to assemble consumer
| goods.
|
| Is this OS just for the brief period of time between the loss and
| the ultimate end? To like, play some rounds of solitaire while
| awaiting the inevitable?
| nonethewiser wrote:
| >Any moderately-sized US state university can (and some have)
| build one from scratch: as in from fucking sand to "Shall we
| play a game?", all in one go.
|
| I am quite surprised to hear that. Really?
| os2warpman wrote:
| Yup!
|
| Here's one in Utah: https://www.nanofab.utah.edu/
|
| Here's one in Pennsylvania:
| https://www.mri.psu.edu/nanofabrication-lab
|
| Here's one in California: https://nanofab.ucsb.edu/
| BenjiWiebe wrote:
| Those aren't starting from sand though, so they do need
| some external fancy tech to survive the apocalypse - to
| produce their wafers.
| packetlost wrote:
| It won't be small, but you can create PCBs pretty easily with
| chemical etching. I think making the silicon wafers is
| probably harder.
| ummonk wrote:
| PCBs are something people can do in their garage.
| Integrated circuit fabrication is definitely something that
| requires a much more sophisticated lab such as a top
| university lab.
| guhidalg wrote:
| Depends on the state, but for my alma mater (Georgia Tech)
| I'm pretty confident the answer is yes.
| os2warpman wrote:
| Georgia Tech has one of the best fabrication programs in
| the world.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I just had a look and I am not sure they are making silicon
| wafers. I would be surprised, there's not really any
| research in it, and it's costly to say the least.
| joshmarlow wrote:
| To your point - we do have some chokepoints in supply chains
| here and there but I often wonder how much of that is due to
| the learning curve. As in, things are centralized because just
| how we as a civilization learned to build things in our
| particular historical context - if the context changes and the
| knowledge and resources are there to rebuild in a different
| way, we can.
|
| Relatedly - a lot of things seem intrinsically capital
| intensive, but how much of that is due to the fact that we had
| large pools of capital when we learned to do those things?
| iamjackg wrote:
| Perhaps I'm ignorant, but I wonder why I haven't seen this
| aspect explored in post-apocalyptic media more. I mean, beyond
| the obvious fact that if we can "keep making computers" all of
| a sudden the apocalypse doesn't sound quite that bad, which
| would somewhat lower the stakes.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > Any event or series of events that removes mankind's ability
| to produce modern computers is a global extinction-level event
| and rather than dicking around with computers one should really
| be considering suicide to avoid a slow, painful, inevitable
| death in a hostile world surrounded by misery.
|
| Hmmm... At a very high altitude extinction-level events have
| sufficiently sharp edges. But, as we get closer to things it
| becomes fuzzy. For examples: The Black Death (1347-1351), The
| Spanish Flu (1918-1919), The Great Chinese Famine (1959-1961),
| The Haitian Revolution (1791-1804), The Irish Potato Famine
| (1845-1852), each one of these events were extinction-level
| events for those in the middle of them. What year would you
| have selected to self terminate? Remember you would not have
| hindsight or knowledge that the events are temporary.
| os2warpman wrote:
| Those were all local events.
|
| The only thing removing mankind's ability to make computers
| is a large (Chicxulub-ish-sized) meteor strike or andromeda-
| strain-like sci-fi story made real.
|
| Luckily, I'll be killed by tidal waves if a meteor hits the
| Atlantic and I'll be killed in the firestorm if it hits land
| anywhere on Earth.
|
| If it hits the Pacific or Indian oceans, it depends on the
| size. If large enough, I'll shoot myself in the head to avoid
| starvation after playing a few rounds of solitare.
| glitchc wrote:
| > Those were all local events
|
| In a sufficiently catastrophic event (major loss of
| infrastructure), one wouldn't be able to tell if the event
| is local or global. To the people suffering from the Black
| Death, the event must have felt global as everyone they
| knew was experiencing it.
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| > Those were all local events.
|
| > The only thing removing mankind's ability to make
| computers is a large (Chicxulub-ish-sized) meteor strike or
| andromeda-strain-like sci-fi story made real.
|
| One of the possible causes of the Bronze Age Collapse
| (which btw was very non-local) is a prolonged drought that
| apparently lasted for decades. It's wasn't severe by itself
| but long enough for the fertile soil to keep shrinking year
| after year, decreasing the size of sustainable population.
|
| I dwell on this sometimes and I think that probably we
| underestimate how fragile our food production system is.
| Feeding 8 billion people is not an easy endeavor. Multi-
| year global food reserves are not only non-existent but
| maybe even non-possible at this scale. A global event that
| would somehow disrupt our ability to produce food for
| several years in a row will make the hell break loose. I'm
| not confident that humanity couldn't plunge in a couple of
| dark age centuries as a result, all bets are off in a truly
| global famine.
|
| Then the curious question is how likely is such an event?
| Chicxulub -- yes, but these are extremely rare, once in
| millions of years. The Volcanic Winters however occur every
| few centuries, the "Year Without a Summer" was 1816. Could
| we have "3 years without a summer" at some point? And not
| just in the northern hemisphere but globally? I don't know,
| maybe.
|
| After all, the way I think of it is this: modern food
| production at scale is sun + water + fertilizers.
| Production of fertilizers seem distributed enough to be
| resilient at a global scale. Water at the Earth scale is
| sun again -- as long as it's shining it will rain
| somewhere, even if the distribution shifts (with dramatic
| effects for sure, but not a completely desperate
| situation). But then the sun does seem to be the single
| point of failure. If there's dust or ash or something else
| shielding the sun then it is in fact desperate.
| hermitShell wrote:
| Yeah we're not likely to ever face such a situation and still
| even need that many computers. It's an interesting project
| though in the sense that someone has a 32 bit OS running on
| every ISA out there (or even aims to).
|
| Interesting but not practical. CPUs are either 64 bit and have
| memory management hardware or 32 bit and don't. This dictates
| whether you have lots of addressable RAM or not, and changes
| what an OS is for that CPU
| GTP wrote:
| It is also interesting in the fact that it is extremely tiny
| in terms of lines of code, and the approach they took to
| minimize its codebase is original.
| NunoSempere wrote:
| > Any event or series of events that removes mankind's ability
| to produce modern computers is a global extinction-level event
| and rather than dicking around with computers one should really
| be considering suicide to avoid a slow, painful, inevitable
| death in a hostile world surrounded by misery.
|
| To give some color, here: https://blog.sentinel-team.org/p/how-
| likely-are-various-prec... is a list of a few things that could
| kill over 1M people in one year. Maybe your statement is not
| the case for solar storms in particular.
| alpaca128 wrote:
| The probability estimation of "simulation shutdown" seems a
| bit high. It's just as speculative as alien invasions or
| vacuum decay.
| matltc wrote:
| Speculative rationalist dreck. Entertaining nonetheless
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Any event or series of events that removes mankind's ability
| to produce modern computers is a global extinction-level event
| and rather than dicking around with computers one should really
| be considering suicide to avoid a slow, painful, inevitable
| death in a hostile world surrounded by misery.
|
| Wow... there are probably several ways we could lose the
| ability to fab semiconductors. We can look back through history
| at other periods where they "forgot" how to do various things.
| Brunelleschi's dome on the Florence Cathedral was the first
| major dome built in Europe in over a thousand years since the
| fall of the Western Roman Empire. They lost the knowledge of
| dome building. Should they have considered doing themselves in
| because they found themselves in the Dark Ages? We might forget
| how to do various very involved technical things like fab'ing
| chips, or we might lose the knowledge/and or ability to even
| build a fab, for example (just consider the supply-chain
| required to build a fab and consider how fragile some of those
| chains are). Yeah, it will mean that something really bad has
| likely happened, but that doesn't mean that it's the end and we
| should just go and kill ourselves. It will mean that there's
| been some kind of discontinuity, but it doesn't necessarily
| mean the end of humanity. People will still be able to grow
| crops, hunt, fish, etc (given a reasonable climate remains in
| enough places). Likely the population under these conditions
| will be much smaller but it doesn't mean that we can never
| recover as a species - sure, it might take 1000 years. That's
| ok, we go on just like ancestors before us who endured great
| hardship.
| os2warpman wrote:
| The world is more than Europe.
|
| There are many domes that were built in the Middle East and
| Asia while Europe was trying to figure out how to fund
| expensive vanity projects (large domes).
|
| Computers aren't vanity projects.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Computers aren't vanity projects.
|
| Nor are they a requirement for survival. We didn't have
| computers until about the 1930s and somehow we survived as
| a species.
|
| > The world is more than Europe.
|
| Yes, very true. But under the conditions of some kind of
| serious disaster such as we're discussing we wouldn't have
| visibility into what's going on on the other side of the
| world either, just as they didn't. The Dark Ages in Europe
| weren't dark in places like China, but that didn't help you
| if you were living in Europe. (and even in Europe the
| "darkness" wasn't evenly distributed)
| StopDisinfo910 wrote:
| There are no Dark Ages. People in the Byzantine Empire
| (capitale in Europe) and the Abbasid Caliphate very much knew
| how to build domes and where actually busy advancing the
| state of the art.
|
| The fact that the Franks were more interested in warring
| against each others than building great things is no evidence
| of a dark age. They started building again once peace came
| back and didn't restart from where they left off but from the
| new state of the art as translations started pouring over
| from the Arabic empires.
|
| The idea that humanity somehow went back is a fantasy pushed
| forward by catholic commentators.
| kjs3 wrote:
| The 'dark ages' weren't even the dark ages in Europe. The
| idea was invented by guys in the Renaissance who pined for
| the Greco-Roman world and pretended everything since then
| was a slide downhill. Anyone who seriously trots out this
| trope as 'proof' of anything should be taken about as
| seriously as a flat-earther.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > The idea that humanity somehow went back is a fantasy
| pushed forward by catholic commentators.
|
| A tangential aside: Wouldn't that make the catholics look
| bad and as such why would they spread it? ("We had all this
| great tech before the catholic/christians came along and
| ruined everything and now we don't have nice things" seems
| like another way to look at it)
| palata wrote:
| > Brunelleschi's dome on the Florence Cathedral was the first
| major dome built in Europe in over a thousand years since the
| fall of the Western Roman Empire.
|
| I don't think it necessarily means they forgot how to do it,
| though. Or does it? We too stopped building domes made of big
| stones, it doesn't mean we don't know how to do it.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| For whatever reason they weren't building domes anymore in
| Europe where they had been (the fall of the Western Roman
| empire sort of changed priorities for a while). And after a
| generation of not building domes the artisans (in Europe)
| lost the ability to do it.
|
| There's a much closer example: The US spent the 60s
| developing the capability to land humans on the moon. And
| they were successful. They did it about, what, 7 or 8
| times? But then they stopped doing it. And now some 60
| years later they're having a hard time doing it again (see
| the woes of NASA's Artemis and Boeing's Starliner). Imagine
| if the pause wasn't 60 years, but several hundred years.
| binary132 wrote:
| Some people would survive.
| eGQjxkKF6fif wrote:
| That was a hard, and good read. But remember Linux is Love.
| Linux is Life.
|
| If the end of the world happens I'm going down making and doing
| dope stuff. I'm not going outside and mingling with people.
| That's how you get a fucking spear thrown at you or mugged by
| some newfound MS14 gang swinging hockey sticks and shit.
|
| I'm going to forage for some fruits and vegetables, all that
| good stuff since I'm too much of a bitch to kill an animal;
| those things are cute.
|
| I'm going to load up my laptops on solar power/battery, hook in
| to some internet somewhere and live a normal life.
|
| I don't know what Dusk OS is about but the making computers
| from fucking sand, now that's dank.
|
| I'll install Desktop Linux on it and we can all start the next
| era of civilization; this time Microsoft and Apple aint selling
| us out
|
| _catches spear to the chest_ Shit
| louthy wrote:
| > Any event or series of events that removes mankind's ability
| to produce modern computers is a global extinction-level event
|
| Semiconductors have been around for, what, 70 years? The idea
| that humans couldn't survive without modern tech is ludicrous.
|
| Sure, there will be fewer humans, but extincting humans
| completely is likely to be incredibly difficult without an
| atmosphere-on-fire scale event.
| vanschelven wrote:
| I think the stated claim is that any event that takes out
| semiconductors takes out humanity, not that the lack of
| semiconductors itself does.
| ummonk wrote:
| The point isn't that humans couldn't survive without
| computers, but that any even that managed to stop humans
| globally from manufacturing computers would be such a
| massively disruptive event in much more important areas than
| computing.
| louthy wrote:
| > massively disruptive event
|
| That's not the same as what I was replying to: "a global
| extinction-level event"
|
| The difference is pretty substantial.
| keybored wrote:
| > The loss of the ability to make many things, including
| computers but also other more important things like the
| industrial process for making ammonia, globally,
| simultaneously, is the end of humanity.
|
| The end of us sedentary people. No more ammonia by itself won't
| affect hunter-gatherers and uncontacted peoples. But if we're
| talking about not the end of these things in itself but an
| event like a nuclear winter: sure!
|
| We've been through population bottlenecks in the distant past.
| Again, if _we_ (reading this) die out not due to very severe
| climate change or nuclear winter, other kinds of humans could
| live on. Maybe.
|
| By the way I think old-school Preppers are funny.[1] What's the
| point of prepping with a bunker and canned goods? Truly. You
| don't have enough time to train for the skills, or to hoard
| enough stuff, to survive in a post-civilizational state. You're
| just prepping for surviving a few months at best, that's it.
|
| [1] This OS guy is probably more reflected.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| > to avoid a slow, painful, inevitable death in a hostile world
| surrounded by misery.
|
| Well aren't you a bundle of joy, recommending death to people
| in bad situations.
|
| A life of misery isn't all that bad. Much worse could happen.
|
| This reminds me of A Man For All Seasons:
|
| Thomas More: "At the worst we could be beggars and still be
| keep company and be merry together."
|
| Lady Alice: "Aha, merry."
|
| Thomas More: "Aye, merry!"
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEa6XRZa9Vg&t=5459s
| nrb wrote:
| That advice sounds to me like it's more for "an entire world
| where all people are in a bad situation from which they will
| never escape and neither will their next of kin" but if that
| comes to pass, the lighthearted talk of embracing the misery
| will probably end around the time the starvation begins.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| Eschatology is always a controversial subject. Mostly
| pointless to discuss in such a diverse environment.
| hex4def6 wrote:
| They can make their own ingots and ultra pure chemicals, and
| turbopumps and ion implantation machines and spin coaters CVD
| machines and and the HEPA filters for the cleanroom, and the
| remote servers that control the licensing dongle for the robot
| arm that movies the thingie from "A" to "B"?
|
| Sand to "hello world" is a tall order. There is a pyramid of
| industry that supports the entire thing. Even Sand -> 99.9999 %
| Si (purification & Czochralski crystal growth) needs multi-
| story furnaces, vacuum pulling stations, 10 MW of steady power,
| and months of process engineering. All of have huge dependency
| chains.
|
| Even modern "mild" events like supply chain disruptions would
| be enough to shut down any sort of non-toy level production in
| short order.
|
| So yeah, a university as it currently stands can make a
| microchip, relying on all of these dependency chains being in
| operational order. But I don't doubt that would quickly no
| longer be the case if you had a hot war or societal collapse.
|
| The exponential growth in processor capabilities relied on a
| global manufacturing infrastructure from the 1970s until today.
| To do the same level of progression would require much of that
| infrastructure.
|
| Assuming someone managed to strategically nuke every major
| foundry / chemical / machine supplier, but leave everything
| else the same? Sure, maybe we get back to our present tech in
| 15-20 years.
|
| Assume it's the result of a societal collapse? No way in hell.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Most catastrophic scenarios I can imagine result in loss of
| _advanced_ silicon production, but not necessarily _all_
| silicon production. More likely than not there would be ways to
| keep fabs for old well-trodden processes running. In that
| situation, there'd probably be a temporary shock of no
| computers followed by new computers being a lot less
| powerful... it'd be less "no more computers" and more "new
| computers are comparable to their Pentium 4 /PowerPC G5 era
| counterparts", in which case operating systems would still be
| graphical, just a lot more lightweight. Linux and BSDs would
| probably quickly take over desktop computing due to being able
| to run reasonably on such systems with minimal legwork.
|
| If we can't manufacture chips _at all_ , yeah, things will be
| in enough of a pickle that computers will be the least of our
| worries.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| I hope the author doesn't take this the wrong way, but this feels
| like another Temple OS driven by a different (perhaps milder)
| kind of insanity.
|
| It's quite technically impressive, but I'm not sure I'd know what
| to do with it if I were experiencing an apocalypse, in a way that
| would be more useful to me than an install of Windows XP or Linux
| or Freedos would be
| theletterf wrote:
| Temple OS came to my mind, too. At least that one had a UI and
| games; a much better option if civilization collapses.
| emchammer wrote:
| It's just such a boutique thing, saying you're prepared to run
| 32-bit software on hardware during an apocalypse. If CPUs
| suddenly become scarce, I would have figured a tube-based,
| relay-based, or Enigma-type machine with specific useful
| applications would be more practical.
| zeroq wrote:
| You do realize that your usb charger has a microprocesor that
| is as capable as computers you used to play on as a child?
|
| Seriously, finding a running 386 today will probably be more
| challanging than finding a PC capable of running Cyberpunk in
| 4k 5 years after the fallout.
|
| Like others have mentioned at worst it's another TempleOS or
| subtle way to point out to your acquaintance that they
| shouldn't stay with you alone at best.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| > years after the fallout.
|
| Ok, but that's not the purpose of the OS. I recommend you
| to read the Why page:
|
| https://collapseos.org/why.html
|
| Two relevants parts:
|
| > Computers, after a few decades, will break down beyond
| repair and we won't be able to program microcontrollers any
| more.
|
| > It's not that modern ICs are more fragile than old ones
| (maybe they are, after all, more can go wrong with millions
| of transistors than with thousands), it's that old designs
| are simpler than modern ones and thus more repairable.
|
| The complete reflexion and arguments are way deeper and
| interesting through. The most interesting parts is under
| "Electronics evolved rapidly without any help before. Why
| can't we pull it again?"
| zeroq wrote:
| Yeah, I've read that with the voice of Ron Perlman: "FAT,
| FAT never changes...".
|
| I get that not every vault dweller will be technically
| apt enough to build a working computer out of a usb
| charger, but there is plenty of hardware and software
| that will be laying around in shrines near ghoul
| settlements.
|
| Every store has POSes that can be easilly repurposed,
| there's DOS, Windows95 and if your tribe really wants to
| get an edge during a siege on enemy village you will most
| likely be able to calculate catapults trajectories on a
| PIP... I mean old android phone.
| horacemorace wrote:
| An LLM and a modern desktop makes any sufficiently enthusiastic
| human into an Operator, as the author describes it.
| keybored wrote:
| An OS for civilizational collapse is a million times more
| relevant than an OS dedicated to God.
| ummonk wrote:
| Churches did a much better job of preserving knowledge
| through the "Dark Age" than did doomsayer prophets.
| EGreg wrote:
| I gotta be honest
|
| It didnt start out that way But 14 years later I would say this
| was also a labor of love and I'm not sure if it was entirely
| rational:
|
| https://github.com/Qbix
|
| and
|
| https://community.qbix.com
| GTP wrote:
| What's this?
| StrangeDoctor wrote:
| I think the idea is:
|
| some computing device is discovered, but the OS is
| bad/missing/old/not useful etc. Or possibly a novel computer is
| built from whatever is still around.
|
| The computer itself would still be good if only it had an os.
|
| Dusk OS is easy to port to new arch because it compiles from
| source on every(?) boot, and only needs a tiny kernel to be
| ported?
| vdupras wrote:
| Yes, every time Dusk boots, it boots from a kernel ranging
| from 2.5 to 4 kilobytes in size, depending on the CPU. The
| rest is all compiled (very quickly) from source on the fly.
| thih9 wrote:
| This and more is addressed on the "why.html" page. E.g.:
|
| > (...) you and I are likely to be dead before Collapse OS is
| actually useful.
|
| or:
|
| > People who are less technical have trouble seeing the point
| of this project and ask "why can't we just use Linux?". People
| who have actually lifted Linux' hood don't ask that question
| because they actually understand the magnitude of complexity
| involved, but if you haven't, it's a legitimate question to
| ask.
|
| https://collapseos.org/why.html
| ummonk wrote:
| There's a lot of idiosyncratic verbiage about stuff like collapse
| of civilization and users vs. operators, but it's not clear to me
| what makes this more lightweight or hackable than a typical
| lightweight RTOS or even just baremetal drivers running on a
| microcontroller.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Or why an "almost C compiler" is better than a C compiler.
| GTP wrote:
| I think that having an "almost" C compiler is a trick they
| use to minimize the size of the codebase.
| vdupras wrote:
| Yes, this is it. A C compiler in 50 kilobytes of code is
| pretty innovative.
|
| It's also doesn't lie about the "almost". It's really
| almost C. It's just that C's stdlib is POSIX centric and
| doesn't fit Forth well, so it's not implemented as is.
| kaoD wrote:
| Or rather, why is it not _much worse_ than an actual C
| compiler.
|
| In an apocalyptic event energy would be precious. You'd
| rather have an optimizing compiler to run longer off your
| solar-charged car battery or whatever.
|
| I like the roleplay/lore and the tech effort is impressive
| but I don't think it fits the idea.
| fuhsnn wrote:
| > I like the roleplay/lore and the tech effort is
| impressive but I don't think it fits the idea.
|
| "An optimizing compiler requires at least 500MB of RAM,
| which can only be looted from level 7 Terminator elites!"
| NunoSempere wrote:
| I've seen this before, thought it was super interesting, kudos to
| the author. Leaving this comment for contrast with some other
| negative comments.
| etskinner wrote:
| According to the "Linking to this website" section:
| If you want to link to this website, please use http:// links
| rather than https:// ones. While http:// links are trivially
| "upgradable" to HTTPS, the opposite is not.
|
| Mods should update the link in this post
| munificent wrote:
| I think many of us feel a lot of existential dread about the
| future these days, and if hacking on an OS helps the author cope
| with those feelings and improves their psychology, then I'm all
| for it. Whatever keeps you sane.
| zeroq wrote:
| That "civilizational collapse" scenario must be straight out of
| the Fallout game.
|
| In my mind I was reading their page with the voice of Ron Perlman
| - "FAT, FAT never changes...".
| blturner wrote:
| Recent issue of Wired has an interview with the author
| https://www.wired.com/story/forth-collapse-os-apocalypse-pro...
| lykahb wrote:
| I think that in the event of a such a collapse, there would be
| two new directions: turning the surviving advanced digital
| devices into general computers, and building new electronics.
| Reusing existing common software would be easier than building
| something from scratch. So, I'd expect that postmarketOS and
| flavours of Linux for low-power machines meets most needs.
|
| Also, it'd be fantastic if iPhones have a doomsday switch that
| untethers them from Apple - that'd be the difference between a
| useless brick and a precious artifact of a bygone era. The post-
| apocalyptic setting has potential for a game that comes from the
| perspective of a builder, and goes deeply into civil engineering
| and IT - build architecture that can withstand the elements,
| design a water chip, write embedded software for it.
| r14c wrote:
| I think forth is fun, but I can't really take the collapse
| narrative of this project seriously. IG it's disrespectful, but I
| kinda view it as a performance art piece with fallout vibes.
| nntwozz wrote:
| That's nice, but it won't replace the trusty abacus.
|
| That's what you need for a real apocalypse.
| timbit42 wrote:
| My solar powered calculator will be fine.
| tgma wrote:
| Let me preface that I do not subscribe to the ideology at all,
| but the concept of bootstrapping a complex system is
| intellectually worthwhile and often practical in its use-cases.
| For example, imagine a tech company with a bunch of datacenters
| that boot from the network, have redundancy etc, but if you
| somehow turn the macthines off all at once, no one knows if they
| can reboot safely (say, service discovery cannot find the machine
| hosting OS images anymore).
|
| As a practical matter, you can flip the author's mental pessimism
| and look at the optimistic situation where we conquer other
| planets, in which case thinking about an optimal bootstrapping
| path is going to be essential for the society and its industrial
| needs.
|
| It is also true that some fairly local shocks in human society
| can cause a cascading failure and doing this analysis fairly
| regularly can help identify and minimize the cascade.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Collapse OS_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43482705 -
| March 2025 (199 comments)
|
| _Running CollapseOS on an Esp8266_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645124 - Dec 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _Dusk OS: 32-bit Forth OS. Useful during first stage of
| civilizational collapse_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36751422 - July 2023 (141
| comments)
|
| _DuskOS: Successor to CollapseOS_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36688676 - July 2023 (4
| comments)
|
| _Collapse OS - Why?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35672677 - April 2023 (1
| comment)
|
| _Collapse OS: Winter is coming_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207852 - Oct 2022 (2
| comments)
|
| _Collapse OS_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340518 -
| May 2022 (8 comments)
|
| _Collapse OS Status: Completed_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26922146 - April 2021 (2
| comments)
|
| _Collapse OS - bootstrap post-collapse technology_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25910108 - Jan 2021 (116
| comments)
|
| _Collapse OS Web Emulators_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24138496 - Aug 2020 (1
| comment)
|
| _Collapse OS, an OS for When the Unthinkable Happens_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535720 - June 2020 (2
| comments)
|
| _Collapse OS_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453575 -
| June 2020 (15 comments)
|
| _Collapse OS - Why Forth?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23450287 - June 2020 (166
| comments)
|
| _Collapse OS - Why?_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901002 - April 2020 (3
| comments)
|
| _' Collapse OS' Is an Open Source Operating System for the Post-
| Apocalypse_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21815588 - Dec
| 2019 (3 comments)
|
| _Collapse OS_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 -
| Oct 2019 (303 comments)
| WorldPeas wrote:
| Whenever I see something like this I wonder: how is it more
| valuable than porting freeDOS/busybox to the same environments,
| with its dearth of existing software and hardware support
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Many comments strawman the author then argue with what they
| imagine he images. Guys just read the 'Why' page [0] and argue
| with his thesis. I'm not sure to agree with everything but it
| still is a very interesting and questioning read. Kudos to the
| author for writing it.
|
| This OS is _not_ for:
|
| - you or your child
|
| - a planet with working computers
|
| - a planet with cheap and abundant 'bootstrap' energy like we had
| from 1850 to 1960
|
| - a planet where humans _really_ struggle to get food ( "you're
| running away from cannibals", but I think this metaphor is a bad
| choice after the mad-max refutation)
|
| That page [1] is also a core part of the theory: "What makes
| collapse inevitable and imminent".
|
| [0] https://collapseos.org/why.html [1]
| https://collapseos.org/civ.html
| siddthesquid wrote:
| I feel I can empathize with the ideology, and I want to argue
| that an idea like this is a big piece of some puzzle.
|
| The puzzle: During the collapse, I think the biggest thing we
| would lose is our ability to communicate with each other in a
| reliable way. Like telecommunications and internet and all that.
| Who and what do we trust?
|
| I imagine that before a collapse like this would happen, people
| would get a hint to gather as much as they can to help with their
| survival. Those things would include: this OS, the knowledge to
| load a sequence of bytes from whatever device is holding the OS
| to as many CPUs/controllers as possible, strategies to connect
| any number of arbitrary CPUs to radio devices, some knowledge of
| public keys and private keys. maybe all neatly organized into a
| handbook
|
| The OS itself would be responsible for providing as easy an
| interface for any average joe to generate public/private keys,
| communicate with other people who have followed their same
| protocol, and use those public keys to build trust from
| communications. before the collapse happens, you may even collect
| a list of public keys you are likely to already trust.
|
| The OS could maybe even have software for building communities of
| trust or even handling adhoc finances through (don't hate me for
| this) cryptocurrency.
|
| anyways, this is all based on an assumption that the ability to
| communicate quickly (and build trust in a decentralized yet
| controllable way) is the best mitigation we have to a collapse
|
| this answer is slightly influenced by the movie leave the world
| behind lol
| taylorallred wrote:
| Where can I go to learn how to scavenge for microcontrollers and
| load/operate an OS like this on them? (Low-key would like to know
| that I could do that if need be).
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