5 ms·

The Unleashed Operating System

54 points by colinprince 8y ago

lostmsu 8y ago
Yes, but why?
- jarenhavell 8y ago
  Developers. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs
krylon 8y ago
"we care about more than just that the code works — we want code we can (for the most part) be proud of." I am not sure if I would use it, but I like this attitude!
- pecg 8y ago
  Like the OpenBSD developers, a posture much needed these days.
fotcorn 8y ago
The first goal is to make contribution easy, but I can't find any documentation on how to do this. A public GitLab instance where everyone could submit pull requests would be really cool (or just host it on GitHub).
- b2ccb2 8y ago
  It's in the docs folder of the public git repo: http://repo.or.cz/unleashed.git/blob/HEAD:/docs/illumos-refugees.md#l37 http://repo.or.cz/unleashed.git/blob/HEAD:/docs/illumos-refu...
cloudive 8y ago
i'd like an alternative to linux and BSD that has better RISC compatibility
- krylon 8y ago
  What exactly do you mean by that? Both the Linux kernel and several of the BSD systems run on multiple RISC achitectures.
  - tonysdg 8y ago
    Maybe a typo for RISC-V? Still doesn't make a lot of sense though...
    - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
      Yeah, IIRC FreeBSD supports riscv and Fedora actually ships a full image for it.
      - cestith 8y ago
        https://riscv.org/software-status/#operating-systems https://riscv.org/software-status/#operating-systems
siteshwar 8y ago
> Unleashed is an operating system fork of illumos, Can someone explain why it was forked ?
- lawlessone 8y ago
  To change the name? :)
- snw 8y ago
  Probably someone from the unleashed project can give a better answer, but my understanding is mostly unhappiness about the illumos contribution process. The illumos RTI (request to integrate) process is designed to ensure a certain quality of contributions. The downside of this is that it sometimes takes a long time to contribute a change. For illumos there is also pretty high expectation of backwards compatibility. What unleashed now offers is a place to do more radical changes and quickly iterate on new ideas. While the small illumos community is already pretty fragmented my personal hope is that in the future work done by both projects keeps getting merged from time to time. Maybe this also serves as a wakeup call to the illumos project to make some improvements to the contribution process itself.
  - neuromantik8086 8y ago
    Perhaps unleashed could be to illumos what fedora is to rhel/centos?
erikb 8y ago
These are not goals. Every OS in the world has contributions and releases. Linux has the goal to be pragmatic, BSDs have the goal to be technically perfect in a certain area, Windows had the goal to be on every desktop computer in the world and more, and OSX has the goal to be smooth and sharp. If your highest goal is that someone contributes code to your OS why would anybody use it? Think about htat question and you might find your actual goal. If you can't find a goal, then maybe the existing OSes are sufficient. Choose one, live with it, and develop something else on top that doesn't have a satisfiable alternative yet.
- rwmj 8y ago
  If you've ever tried to contribute something to the Linux kernel you'd know it's not an easy process. They say that they want to "encourage new contributors to repeatedly contribute". So in this respect it is very different from the Linux kernel. Now I will admit this is going to be tricky. How do you dissuade junk contributions or misfeatures but at the same time encourage contributions? They may end up with an overall declining quality which kills off other goals such as user adoption.
  - linuxftw 8y ago
    > If you've ever tried to contribute something to the Linux kernel you'd know it's not an easy process. They say that they want to "encourage new contributors to repeatedly contribute". So in this respect it is very different from the Linux kernel. I have contributed a small 1-time change to the Linux kernel. It was relatively easy and straight forward; I sent my first patch to the wrong list, but the maintainers helpfully corrected me. The difficult part is finding what to contribute, IMO.
    - rwmj 8y ago
      I think you're forgetting the large learning curve to get to that point. You learned how to build the kernel, git, the kernel style guide, signed-off-bys, checkpatch, get-maintainer and finally running git-email. And there's the assumption that you knew what to change and how to fix it, but most kernel error messages are opaque - it can often be impossible to find out why a system call returns -EINVAL or where an error message comes from. And that's just for a small change. Large and/or controversial changes often involve multiple rounds of review and can take (literally) years to get upstream. I'm sometimes amazed when I read LWN about how long it has taken for features to get integrated into the kernel. I don't know what Unleashed OS is planning but it seems obvious we could make this a whole lot simpler.
improv32 8y ago
How will Unleashed compare to say FreeBSD? Better desktop support?
jpttsn 8y ago
Is it just me or is the font aligned to justify and the margins set to zero? Is this an operating system for people who don’t care to make a good first impression?
- dokem 8y ago
  Maybe it's an OS for people who like systems and not CSS?
  - udp 8y ago
    Well, they’ve used CSS to do that. If they’d just left it alone it would have been fine.
- egypturnash 8y ago
  It’s not just you. Damn that does not look good on my iPad.
neuromantik8086 8y ago
https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/
drngdds 8y ago
With no snarkiness intended, why would I want to use this? Is it just for people who want an OS to contribute to for fun? The only features really mentioned are "it's not horrifically legacy" and "it's easy to contribute to".

54 points by colinprince 8y ago

lostmsu 8y ago

Yes, but why?

jarenhavell 8y ago
Developers. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Vhh_GeBPOhs

krylon 8y ago

"we care about more than just that the code works — we want code we can (for the most part) be proud of." I am not sure if I would use it, but I like this attitude!

pecg 8y ago
Like the OpenBSD developers, a posture much needed these days.

fotcorn 8y ago

The first goal is to make contribution easy, but I can't find any documentation on how to do this. A public GitLab instance where everyone could submit pull requests would be really cool (or just host it on GitHub).

b2ccb2 8y ago
It's in the docs folder of the public git repo: http://repo.or.cz/unleashed.git/blob/HEAD:/docs/illumos-refugees.md#l37 http://repo.or.cz/unleashed.git/blob/HEAD:/docs/illumos-refu...

cloudive 8y ago

i'd like an alternative to linux and BSD that has better RISC compatibility

krylon 8y ago
What exactly do you mean by that? Both the Linux kernel and several of the BSD systems run on multiple RISC achitectures.
- tonysdg 8y ago
  Maybe a typo for RISC-V? Still doesn't make a lot of sense though...
  - yjftsjthsd-h 8y ago
    Yeah, IIRC FreeBSD supports riscv and Fedora actually ships a full image for it.
    - cestith 8y ago
      https://riscv.org/software-status/#operating-systems https://riscv.org/software-status/#operating-systems

siteshwar 8y ago

> Unleashed is an operating system fork of illumos, Can someone explain why it was forked ?

lawlessone 8y ago
To change the name? :)
snw 8y ago
Probably someone from the unleashed project can give a better answer, but my understanding is mostly unhappiness about the illumos contribution process. The illumos RTI (request to integrate) process is designed to ensure a certain quality of contributions. The downside of this is that it sometimes takes a long time to contribute a change. For illumos there is also pretty high expectation of backwards compatibility. What unleashed now offers is a place to do more radical changes and quickly iterate on new ideas. While the small illumos community is already pretty fragmented my personal hope is that in the future work done by both projects keeps getting merged from time to time. Maybe this also serves as a wakeup call to the illumos project to make some improvements to the contribution process itself.
- neuromantik8086 8y ago
  Perhaps unleashed could be to illumos what fedora is to rhel/centos?

erikb 8y ago

These are not goals. Every OS in the world has contributions and releases. Linux has the goal to be pragmatic, BSDs have the goal to be technically perfect in a certain area, Windows had the goal to be on every desktop computer in the world and more, and OSX has the goal to be smooth and sharp. If your highest goal is that someone contributes code to your OS why would anybody use it? Think about htat question and you might find your actual goal. If you can't find a goal, then maybe the existing OSes are sufficient. Choose one, live with it, and develop something else on top that doesn't have a satisfiable alternative yet.

rwmj 8y ago
If you've ever tried to contribute something to the Linux kernel you'd know it's not an easy process. They say that they want to "encourage new contributors to repeatedly contribute". So in this respect it is very different from the Linux kernel. Now I will admit this is going to be tricky. How do you dissuade junk contributions or misfeatures but at the same time encourage contributions? They may end up with an overall declining quality which kills off other goals such as user adoption.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  > If you've ever tried to contribute something to the Linux kernel you'd know it's not an easy process. They say that they want to "encourage new contributors to repeatedly contribute". So in this respect it is very different from the Linux kernel. I have contributed a small 1-time change to the Linux kernel. It was relatively easy and straight forward; I sent my first patch to the wrong list, but the maintainers helpfully corrected me. The difficult part is finding what to contribute, IMO.
  - rwmj 8y ago
    I think you're forgetting the large learning curve to get to that point. You learned how to build the kernel, git, the kernel style guide, signed-off-bys, checkpatch, get-maintainer and finally running git-email. And there's the assumption that you knew what to change and how to fix it, but most kernel error messages are opaque - it can often be impossible to find out why a system call returns -EINVAL or where an error message comes from. And that's just for a small change. Large and/or controversial changes often involve multiple rounds of review and can take (literally) years to get upstream. I'm sometimes amazed when I read LWN about how long it has taken for features to get integrated into the kernel. I don't know what Unleashed OS is planning but it seems obvious we could make this a whole lot simpler.

improv32 8y ago

How will Unleashed compare to say FreeBSD? Better desktop support?

jpttsn 8y ago

Is it just me or is the font aligned to justify and the margins set to zero? Is this an operating system for people who don’t care to make a good first impression?

dokem 8y ago
Maybe it's an OS for people who like systems and not CSS?
- udp 8y ago
  Well, they’ve used CSS to do that. If they’d just left it alone it would have been fine.
egypturnash 8y ago
It’s not just you. Damn that does not look good on my iPad.

neuromantik8086 8y ago

https://xkcd.com/927/ https://xkcd.com/927/

drngdds 8y ago

With no snarkiness intended, why would I want to use this? Is it just for people who want an OS to contribute to for fun? The only features really mentioned are "it's not horrifically legacy" and "it's easy to contribute to".