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The more I see those small graphical OSes like this one, Kolibri, etc. the more I wish they were ported (or better conceived from the beginning) to be run on AR

The more I see those small graphical OSes like this one, Kolibri, etc. the more I wish they were ported (or better conceived from the beginning) to be run on ARM systems. Those small cheap boards with video output would find the best possible companion when bare metal programming is too hard and a full fledged Linux distro would be overkill. Give me a compiler, then libraries for gpio and hardware, GUI, low level networking, etc. and I can choose between a huge load of cheap boards to build a lab instrument panel, my new home IoT dashboard, a portable communication device, a music synthesizer, etc. It looks to me as those two worlds are in need of each other but they don't know that yet.

xyproto 5y ago
There's always Arch Linux ARM, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and RiscOS. They all run on a Raspberry Pi 4. What are you looking for that those aren't covering?
- squarefoot 5y ago
  Some among the cheaper boards are much less capable than the RPi4; 256 or 512 MB RAM can indeed run a tiny Linux desktop, but for some uses it would struggle for lack of resources. A single user system with no layers of code devoted to security (which would be pointless in non connected devices) would probably be a lot faster on constricted hardware. The goal of such a system shouldn't be to replace BSD or Linux, which do what they do extremely well, but to offer a smaller tinier system for those contexts when the basic functionalities of an OS are needed without the inevitable bloat that comes with security and support for beefier hardware and/or more complex software. "It couldn't run LibreOffice? Who cares! If I wanted to use it for that I'd use Linux instead." I mean, If I want to build say a fully autonomous portable software defined radio that boots in a handful of seconds straight to its GUI on a very small board, I'd have a hard time doing that with a full Linux distro, no matter how optimized it is, since it still is a full UNIX-like OS with all the bells and whistles that would make it runnable on a supercomputer. I think that those small OSes could potentially fill a gap between smaller things such as no OS at all or smaller ones such as FreeRTOS and complete Linux systems, but to really appreciate them they should also run on hardware such as ARM, RISC-V, etc.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    Speaking of "cheaper boards" : http://collapseos.org/ http://collapseos.org/ I'm somewhat skeptical of the usefulness of 16 and 32 bit software : 8-bit is simple and can do ASCII, sRGB... while 64-bit is enough for the foreseeable future, but in-between ? You're just hampering yourself for dubious gains...
- unionpivo 5y ago
  Those are my own opinions as to why. Plenty of people are working on those systems, so obviously there are plenty of people that have different opinion. They are too big, and well established projects. I cant just plop down over a weekend and make some kind of meaningful contribution. Most of the low hanging fruit is already dealt with. Those are great systems to work with, or if you want to build on top of. Not that great if you just want to hack on core system. It's not that you can't because people definitively are. But expectations are bigger, scope is bigger, you need to keep multiple architectures in mind, people will use it on all kinds of hardware. You need to coordinate with dozens or more people. Everything takes more time.
stuaxo 5y ago
Linux had all sorts of 386isms at the beginning. Having watched this project for a bit it probably will gain an ARM port in the next year or two. Since there is already a emulator, it will probably gain the ability to run x86 serenity OS apps at some point after that.
toast0 5y ago
I've been working on a hobby OS for a while now; I don't expect to ever do any major graphics work[1], and I do want to run on ARM eventually, but it's just so much easier to get started on x86. x86 has a lot of baggage, but it also has a rather simple text mode, and easily accessed serial ports which get output easily. And there's a whole bunch of freely available documentation from Intel and the community that helps a ton. [1] At some point, I probably have to do bitmapped text, but I'm trying to keep my scope narrow, and graphics aren't for me. :)

xyproto 5y ago

There's always Arch Linux ARM, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and RiscOS. They all run on a Raspberry Pi 4. What are you looking for that those aren't covering?

squarefoot 5y ago
Some among the cheaper boards are much less capable than the RPi4; 256 or 512 MB RAM can indeed run a tiny Linux desktop, but for some uses it would struggle for lack of resources. A single user system with no layers of code devoted to security (which would be pointless in non connected devices) would probably be a lot faster on constricted hardware. The goal of such a system shouldn't be to replace BSD or Linux, which do what they do extremely well, but to offer a smaller tinier system for those contexts when the basic functionalities of an OS are needed without the inevitable bloat that comes with security and support for beefier hardware and/or more complex software. "It couldn't run LibreOffice? Who cares! If I wanted to use it for that I'd use Linux instead." I mean, If I want to build say a fully autonomous portable software defined radio that boots in a handful of seconds straight to its GUI on a very small board, I'd have a hard time doing that with a full Linux distro, no matter how optimized it is, since it still is a full UNIX-like OS with all the bells and whistles that would make it runnable on a supercomputer. I think that those small OSes could potentially fill a gap between smaller things such as no OS at all or smaller ones such as FreeRTOS and complete Linux systems, but to really appreciate them they should also run on hardware such as ARM, RISC-V, etc.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  Speaking of "cheaper boards" : http://collapseos.org/ http://collapseos.org/ I'm somewhat skeptical of the usefulness of 16 and 32 bit software : 8-bit is simple and can do ASCII, sRGB... while 64-bit is enough for the foreseeable future, but in-between ? You're just hampering yourself for dubious gains...
unionpivo 5y ago
Those are my own opinions as to why. Plenty of people are working on those systems, so obviously there are plenty of people that have different opinion. They are too big, and well established projects. I cant just plop down over a weekend and make some kind of meaningful contribution. Most of the low hanging fruit is already dealt with. Those are great systems to work with, or if you want to build on top of. Not that great if you just want to hack on core system. It's not that you can't because people definitively are. But expectations are bigger, scope is bigger, you need to keep multiple architectures in mind, people will use it on all kinds of hardware. You need to coordinate with dozens or more people. Everything takes more time.

stuaxo 5y ago

Linux had all sorts of 386isms at the beginning. Having watched this project for a bit it probably will gain an ARM port in the next year or two. Since there is already a emulator, it will probably gain the ability to run x86 serenity OS apps at some point after that.

toast0 5y ago

I've been working on a hobby OS for a while now; I don't expect to ever do any major graphics work[1], and I do want to run on ARM eventually, but it's just so much easier to get started on x86. x86 has a lot of baggage, but it also has a rather simple text mode, and easily accessed serial ports which get output easily. And there's a whole bunch of freely available documentation from Intel and the community that helps a ton. [1] At some point, I probably have to do bitmapped text, but I'm trying to keep my scope narrow, and graphics aren't for me. :)