4 ms·

Stimulates a bit of an impulse I had as a teenager and wanting to experience that on my PC, or get into BeOS or QNX, based just on witnessing screenshots and so

by floam 5y ago

Stimulates a bit of an impulse I had as a teenager and wanting to experience that on my PC, or get into BeOS or QNX, based just on witnessing screenshots and something deeply striking my fancy. Before I got into Linux (which was before I got a Mac in 2006), I used WindowBlinds and LiteStep to do exactly that, and more. I used to really care more about certain trappings of my experience, and I didn't have any actual work to do. Now I settle for whatever in my 30s. Let's see, what is my first extant contribution to the Internet… oh yeah, I thought this was handsome. It was a theme for an explorer.exe shell replacement. https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/154/ https://www.wincustomize.com/explore/litestep/154/ https://skins14.wincustomize.com/1/53/153855/6/154/preview-6-154.jpg https://skins14.wincustomize.com/1/53/153855/6/154/preview-6...

floam 5y ago
"542 lines of code" (a configuration file), "best viewed in tahoma size 7"... cringe. In my defense, it was 2001-2002, I mostly had MS Paint at my disposal, and I was 14 (and not like a smart 14).
- laputan_machine 5y ago
  For some reason when I was that age I loved tiny fonts, too. Actually a nice theme, I probably would have used it!
  - floam 5y ago
    I know my vision is still good, but there is no debate that my vision back then was a lot better. And focusing for tens of hours certainly wasn't any kind of effort.
GekkePrutser 5y ago
Qnx was pretty unique. We no longer have any RTOS with a desktop GUI sadly
- zozbot234 5y ago
  Linux with the PREEMPT_RT patchset is pretty much a true RTOS nowadays. Though you still need to be careful in developing userspace to achieve true "hard" time bounds, and that's largely incompatible with a "desktop" workflow.
- floam 5y ago
  You can posix_spawn there without tcsetpgrp races, that is pretty cool. Still leading the way! https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=1044 https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=1044 https://developer.blackberry.com/native/reference/core/com.qnx.doc.neutrino.lib_ref/topic/p/posix_spawnattr_setxflags.html https://developer.blackberry.com/native/reference/core/com.q...
Joeri 5y ago
I used BeOS as a daily driver for a few years back in the day. It was a great OS, wonderfully smooth and powerful. But I was forced off of it because of the lack of applications. Applications make or break an OS. Microsoft had to learn this lesson several times already (windows phone, windows rt).

by floam 5y ago

floam 5y ago

"542 lines of code" (a configuration file), "best viewed in tahoma size 7"... cringe. In my defense, it was 2001-2002, I mostly had MS Paint at my disposal, and I was 14 (and not like a smart 14).

laputan_machine 5y ago
For some reason when I was that age I loved tiny fonts, too. Actually a nice theme, I probably would have used it!
- floam 5y ago
  I know my vision is still good, but there is no debate that my vision back then was a lot better. And focusing for tens of hours certainly wasn't any kind of effort.

GekkePrutser 5y ago

Qnx was pretty unique. We no longer have any RTOS with a desktop GUI sadly

zozbot234 5y ago
Linux with the PREEMPT_RT patchset is pretty much a true RTOS nowadays. Though you still need to be careful in developing userspace to achieve true "hard" time bounds, and that's largely incompatible with a "desktop" workflow.
floam 5y ago
You can posix_spawn there without tcsetpgrp races, that is pretty cool. Still leading the way! https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=1044 https://www.austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=1044 https://developer.blackberry.com/native/reference/core/com.qnx.doc.neutrino.lib_ref/topic/p/posix_spawnattr_setxflags.html https://developer.blackberry.com/native/reference/core/com.q...

Joeri 5y ago

I used BeOS as a daily driver for a few years back in the day. It was a great OS, wonderfully smooth and powerful. But I was forced off of it because of the lack of applications. Applications make or break an OS. Microsoft had to learn this lesson several times already (windows phone, windows rt).