7 ms·

NodeOS – A Node.js Operating System

55 points by revskill 5y ago

slmjkdbtl 5y ago
I'm interested in making a user interface for the OS with electron
mrtweetyhack 5y ago
This is dead
- keyle 5y ago
  One could argue that it should have never lived.
  - krylon 5y ago
    That is not dead which can eternal lie, for with strange eons, even death may die. SCNR
- cmroanirgo 5y ago
  This comment seems correct. No commits in years [0], but more telling is issue #441 [1]: > Q: Is nodeOS an abandonned project? > A: Unluckily, sort of. I've tried sometimes to retake it, but work has absorved me so much that don't have time to engage on long-term side projects, and size of NodeOS itself give me a lot of respect. Obviously this has not been the only problem, I failed to communicate and delegate some work to the community, although they were willing to do so. If only I could get some extra motivation to retake it, like some funds or something, or at least to focus myself on the project and get over to my fears... :-/ So, it seems that it's stalled and with some love it might be able to be resurrected. But even the issue report is over 1 year old. [0] https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS [1] https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS/issues/441 https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS/issues/441 edit: formatting
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    Interesting reply from the lead. Very honest.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
kgeist 5y ago
>The first operating system powered by node.js and npm This is interesting, in the light of recent supply chain attacks on npm. How safe is a npm-based OS?
- eins1234 5y ago
  I'd be curious to learn what kinds of safeguards various package managers of Linux distros have employed against supply chain attacks on individual maintainers who might try to poison certain popular packages if compromised? Specifically, I'd imagine NPM might actually be a bit better than many distro's package repos due to the post left-pad era changes they put in place to make packages more... immutable and tamper-resistant, so the only way for a new malicious package to reach users is for those users to actually explicitly update to the new malicious versions. But being not even remotely familiar with how Linux package repos are updated/maintained, I'm probably missing a lot of nuance.
- brundolf 5y ago
  Seems feasible to create a limited mirror of NPM with only hand-audited packages (and versions). At that point it's not really different from the repositories managed by OS maintainers.
vishnuharidas 5y ago
Why some people don't add some screenshots in their projects?
- nix23 5y ago
  # uname -a NodeOS 0.04 Your welcome
j4hdufd8 5y ago
Why?
- revskill 5y ago
  Why not ?
stevefan1999 5y ago
Why, god, why the heck are you having Node.js to take over every front facing thing. This is 100% despicable. I thought my own imagined PowerShell based Linux Distro would be insidious enough, but this, this is an absolute, pure evil.
- revskill 5y ago
  Because of sharing. Write your function once then u can import to use it everywhere, from server to frontend, mobile or desktop app. Why reinventing the wheel ?
  - d_tr 5y ago
    But it somehow reached the "everywhere" status first...
    - revskill 5y ago
      We have a project which's converted into a monorepo due to need of syncing and sharing. Imaging you have a web app and a mobile app, when the web app has changes, u need to sync changes to mobile app as well. What's the best way to do it ? Besides javascript, i can't know a better way then. Our team has only 2 devs working on all server, web and mobile appp.
      - d_tr 5y ago
        This is certainly sensible. My point was that IMHO it is unfortunate that it is JavaScript that has risen to be this single language.
      - laumars 5y ago
        If there are only two people in your dev team then you absolutely wouldn’t be writing OS components as well as web apps regardless of the languages natively supported by the OS.
        5y ago
afandian 5y ago
From the title I thought this would be a whole OS (scheduler etc) but the homepage makes it look more like it's just a js shell?
gtsop 5y ago
Imagine promoting thousands of vulnerable non-trustworthy npm packages to first class citizens on your OS xD
- laumars 5y ago
  That was one of my first thoughts too. Hilarious stuff
- fatboy93 5y ago
  Calendar breaks because dependency for checking leap year is also somehow tied to is-odd/is-even
emko7 5y ago
Ain't linux gnome shell basicly css and javascript
- tored 5y ago
  The frontend of Gnome shell at least. The API that the JavaScript consumes is still low level. My experience with Gnome shell is that third party extension, written in JavaScript, is often leaky and leads to massive slowdowns in the desktop and requires a restart of gnome shell at least once a day. Which leads to the conclusion not to use third party extensions, thus removing the benefit of having a scriptable shell.
jcsnv 5y ago
hey, congrats on launching this! what made you want to build it?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
henning 5y ago
The project isn't dead, their Webpack builds just now take 4 years.
robbrown451 5y ago
It looks dead. I think they chose the wrong approach in lots of ways, but it wasn't that far from a JS (and Typescript) based OS on top of Linux that is actually a good idea. ChromeOS is kind of close to what I'd want, if you could remove Google from it. (I actually like ChromeOS, nearly perfect for my kid's computer) Firefox OS was also kind of close, but they missed in a lot of ways. Here are the features of some OS I wish existed: Open source and not primarily controlled by Apple or Google or Microsoft of Facebook or whatever. JS and Typescript are essentially native and are the primary ways of building apps, but WASM would be available if you need machine code. The same JS engine runs in the browser as for running applications. The same rendering engine works inside the browser and to render "native" apps that do any drawing to the screen. Preferably, you could choose to run on one of several browser engines Most apps that run as native apps can, without much extra work, run as web apps, and vice versa. The UI isn't built on a framework that might fall in popularity. So not React or Angular or Vue or whatever. If people want to use those in their apps, they are there, but core stuff for the UI avoids relying on them. That's all I can think of for now. Beyond "design it really, really well and make a slick feeling but non-limiting front end experience." Which is hard. (sorry to those with unbridled hate for JS and even Typescript)
- laumars 5y ago
  We’ve seen how Electron performs. The only reason VSC doesn’t totally suck is because a lot of it is still native code. I can’t even imagine how crappy it would be building an entire OS out of that stuff. And you’re never going to escape the needs for another systems language because unless you find a way of writing non-memory managed code with pointers and inlined assembly in JavaScript, that language simply isn’t going to cut it. And on top of that you’d need a compiler that can compile machine code just to bootstrap node in the first place. I’m all for experimental operating systems but there’s a reason systems languages differ in design to web scripting languages and really we should be using the languages that suit each domain the best rather than simply putting JavaScript everywhere because we are too lazy to learn anything else.
  - chpmrc 5y ago
    VSCode literally runs in the browser with identical performance to the Electron app (because aside from some differences in APIs, the runtime is pretty much the same). Try GitHub Codespaces and you'll see.
overflyer 5y ago
Subtitle to the OS name should be: "I don't need those CPU cycles anyways" or maybe "because the cancer of JS has not spread enough already."
- ranguna 5y ago
  Why do you need to be so aggressive?
  - overflyer 5y ago
    Keeps you young, healthy and your skin smooth.
    - ranguna 5y ago
      And fun at parties as well I guess
  - hereforphone 5y ago
    He's probably this cynical because he's actually worked with Javascript before.
    - overflyer 5y ago
      Yeah when I was an ITSM consultant. ServiceNow uses JS extensively. Those were the ECMA 4 and ECMA 5 times to be honest though. I guess a lot has changed since then.
      - octotoad 5y ago
        Unfortunately not a lot has changed since then in ServiceNow’s JavaScript situation. Still stuck on ES5 Rhino.
vasergen 5y ago
reminds me of quote "everything that can be written in js will be written in js" curious if there is practical use for this kind of systems
- stevefan1999 5y ago
  Yes. Lisp Machine [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine
PhantomBKB 5y ago
"The website has been blocked as per order of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under IT Act, 2000."
wetpaws 5y ago
Wish the devs all the best and a soonest release from the mental institution.
ngcc_hk 5y ago
And if you get one node polluted whole thing go down. Great move.
madc 5y ago
I think this link should actually go here: https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS/issues/441 https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS/issues/441
MauranKilom 5y ago
This seems relevant: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...
shomyo 5y ago
This is mental.
nix23 5y ago
Seeing that, a javaos instantly looks not that bad anymore ;)
assbuttbuttass 5y ago
I was expecting a kernel written in Javascript

55 points by revskill 5y ago

slmjkdbtl 5y ago

I'm interested in making a user interface for the OS with electron

mrtweetyhack 5y ago

This is dead

keyle 5y ago
One could argue that it should have never lived.
- krylon 5y ago
  That is not dead which can eternal lie, for with strange eons, even death may die. SCNR
cmroanirgo 5y ago
This comment seems correct. No commits in years [0], but more telling is issue #441 [1]: > Q: Is nodeOS an abandonned project? > A: Unluckily, sort of. I've tried sometimes to retake it, but work has absorved me so much that don't have time to engage on long-term side projects, and size of NodeOS itself give me a lot of respect. Obviously this has not been the only problem, I failed to communicate and delegate some work to the community, although they were willing to do so. If only I could get some extra motivation to retake it, like some funds or something, or at least to focus myself on the project and get over to my fears... :-/ So, it seems that it's stalled and with some love it might be able to be resurrected. But even the issue report is over 1 year old. [0] https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS [1] https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS/issues/441 https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS/issues/441 edit: formatting
- agumonkey 5y ago
  Interesting reply from the lead. Very honest.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

kgeist 5y ago

>The first operating system powered by node.js and npm This is interesting, in the light of recent supply chain attacks on npm. How safe is a npm-based OS?

eins1234 5y ago
I'd be curious to learn what kinds of safeguards various package managers of Linux distros have employed against supply chain attacks on individual maintainers who might try to poison certain popular packages if compromised? Specifically, I'd imagine NPM might actually be a bit better than many distro's package repos due to the post left-pad era changes they put in place to make packages more... immutable and tamper-resistant, so the only way for a new malicious package to reach users is for those users to actually explicitly update to the new malicious versions. But being not even remotely familiar with how Linux package repos are updated/maintained, I'm probably missing a lot of nuance.
brundolf 5y ago
Seems feasible to create a limited mirror of NPM with only hand-audited packages (and versions). At that point it's not really different from the repositories managed by OS maintainers.

vishnuharidas 5y ago

Why some people don't add some screenshots in their projects?

nix23 5y ago
# uname -a NodeOS 0.04 Your welcome

j4hdufd8 5y ago

Why?

revskill 5y ago
Why not ?

stevefan1999 5y ago

Why, god, why the heck are you having Node.js to take over every front facing thing. This is 100% despicable. I thought my own imagined PowerShell based Linux Distro would be insidious enough, but this, this is an absolute, pure evil.

revskill 5y ago
Because of sharing. Write your function once then u can import to use it everywhere, from server to frontend, mobile or desktop app. Why reinventing the wheel ?
- d_tr 5y ago
  But it somehow reached the "everywhere" status first...
  - revskill 5y ago
    We have a project which's converted into a monorepo due to need of syncing and sharing. Imaging you have a web app and a mobile app, when the web app has changes, u need to sync changes to mobile app as well. What's the best way to do it ? Besides javascript, i can't know a better way then. Our team has only 2 devs working on all server, web and mobile appp.
    - d_tr 5y ago
      This is certainly sensible. My point was that IMHO it is unfortunate that it is JavaScript that has risen to be this single language.
    - laumars 5y ago
      If there are only two people in your dev team then you absolutely wouldn’t be writing OS components as well as web apps regardless of the languages natively supported by the OS.
      - 5y ago

afandian 5y ago

From the title I thought this would be a whole OS (scheduler etc) but the homepage makes it look more like it's just a js shell?

gtsop 5y ago

Imagine promoting thousands of vulnerable non-trustworthy npm packages to first class citizens on your OS xD

laumars 5y ago
That was one of my first thoughts too. Hilarious stuff
fatboy93 5y ago
Calendar breaks because dependency for checking leap year is also somehow tied to is-odd/is-even

emko7 5y ago

Ain't linux gnome shell basicly css and javascript

tored 5y ago
The frontend of Gnome shell at least. The API that the JavaScript consumes is still low level. My experience with Gnome shell is that third party extension, written in JavaScript, is often leaky and leads to massive slowdowns in the desktop and requires a restart of gnome shell at least once a day. Which leads to the conclusion not to use third party extensions, thus removing the benefit of having a scriptable shell.

jcsnv 5y ago

hey, congrats on launching this! what made you want to build it?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

henning 5y ago

The project isn't dead, their Webpack builds just now take 4 years.

robbrown451 5y ago

It looks dead. I think they chose the wrong approach in lots of ways, but it wasn't that far from a JS (and Typescript) based OS on top of Linux that is actually a good idea. ChromeOS is kind of close to what I'd want, if you could remove Google from it. (I actually like ChromeOS, nearly perfect for my kid's computer) Firefox OS was also kind of close, but they missed in a lot of ways. Here are the features of some OS I wish existed: Open source and not primarily controlled by Apple or Google or Microsoft of Facebook or whatever. JS and Typescript are essentially native and are the primary ways of building apps, but WASM would be available if you need machine code. The same JS engine runs in the browser as for running applications. The same rendering engine works inside the browser and to render "native" apps that do any drawing to the screen. Preferably, you could choose to run on one of several browser engines Most apps that run as native apps can, without much extra work, run as web apps, and vice versa. The UI isn't built on a framework that might fall in popularity. So not React or Angular or Vue or whatever. If people want to use those in their apps, they are there, but core stuff for the UI avoids relying on them. That's all I can think of for now. Beyond "design it really, really well and make a slick feeling but non-limiting front end experience." Which is hard. (sorry to those with unbridled hate for JS and even Typescript)

laumars 5y ago
We’ve seen how Electron performs. The only reason VSC doesn’t totally suck is because a lot of it is still native code. I can’t even imagine how crappy it would be building an entire OS out of that stuff. And you’re never going to escape the needs for another systems language because unless you find a way of writing non-memory managed code with pointers and inlined assembly in JavaScript, that language simply isn’t going to cut it. And on top of that you’d need a compiler that can compile machine code just to bootstrap node in the first place. I’m all for experimental operating systems but there’s a reason systems languages differ in design to web scripting languages and really we should be using the languages that suit each domain the best rather than simply putting JavaScript everywhere because we are too lazy to learn anything else.
- chpmrc 5y ago
  VSCode literally runs in the browser with identical performance to the Electron app (because aside from some differences in APIs, the runtime is pretty much the same). Try GitHub Codespaces and you'll see.

overflyer 5y ago

Subtitle to the OS name should be: "I don't need those CPU cycles anyways" or maybe "because the cancer of JS has not spread enough already."

ranguna 5y ago
Why do you need to be so aggressive?
- overflyer 5y ago
  Keeps you young, healthy and your skin smooth.
  - ranguna 5y ago
    And fun at parties as well I guess
- hereforphone 5y ago
  He's probably this cynical because he's actually worked with Javascript before.
  - overflyer 5y ago
    Yeah when I was an ITSM consultant. ServiceNow uses JS extensively. Those were the ECMA 4 and ECMA 5 times to be honest though. I guess a lot has changed since then.
    - octotoad 5y ago
      Unfortunately not a lot has changed since then in ServiceNow’s JavaScript situation. Still stuck on ES5 Rhino.

vasergen 5y ago

reminds me of quote "everything that can be written in js will be written in js" curious if there is practical use for this kind of systems

stevefan1999 5y ago
Yes. Lisp Machine [1]. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_machine

PhantomBKB 5y ago

"The website has been blocked as per order of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under IT Act, 2000."

wetpaws 5y ago

Wish the devs all the best and a soonest release from the mental institution.

ngcc_hk 5y ago

And if you get one node polluted whole thing go down. Great move.

madc 5y ago

I think this link should actually go here: https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS/issues/441 https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS/issues/441

MauranKilom 5y ago

This seems relevant: https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death-of-javascript https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/the-birth-and-death...

shomyo 5y ago

This is mental.

nix23 5y ago

Seeing that, a javaos instantly looks not that bad anymore ;)

assbuttbuttass 5y ago

I was expecting a kernel written in Javascript