[HN Gopher] Radiant Computer
___________________________________________________________________
Radiant Computer
Author : beardicus
Score : 168 points
Date : 2025-11-05 13:22 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (radiant.computer)
(TXT) w3m dump (radiant.computer)
| mwcampbell wrote:
| The thing that always worries me about these clean-slate designs
| is the fear that they'll ignore accessibility for disabled
| people, e.g. blind people, and then either the system will remain
| inaccessible, or accessibility will have to be retrofitted later.
| nicksergeant wrote:
| It's funny you mention that because the first thing I thought
| when viewing this page was "is this a loading state? why is
| everything grey?".
| debo_ wrote:
| Ahem. It's _radiant_ grey.
| jccalhoun wrote:
| I thought "is there one of those popups covering things and
| greying out the page until you close it?"
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| I like the design. Minimal and loaded fast. I haven't dug
| into the pages' code but I'm guessing there's little or no
| bloated JavaScript.
| d-us-vb wrote:
| Yeah, this is concerning. Although, if the system is
| architected well, accessibility features ought to be something
| that can be added as an extension.
|
| What is a screen reader but something that can read the screen?
| It needs metadata from the GUI, which ought to be available if
| the system is correctly architected. It needs navigation order,
| which ought to be something that can be added later with a
| separate metadata channel (since navigation order should be
| completely decoupled from the implementation of the GUI).
|
| The other topic of accessibility a la Steve Yegge: the entire
| system should be approachable to non-experts. That's already in
| their mission statement.
|
| I think that the systems of the past have trained us to expect
| a lack of dynamism and configurability. There is some value to
| supporting existing screen-readers, like ORCA, since power
| users have scripts and whatnot. But my take is that if you
| provide a good mechanism that supports the primitive
| functionality and support generalized extensibility, then new
| and better systems can emerge organically. I don't use
| accessibility software, but I can't imagine it's perfect. It's
| probably ripe for its own reformation as well.
| throwup238 wrote:
| _> What is a screen reader but something that can read the
| screen?_
|
| Good screen readers track GUI state which makes it hard to
| tack on accessibility after the fact. They depend on the
| identity of the elements on the screen so they can detect
| relevant changes.
| Lerc wrote:
| I'm actually ok with that if it truly serving the purpose for
| what a computer should be.
|
| I think those principles would embody the notion that the same
| thing cannot serve all people equally. Simultaneously, for
| people to interact, interoperability is required. For example,
| I don't think everyone should use the same word processor. It
| is likely that blind people would be served best by a word
| processor designed by blind people. Interoperable systems would
| aim to neither penalise or favour users for using a different
| program for the same task.
| glenstein wrote:
| I also think for the purpose of _piloting_ a new system I don
| 't mind people chasing whatever aspect of that mission most
| inspires them. Anything aspiring to be a universal paradigm
| needs to account for accessibility to have legitimacy in
| being "for everyone" but that doesn't necessarily have to be
| the scope when you're starting.
|
| I'd like to think that prioritizing early phase momentum of
| computing projects leads to more flowers blooming, and
| ultimately more accessibility-enabled projects in the long
| run.
| PeaceTed wrote:
| For all the complaints leveled at Apple, their accessibility on
| their OS's is astounding.
|
| It is said if we live long enough, we all will be disabled at
| some point.
| user_7832 wrote:
| > RadiantOS treats your computer as an extension of your mind.
| It's designed to capture your knowledge, habits, and workflows at
| the system layer. Data is interlinked like a personal wiki, not
| scattered across folders.
|
| This sounded really interesting... till I read this:
|
| > It's an AI-native operating system. Artificial neural networks
| are built in and run locally. The OS understands what
| applications can do, what they expose, and how they fit together.
| It can integrate features automatically, without extra code. AI
| is used to extend your ability, help you understand the system
| and be your creative aid.
|
| (From https://radiant.computer/system/os/)
|
| That's... kind of a wierd thing to have? Other than that, it
| actually looks nice.
| d-us-vb wrote:
| There are lots of systems that have tried to do something like
| the first quote. They're usually referred to as "semantic
| OSes", since the OS itself manages the capturing of semantic
| links.
|
| I don't think anyone denies the current utility of AI. A big
| problem of the current OSes is that AI features are clumsily
| bolted on without proper context. If the entire system is
| designed from the ground up for AI and the model runs locally,
| perhaps many of the current issues will be diminished.
| palmotea wrote:
| > I don't think anyone denies the current utility of AI. A
| big problem of the current OSes is that AI features are
| clumsily bolted on without proper context.
|
| I do. "AI" is not trustworthy enough to be anything but
| "clumsily bolted on without proper context."
| sealeck wrote:
| Why isn't AI just another application that can be run on the
| device? Surely we expose the necessary interfaces through the
| OS and the application goes from there?
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Same. I was super excited until I saw the AI stuff you pointed
| out. I'll have to read more about that. I like the idea of a
| new OS that isn't just a Linux clone, networking stack that is
| old school and takes computing in a different direction. I
| don't have a lot of need for the AI stuff outside of some
| occasional LLM stuff. I'd like to hear more from the authors on
| this.
|
| I also understand that the old BBS way of communicating isn't
| perfect, but looking into web browsers seems to just be
| straight up insanity. Surely we can come up with something
| different now that takes the lessons learned over the past few
| decades combined with more modern hardware. I don't pretend to
| know what that would look like, but the idea of being able to
| fully understand the overall software stack (at least
| conceptually) is pretty tempting.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| Sounds like it's vibe-coding your entire software stack (data,
| apps, OS) in real time.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Most of the text on the site seems LLM written as well. Given
| that the scope of the project involves making their own
| programming language, OS, and computing hardware, but they
| don't seem to have made very much tangible progress towards
| these goals, I don't understand why they decided to spend time
| making a fancy project site before they have anything to show.
| It makes me doubt that this will end up going anywhere.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Most of the text on the site seems LLM written as well.
|
| I was thinking the same thing. Out of curiosity I pasted it
| at one of those detection sites and it said 0% AI written,
| but the tone of vague transcendance certainly got my eyebrow
| raised.
| ItsHarper wrote:
| They've written an R' compiler in C, and ported its order and
| parser to be self-hosted, with source code for those included
| in blog posts.
|
| I'm not a fan of all the LLM and image generator usage
| either, though.
| glenstein wrote:
| I actually don't mind it necessarily. I wonder if the medium-
| far future of software is a ground-level AI os that spins up
| special purpose applications on the fly in real time.
|
| What clashes for me is that I don't see how that has anything
| to do with the mission statement about getting away from social
| media and legacy hardware support. In fact it seems kind of
| diametrically opposite, suggesting intentionally hand crafted,
| opinionated architecture and software principles. Nothing about
| the statement would have lead me to believe that AI is the
| culmination of the idea.
|
| And again, the statement itself I am fine with! In fact I am
| against the culture of reflex backlash to vision statements and
| new ventures. But I did not take the upshot of this particular
| statement to be that AI was the culmination of the vision.
| __alexs wrote:
| People had similar fears about OLE in Windows 95.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| That's kind of where my mind went too. They're pitching this
| functionality for use by AI, but if it's actually something
| like OLE or the Smalltalk browser or something like that
| where you can programmatically enumerate APIs, this has a lot
| of potential for non-AI use cases too that I generally find
| lacking in conventional platforms.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| I think it's fine if all the 'ai' is local.
|
| I haven't read all of the documentation around this project but
| I hope it's in the same vein as the cannon cat and the apple-
| apple//gs (and other early computer systems with quick and easy
| access to some kind of programmable environment). (as an aside
| I think apple tried to keep this going with applescript and
| automator but didn't quite pull it off)
|
| I think there is a weird trick though. General purpose
| computers a great and they can do _anything_ and many people
| bog down their systems with _everything_ as a result. I feel
| like past projects like Microsoft 's Bob and the Canon Cat were
| also in this general thought pattern. Strip it back, give them
| the tools that they need and very little else.
|
| I try and follow that pattern also on my work macbook. I only
| install what I need to do my job. Anything I want to try out
| gets a deadline for removal. I keep my /Applications folder
| very light and I police my homebrew installs with a similar
| zeal.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| > Radiance compiler targetting RISC-V ISA. Involves writing an
| R' compiler in C and then porting it to R'.
|
| R is a language for statistics and data analysis, I can't
| understand why they chose it for low-level systems programming
| having modern alternatives like Go or Rust. Maybe it has to do
| with the AI integration.
|
| It seems interesting enough to follow, but I'm uncertain about
| its actual direction.
|
| Edit: Thanks to people in this thread for pointing out that
| it's not R, but R'. The language they're creating is called
| Radiance, so it may be that R' is a subset of it.
|
| > Radiance is a small statically-typed systems programming
| language designed for the Radiant platform, targeting the
| RISC-V RV64GC architecture. Radiance features a modern syntax
| and design inspired by Rust, Swift and Zig.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| I think R' is completely separate from R-the-stats-language
| and more like a cut down version of their Radiance language.
| Pretty common way to bootstrap a self-hosted runtime.
| cloudhead wrote:
| Yes, R' is "R prime", unrelated to the statistics language.
| Honestly didn't think about it that much.
| Y_Y wrote:
| Good luck running your super-necessary local models without
| nvidia drivers
| slater wrote:
| So what does its UI look like?
| d-us-vb wrote:
| Based on its /log page, it doesn't look like it has one yet.
| They're just now implementing the implementation language, R'.
| palmotea wrote:
| > They're just now implementing the implementation language,
| R'.
|
| They haven't done their due diligence: there's already a
| well-known language named R: https://www.r-project.org/. The
| prime isn't sufficient disambiguation.
| exasperaited wrote:
| well-known "language" (air quotes)
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I assume they know but don't care. Either way, that is a
| bad choice. I think "Rad" would be a good name, but maybe
| they already are using that for something else.
|
| Edit: where did you see it's called "R"? It looks like they
| call the system language "Radiance" :
| https://radiant.computer/system/radiance/
| ItsHarper wrote:
| https://radiant.computer/system/radiance/prime/
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Ah, so no quite "R", but "R'" (R Prime).
| debo_ wrote:
| I assumed R and R' are prototypical bootstrapping variants
| of what will be the full-fledged Radiant language, but that
| wasn't explicitly written anywhere.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| They called their language "R"??? Robert Gentleman will throw
| a hissy fit.
| underdeserver wrote:
| I don't understand why they're particular about writing their own
| esoteric language. If they want people to buy and engage with it,
| software has to be the gateway, and that's easier to write in a
| language people know.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| It's prob a balance. Sure, C is king....but if you are starting
| from scratch...do you REALLY need it or could you design
| something even better? Maybe, maybe not.
|
| I've programmed for a long time, but always struggled with
| Assembly and C, so take my views with a grain of salt.
| underdeserver wrote:
| I don't think C _is_ king anymore. They could use Rust with
| nostd, or Zig, or C++. Anything (low level enough) is better
| than an entirely new language.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I missed this earlier: "Radiance features a modern syntax
| and design inspired by Rust, Swift and Zig."
| glenstein wrote:
| The more I look at it and think about it, it feels like the
| whole thing, language and images together, are collectively
| concept art. Which, if that's the case, is fine for what it is.
| But I do think if that's the case, I think it's at least
| slightly disrespectful to readers to be coy about how real any
| of this is.
| neonnoodle wrote:
| Next you'll tell me urbit, nock, and hoon never caught on
| PeaceTed wrote:
| Yes but have you considered making a trapazoid wheel? Maybe it
| will work, or not...
| lowsong wrote:
| > Computing machines are instruments of creativity, companions in
| learning, and partners in thought. They should amplify human
| intention.
|
| An admirable goal. However putting that next to a bunch of AI
| slop artwork and this statement...
|
| > One of our goals is to explore how an A.I.-native computer
| system can enhance the creative process, all while keeping data
| private.
|
| ...is comically out of touch.
|
| The intersection between "I want simple and understandable
| computing systems" and "I want AI" is basically zero. (Yes, I'm
| sure some of you exist, my point is that you're combining a slim
| segment of users who want this approach to tech with another slim
| segment of users who want AI.)
| cloudhead wrote:
| In five years time, "I want AI" will be 99% of computer users.
| Sure, neural nets are opaque, but having an AI assistant
| running locally and helping you with your tasks does not make
| your computer any harder to understand.
| palmotea wrote:
| The AI art makes it look like vapor.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| So does the AI text.
|
| They want to implement custom hardware with support for audio,
| video, everything, a completely new language, a ground-up OS,
| and also include AI.
|
| Sounds easy enough.
| largbae wrote:
| If it doesn't have a browser, how will you visit radiant.computer
| on your Radiant Computer?
| 7thaccount wrote:
| You wouldn't I don't think (assuming this thing ever got off
| the ground - huge assumption), but is that really a problem? I
| think the web page is more to make normalish people aware that
| this hypothetical ecosystem would be out there. From within
| that ecosystem they could have a different page.
| system7rocks wrote:
| This looks like an advertisement for a new season of Severance or
| something.
|
| The image on this page is wild:
| https://radiant.computer/principles/
|
| Of course, I am intrigued by open architecture. Will they be able
| to solve graphic card issues though?
| d-us-vb wrote:
| You won't be bringing your own graphics card to RadiantOS.
| According to one of the pages, they want to design their own
| hardware and the graphics will be provided by a memory-mapped
| FPGA.
|
| If your question is about the general intricacies in graphics
| that usually have bugs, then I'd say they have a much better
| chance at solving those issues than other projects that try to
| support 3rd party graphics hardware.
| edm0nd wrote:
| my outie enjoys trying experimental operating systems
| analog8374 wrote:
| Am I hallucinating or is that black diamond in the sky a little
| malproportioned?
| zamadatix wrote:
| It's an AI generated image
| flobosg wrote:
| That image is giving me some Evangelion vibes:
| https://wiki.evageeks.org/Ramiel
| glenstein wrote:
| I am fascinated by the art but it seem bizzarely overdefined
| relative to the software vision laid out in text. That is,
| the amount of richly imagined imagery dramatically outpaces
| the overall coherence of the vision in every other respect.
|
| And as with the text, the art _feels_ AI generated. In fact I
| even think it 's quite beautiful for what it is, but it
| reminds me of "dark fantasy" AI generated art on Tikok.
|
| I have nothing against an aesthetic vision being the kernel
| of inspiration for a computing paradigm (I actually think the
| concept art process is a fantastic way to ignite your
| visionary mojo, and I'm flashing back to amazing soviet
| computing design art).
|
| But I worry about the capacity and expertise to be able to
| follow through given the vagueness of the text and the, at
| least, strongly-suggestive-of-AI text and art, which might
| reflect the limited capacity and effort even to generate the
| website let alone build out any technology.
| Starlevel004 wrote:
| Why does the website look like my monitor is dying? Black on dark
| grey, seriously?
| alejoar wrote:
| Indeed. Not very.. radiant.
| jasonjmcghee wrote:
| Out of curiosity- there's a focus on local llm then talk about no
| GPU, only FPGA. Those feel- at odds. But maybe I'm out of the
| loop for how far local LLMs on custom hardware has come?
| ItsHarper wrote:
| They're still at the compiler stage. LLM features and hardware
| seem far enough away that it's reasonable to wait to evaluate
| if that combination is actually practical.
| moconnor wrote:
| The landing page reads like it was written with an LLM.
|
| Somehow this makes me immediately not care about the project; I
| expect it to be incomplete vibe-coded filler somehow.
|
| Odd what a strong reaction it invokes already. Like: if the
| author couldn't be bothered to write this, why waste time reading
| it? Not sure I support that, but that's the feeling.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| It seems be popular here because of the ideas it proposes.
| wrs wrote:
| I am very concerned about the long term effects of people
| developing the habit of mistrusting things just because they're
| written in coherent English and longer than a tweet. (Which
| seems to be the criterion for "sounds like an LLM wrote it".)
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Haha. This is so true. I'm a bit long-winded myself and once
| got accused of being AI on here. I just don't communicate
| like Gen Alpha. I read their site and nothing jumped out as
| AI although it's possible they used it to streamline what
| they initially wrote.
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Wait until the bot herders realize you can create engagement
| by having a bot complain about texts being LLM-like.
| cloudhead wrote:
| What's odd is how certain people seem to be about their
| intuition about what is and isn't written by an LLM.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| >"It's a tool for personal computing where every application and
| every surface, exists as code you can read, edit, and extend.
| It's a system you can truly own"
|
| This sounds a lot like a Smalltalk running as the OS until they
| started talking about implementing a systems language.
| Lerc wrote:
| I'm interested in the idea of a clean slate hardware/software
| system. I think being constrained to support existing hardware or
| software reduces opportunities for innovation on the other.
|
| I don't see that in this project. This isn't defined by a clean
| slate. It is defined by properties that it does not want to be.
|
| Off the top of my head I can think of a bunch of hardware
| architectures that would require all-new software. There would be
| amazing opportunities for discovery writing software for these
| things. The core principles of the software for such a machine
| could be based upon a solid philosophical consideration of what a
| computer should be. Not just "One that doesn't have social media"
| but what are truly the needs of the user. This is not a simple
| problem. If it should facilitate but also protect, when should it
| say no?
|
| If software can run other software, should there be an
| independent notion of how that software should be facilitated?
|
| What should happen when the user directs two pieces of software
| to perform contradictory things? What gets facilitated, what gets
| disallowed.
|
| I'd love to see some truly radical designs. Perhaps model where
| processing and memory are one, A:very simple core per 1k of SRAM
| per 64k of DRAM per megabytes of flash, machines with 2^n cores
| where each core has a direct data channel to every core with its
| n-bit core ID being one but different (plus one for all bits
| different).
|
| A n=32 system would have four billion cores and 4 terabytes if
| RAM and nearly enough persistent storage but it would take
| talking through up to 15 intermediaries to communicate between
| any two arbitrary cores.
|
| You could probably start with a much lower n. Then consider how
| to write software for it that meets the principles that meets the
| criteria of how it should behave.
|
| Different, clean slate, not easy.
| Aurornis wrote:
| Clean slate designs with arbitrarily radical designs are easy
| when you don't have to actually build them.
|
| There are reasons that current architecture are mostly similar
| to each other, having evolved over decades of learning and
| research.
|
| > Perhaps model where processing and memory are one, A:very
| simple core per 1k of SRAM per 64k of DRAM per megabytes of
| flash,
|
| To serve what goal? Such a design certainly wouldn't be useful
| for general purpose computing and it wouldn't even serve
| current GPU workloads well.
|
| Any architecture that requires extreme overhauls of how
| software is designed and can only benefit unique workloads is
| destined to fail. See Itanium for a much milder example that
| still couldn't work.
|
| > machines with 2^n cores where each core has a direct data
| channel to every core with its n-bit core ID being one but
| different (plus one for all bits different).
|
| Software isn't the only place where big-O scaling is relevant.
|
| Fully connected graph topologies are great on paper, but the
| number of connections scales quadratically. For a 64-core fully
| connected CPU topology you would need 2,016 separate data
| buses.
|
| Those data buses take up valuable space. Worse, the majority of
| them are going to be idle most of the time. It's extremely
| wasteful. The die area would be better used for anything else.
|
| > A n=32 system would have four billion cores
|
| A four billion core system would be the poster child for
| Amdahl's law and a great example of how not to scale compute.
|
| Let's not be so critical of companies trying to make practical
| designs.
| d-us-vb wrote:
| Perhaps not a true counterpoint, but there are systems like
| the GA144, an array of 144 Forth processors.
|
| I think you're missing the point, and I don't think OP is
| "being critical of companies making practical designs."
|
| Also, I think OP was imagining some kind of tree based
| topology, not connected graph since he said:
|
| > ...but it would take talking through up to 15
| intermediaries to communicate between any two arbitrary
| cores.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Are you aware of anyone who has used that system outside of
| a hobbyist buying the dev board? I looked into it and the
| ideas were cool, but no clue how to actually do anything
| with it.
| teraflop wrote:
| > Software isn't the only place where big-O scaling is
| relevant.
|
| > Fully connected graph topologies are great on paper, but
| the number of connections scales quadratically. For a 64-core
| fully connected CPU topology you would need 2,016 separate
| data buses.
|
| Nitpick: I don't think the comment you're replying to is
| proposing a fully-connected graph. It's proposing a hypercube
| topology, in which the number of connections per CPU scales
| logarithmically. (And with each node also connected to its
| diagonal opposite, but that doesn't significantly change the
| scaling.)
|
| If my math is right, a 64-core system with this topology
| would have only 224 connections.
| Lerc wrote:
| This is what I meant. I also like the idea of optical,
| line-of-sight connections. If you do the hypercube topology
| everything a node connects to has a different parity, so
| you lay them out on two panels facing each other.
| cloudhead wrote:
| Thanks for these thoughts -- I agree in principle, but we have
| to juggle a couple things here: while Radiant is in some ways
| an experiment, it isn't a research project. There are enough
| "obvious" things we can do better this time around, given
| everything we've learned as an industry, that I wouldn't want
| to leapfrog over this next milestone in personal computer
| evolution and end up building something a little too unfamiliar
| to be useful.
| Lerc wrote:
| In that case I think the best advice I can give here is to
| focus less on features you dislike in other things and
| conaider the problems caused by those things. Without being
| encumbered by legacy reqirements you are free to make any
| changes you want, but each part is workload. Start at the top
| of each symptomatic feature and work your way down until you
| can change the part that causes the symptoms. Some things
| might require going down to the core. Some could be fixed
| with top level changes. Focus on finding what makes things
| bad(and why) instead of identifying bad things.
| cloudhead wrote:
| That's a nice approach, thanks for the advice.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| BeOS was one.
|
| When Apple was looking for its "next generation" OS, everyone
| assumed that Gasse and BeOS were going to be it, but they chose
| Jobs and the legacy (FreeBSD-based) NextOS.
|
| I know that "old is bad," in today's tech world, but, speaking
| only for myself, I'm glad they made the decision they did. BeOS
| was really cool, but it was _too_ new.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Very interesting and ambitious project and nice design. I hope
| the author will be able to comment here.
|
| I'm interested to hear about the plans or capabilities in R' or
| Radiance for things like concurrent programming,
| asynchronous/scheduling, futures, and invisible or implied
| networking.
|
| AI is here and will be a big part of future personal computing. I
| wonder what type of open source accelerator for neural networks
| is available as a starting point. Or if such a thing exists.
|
| One of the opportunities for AI is in compression codecs that
| could provide for very low latency low bandwidth standards for
| communication and media browsing.
|
| For users, the expectation will shortly be that you can talk to
| your computer verbally or send it natural language requests to
| accomplish tasks. It is very interesting to think how this could
| be integrated into the OS for example as a metadata or interface
| standard. Something like a very lightweight version of MCP or
| just a convention for an SDK filename (since software is
| distributed as source) could allow for agents to be able to use
| any installed software by default. Built in embeddings or vector
| index could also be very useful, maybe to filter relevant SDKs
| for example.
|
| If content centric data is an assumption and so is AI, maybe we
| can ditch Google and ChatGPT and create a distributed hash
| embedding table or something for finding or querying content.
|
| It's really fun to dream about idealized or future computers.
| Congratulations for getting so far into the details of a real
| system.
|
| One of my more fantasy style ideas for a desktop uses a curved
| continuous touch screen. The keyboard/touchpad area is a pair of
| ergonomic concave curves that meet in the middle and level out to
| horizontal workspaces on the sides. The surface has a SOTA haptic
| feedback mechanism.
| cloudhead wrote:
| Thanks for your comment! In terms of concurrent programming in
| Radiance, it's likely I go for something inspired by Go's
| simplicity and Haskell's power with STM[0]. Actors are also on
| the table, but likely as a library on top of the native system,
| whatever it is. The important thing is that everything that
| involves "waiting" be composable in this system: timers,
| network i/o, IPC, file i/o, etc.
|
| For the AI/OS intersection, it is indeed a very interesting
| design space. The key insight really is that the better the AI
| knows you, the more helpful it can be to you, so the more you
| give it access to, the better. However, to be safe, the OS
| itself needs to be locked down in such a way that personal data
| cannot leave your device. This is why capabilities-based
| security is an interesting direction: software should not have
| access to more than what it needs to operate, and you need fine
| grained control over that.
|
| If you have more ideas, please write us!
|
| [0]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_transactional_memory
| Flere-Imsaho wrote:
| Please make a REPL front and centre of the system.
|
| REPLs make computers feel like magic to me.
| cloudhead wrote:
| I agree! I've been thinking about why terminal software is
| so compelling, and how to make that the default while
| keeping the system accessible to beginners. I think there's
| a way to do it, to unify GUI, TUI and CLI.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| Take a look at what Rebol did in the late 90s. They have
| a DSL called "View" for making user interfaces with your
| scripts. Rebol itself shipped with a program that came
| with a ton of sample applications including Tetris. The
| creator of Rebol (Carl Sassenrath) was also big on the
| Amiga scene and envisioned what he called iOS (internet
| operating system, not the Apple iPhone OS) where you
| would do stuff like load a web page by just running the
| page's Rebol script iirc.
|
| It never took off for various reasons. For one, the
| language was a bit like lisp, but with brackets. More
| importantly, it was commercial and then closed source for
| too long when Perl was really taking off.
|
| Long story short though, whatever language you implement
| should have extremely high level primitives for simple
| GUI widgets. Forget Qt and Windows Forms...there HAS to
| be an easier solution. I can see how Rebol did it and
| surely you can make something like that possible.
| anthk wrote:
| Check the Red programming language.
| JSR_FDED wrote:
| I love these guys for trying to do this. I just hope they've
| already made their money and can afford to continue doing this.
|
| It's every engineer's dream - to reinvent the entire stack, and
| fix society while they're at it (a world without social media,
| sign me up!).
|
| Love the retro future vibes, complete with Robert Tinney-like
| artwork! (He did the famous Byte Magazine covers in the late 70s
| and early 80s).
|
| https://tinney.net/article-this-1981-computer-magazine-cover...
| cloudhead wrote:
| Thanks for the encouragement!
| MomsAVoxell wrote:
| Look, if someone hasn't done it already, I see absolutely no
| reason not to build a Lua-based IPFS process, port it absolutely
| everywhere, and use it to host its own operating system.
|
| Why does it always need to be so difficult? We already have the
| tools. Our methods, constantly changing and translblahbicatin'
| unto the falnords, snk snk... this kind of contrafabulation needs
| to cease.
|
| Just sayin'.
|
| IPFS+Lua. It's all we really need.
|
| Yes yes, new languages are best languages, no no, we don't need
| it to be amazing, just great.
|
| It'll be great.
| ilaksh wrote:
| You can build a first version of that in a week or less.
|
| I think it could be great. The challenge for me has always been
| getting other people to use things I've built.
|
| But why not try it?
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| I'm having a hard time following the through line on these first
| principles. Likely it's just a "me" problem because I have status
| quo system designs set in my head, but here are some ideas that
| seem conflicting to me:
|
| > Hardware and software must be designed as one
|
| In here, they describe an issue with computers is how they use
| layers of abstraction, and that actually hides complexity. But...
|
| > Computers should feel like magic
|
| I'm not sure how the authors think "magic" happens, but it's not
| through simplicity. Early computers were quite simple, but I can
| guarantee most modern users would not think they were magical to
| use. Of course, this also conflicts with the idea that...
|
| > Systems must be tractable
|
| Why would a user need to know how every aspect of a computer
| works if they're "magic" and "just work"?
|
| Anyway, I'm really trying not to be cynical here. This just feels
| like a list written by someone who doesn't really understand how
| computers or software came to work the way they do.
| iansteyn wrote:
| Yeah I felt the contradictions here too. Doesn't the feeling of
| "magic" directly proceed from abstraction and non-tractability
| (or at least, as you say, not _needing_ to understand every
| part of the system)?
| glenstein wrote:
| >Doesn't the feeling of "magic" directly proceed from
| abstraction and non-tractability
|
| Yes, but also I think it can also have a kind of liminal
| impression of an internal logic.
| iansteyn wrote:
| Would you mind elaborating?
| glenstein wrote:
| I agree that the "magic" feeling involves abstraction
| from nuts and bolts, but a kind of notable responsiveness
| to, say, preferred trains of thought that are optimal for
| a workflow or project management or for rich functional
| interaction. I use the word "liminal" in the sense of the
| aesthetic term "liminal spaces" to indicate a presence of
| a kind of lightweight logic not necessarily fully
| articulated.
| maherbeg wrote:
| Love ambitious projects like this!
|
| I wonder why the Unix standard doesn't start dropping old
| syscalls and standards? Does it have to be strictly backwards
| compatible?
| jovial_cavalier wrote:
| Even if the standard dropped them, Linux would likely retain
| them.
|
| https://linuxreviews.org/WE_DO_NOT_BREAK_USERSPACE
| barrenko wrote:
| Was hoping this was an evolution on the daylight computer.
| efficax wrote:
| Like clockwork every year or so someone emerges and says "I'm
| going to fix computing" and then it never happens. We're as mired
| in the status quo in computing as we are in politics, and I don't
| see any way out of it, really.
|
| Also the website is very low contrast (brighten up that
| background gray a bit!)
| benob wrote:
| I have been having a lot of fun with PicoCalc. It's not
| targeted at end users but is fun for developers alike who want
| a taste of developing things from first principles. More than
| anything it can live independently from your other devices.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I keep seeing the videos pop up. It does look really cool. I
| see it has a basic interpreter, so I guess kinda like a C64?
| benob wrote:
| It comes with a basic interpreter, but the thriving
| community develops plenty of stuff: python, lua, forth,
| lisp... have nice ports which you can play with on device.
| There also is a library of software developed for rp2040
| which have been ported, such as a mac classic emulator. If
| you feel that a micro controller is too low power, you can
| plug in a luckfox lyra which runs a proper linux with 128M
| of RAM.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| That is really cool! Making me want one even more. I
| might have fun picking that forth implementation apart.
| cloudhead wrote:
| Gotta keep trying then!
| PeaceTed wrote:
| Pretty much. I mean, best of luck to them. One has to try if
| anything is to change but I have seen this kind of thing so
| many times. Filled with enthusiasm but lacking in execution.
|
| The whole 'Real artists ship' thing in action.
| Sateeshm wrote:
| It's a miracle that the internet and computers work with each
| other as well as they do.
| lostlogin wrote:
| Coincidence or borrows from Asimov?
|
| The Prime Radiant featured in Foundation.
| xorvoid wrote:
| Honestly, this seems rambling and unfocused. It's like a grab-bag
| of recent-ish buzzwords.
|
| The task that has been set is gigantic. Despite that, they've
| decided to make it even harder by designing a new programming
| language on top of it (this seems to be all the work done to
| date).
|
| The hardware challenge alone is quite difficult. I don't know why
| that isn't the focus at this stage. It is as-if the author is
| suggesting that only the software is a problem, when some of the
| biggest issues are actually closed hardware. Sure, Linux is not
| ideal, but its hardly relavent in comparison.
|
| I think this project suffers from doing too much abstract
| thinking without studying existing concrete realities.
|
| I would suggest tackling one small piece of the problem in the
| hardware space, or building directly on some of the work others
| have done.
|
| I don't disagree with the thesis of the project, but I think it's
| a MUCH bigger project than the author suggests and would/will
| require a concentrated effort from many groups of people working
| on many sub-projects.
| junon wrote:
| In the OSdev world that's called an "Alta Lang" problem.
|
| https://wiki.osdev.org/Alta_Lang
| cloudhead wrote:
| Thanks for the feedback. My goal at this stage is to put the
| full vision out there, and refine it to create a sense of
| direction, a north star under which to work. A lot of the
| specifics are undecided/unknown and that's ok at this stage.
| I'm building this bottom up using the skills I have (software),
| and as I bring on hardware folks, those aspects of the system
| will start to clarify as well.
|
| Whether the project is bigger than I think or not is not so
| relevant for me personally, I will attempt it because I don't
| see a future in personal computing that I want to be a part of
| otherwise.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| I read clean slate architecture and "no baggage" and thought
| someone was designing a non Von Neuman architecture machine with
| a novel clockless asynchronous cpu, but nope, it's a custom OS
| running on RISC-V
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| I thought that too. It would have been such an interesting
| thing, I would have (modestly) contributed to their Kickstarter
| even if it didn't produce a commercial product in the end.
| postexitus wrote:
| The whole thing feels like it's generated by LLM. Some
| interesting sounding titbits here and there, no specifics ever,
| weird trance images.
| junon wrote:
| The exokernel makes this a nonstarter if you ever want to run
| untrusted code, as it implies hardware takeovers, compromised
| peripherals/TPMs/drives/etc. especially when it claims to be AI
| first.
| anonzzzies wrote:
| I like this type of stuff, but it cannot go anywhere. A real
| clean slate system, free from all crap we have piled on the
| things we use every day, must be something simple that cannot be
| interesting for the masses and must be understood and
| programmable by one person if things go bad. The only way I can
| see that is by creating something underpowered just to have fun
| and we already have that; actual (old and new) hardware,
| emulators and virtual cpus. As soon as it gets any volume or
| viability, it will be taken on by commercial entities that will
| eat it and the way to prevent it is always to make it obsolete to
| begin with.
| max_ wrote:
| love it!
|
| I wish I could work there!
| saulpw wrote:
| The most important question I have for any project like this is:
| who is making it? And this website does not answer this question.
| timerol wrote:
| Alexis Sellier is the author of all of the posts under /log
| kush_xg01 wrote:
| Nice idea, all the best!
| riversflow wrote:
| > No social networking
|
| What an airball. Social networks are the single most valuable
| aspect of computers and the internet. It is a dark world where we
| all just talk to LLMs instead of each other.
| chambored wrote:
| I'll indications point to this GitHub user [1], Alexis Sellier
| [2], as the engineer behind this. Good luck with such an
| ambitious goal. I'd love to see it.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/cloudhead [2]: https://cloudhead.io/
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I am wondering what linux distro/iso comes up with a liveboot gui
| desktop environment but without a web browser (I only know of
| tinycorelinux but that is too barebones and I wanted to build my
| own iso on top of it but it was a little hard to install packages
| when I tried following its remastering guide etc.)
|
| I even tried to search it on distrowatch with the negate option
| in their search but it seemed to be broken.
|
| I needed it once to build my own "studyOs" , and in the process I
| went down a deep rabbit hole on about the hobby-ist distros of
| linux and their importance.
|
| I then settled on MXLinux because of what I wrote below
|
| People recommend cubic etc. but personally I recommend MXLinux.
| Its default linux snapshot feature was exactly what I was looking
| for and it just worked.
|
| I glanced over this and I was excited thinking oh great this
| could be a linux iso with no browser and similar to tiny core but
| I found out through the comments that its focus on LLM's etc. is
| very vague and weird for what I am reading.
|
| I just feel like its seriously not getting the idea. I want to
| effectively dissect this post's tenants from a Linux user for
| just a few years.
|
| My first experiences was positive, then negative and now its
| mixed really.
|
| I feel like this is intending on become so hardware focused that
| I am not even sure what they mean by this. From my limited
| knowledge, Linux tries to do a lot of things simply to boot up
| into a predictable environment on every computer device _most
| likely_ to the point that there are now things like nix that can
| arise your system in a determinist system.
|
| I still think that there is a point in making something
| completely new instead of Yet another Unix from what I can tell,
| but my hopes aren't very high, sorry. You would have to convince
| me from why the world would be better off with this instead of
| Linux aside and their notes on why not linux is still absolutely
| mixed thoughts in my opinion
|
| > Linux is a monolithic kernel. All drivers, filesystems, and
| core services share the same privilege space. A single bug, eg. a
| bad pointer dereference in a GPU driver can corrupt kernel memory
| and take down the entire system.
|
| Can't drivers be loaded at runtime and there are ways to isolate
| the taking down of entire system imo. I think this is just how a
| monolithic kernel should work, no?
|
| I read more discussions on mono-lithic kernel and micro-kernel on
| Tanenbaum-Torvalds debate wiki [1] and here is something that I
| think to be apt here
|
| > Torvalds, aware of GNU's efforts to create a kernel, stated "If
| the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered
| to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still
| isn't."
|
| Some other person on the usenet group also called gnu hurd a
| vaporware and well I think there is some factuality to it and gnu
| hurd team was working on hurd far longer than linux was working
| at linus (an excerpt? from the same wikipage)
|
| Another line I want to share is this from the wiki: Different
| design goals get you different designs
|
| I think I was going to criticize the radiant computer but hey,
| its open source,nobody's stopping you from doing work on it. And
| this line was said defending linux earlier, so it sure can defend
| this
|
| But at the same time, my concerns regarding this or any project
| is regarding it becoming vapor-ware. Linux is way too big and
| actually good enough for most users. I don't think that the world
| can have a perfect os. It can have a good enough tho and from the
| end user, Linux is exactly that. The fact that its open source
| and is genuinely good at what it does, and there is absolutely no
| denying about it. You could live your whole life using linux Imo.
| Its beautiful.
|
| I used to defend NetBsd etc. or hate systemd etc. but the truth
| of the matter is that nobody's forcing you to use systemd or
| netbsd, you damn well could use a server without it but I have
| found that the mass adoption does make me convince that a sys-
| admin level, linux, maybe even debian or systemd in general would
| have its gains.
|
| I think linux is really really really good, its just the best imo
| but I will still try out things like the freebsd,openbsd etc. . I
| genuinely love it so much. Its honestly wild / even a fever dream
| when you think about it that something like linux even actually
| exists. Its so brilliant and the ecosystem around it is just
| chef's kiss.
|
| One can try and these are your developer hours but I just don't
| want to see things turn into vaporware, so I will just ask you a
| question on how do you prevent this project from becoming a
| vaporware. I am sure this isn't the first time someone has
| proposed the ideal system and it wouldn't be the last either.
|
| Edits: Sorry this got long. I got a little carried reading the
| wiki article, its so good.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanenbaum%E2%80%93Torvalds_deb...
| cloudhead wrote:
| Thanks for your comment.
|
| I do think Linux is good enough (it's what I use daily), but
| I'm a software person. I don't think linux is good enough for
| the average person or for kids learning how to use computers.
| It's hard to use and quite unfriendly, even distros like
| Ubuntu.
|
| The second point is simply that I think we can do better.
| Progress does not stop here, but most people are afraid to take
| on big problems, so they never try.
| Atomic_Torrfisk wrote:
| > RadiantOS is a single address space operating system.
|
| But why? We use virtual address spaces for a reason.
| Freebytes wrote:
| I thought they were talking about redesigning hardware from the
| ground up. There will always be history and baggage if you are
| working with the same computer instruction sets. From the very
| beginning at the level of assembly, there is history and baggage.
| This is not ambitious enough.
| Animats wrote:
| This is a lot like One Laptop Per Child, but more vague. What is
| it supposed to _do_? Why have one?
|
| It's not that the system doesn't come with a browser. It's that
| the browser is apparently built into the operating system.
| Remember IE 6?
|
| If you're going to rethink computing devices, the next thing is
| probably a big screen, a camera, and a good microphone array. No
| keyboard. You just talk to it and occasionally gesture, and it
| organizes and helps you.
| SLWW wrote:
| This is intensely ambitious.
|
| I just kind of want to see what comes out of this.
|
| RISC-V ftw and if they got lightweight, local-first AIs with a
| decent site-map of each program; that could be really unique and
| fun; if not annoying to use in practice.
|
| I see the future they want so badly.
| mwilcox wrote:
| Urbit by BlueSky, with LLMs
| rmonvfer wrote:
| This looks great, but I'm a bit confused about what actually
| exists right now. The site uses the present tense ("it is", "we
| are"), but I couldn't find anything after browsing and clicking
| around for about 15 minutes. From the "log", it sounds like only
| the parser for R Prime is implemented, and that R Prime itself is
| just a precursor to the actual language that will be used to
| develop the whole system (from scratch?). Does that mean that R
| Prime has to be fully developed before work on its successor can
| even begin?
|
| If anything is already working, where's the code? Can people
| contribute yet?
|
| Not trying to nitpick, but it's hard to tell what's real vs.
| vaporware (beyond the author's very impressive abilities for
| systems/language design and writing)
|
| The website also mentions a device but I get that's many years
| away too, right? I mean how long will it take to actually develop
| everything that's described in the website?
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