23 ms·

Essence: Desktop operating system built from scratch

1079 points by nbaksalyar 5y ago

tomjacobs 5y ago
Absolutely amazing. That's a lot of work.
rasengan 5y ago
I really think this is impressive. I also like the unique take on windowing. There's a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxt-tQ5BtM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxt-tQ5BtM Great job!
- Gualdrapo 5y ago
  I recall KDE4 had sort of the same feature, tabbing windows. Haiku has a similar approach too. Though here they're taking it a little step further. Was more impressed with the USB unplug/replug thing and the "live update" on renaming files. Pretty cool.
  - nsonha 5y ago
    I really think tabbing should be the job of the DE, I hate having different shortcuts for switching windows and switching tabs.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  The "open a window and then put an application in it" thing reminds me of Plan 9; in that case, IIRC, you open windows and they start as a terminal, but if you execute anything else the new program just "inherits" the same window.
  - yiyus 5y ago
    Slightly similar in practice, but very different concept. In Plan 9, every process draws interacting with a screen file (in fact, it is a whole filesystem, also including keyboard, mouse, control files, ...). What rio, the Plan 9 window manager, does is to "multiplex" this screen file (again, file system) so that each process has its own screen which does not correspond to the physical monitor, but to a window. An uncommon feature that derives from this design is that you can run a new rio instance inside a rio window. More important, you can just connect to other machines and interact with their windowing filesystems, getting network transparency "for free".
- sneak 5y ago
  Oh wow, the file picker has a thumbnail view. That's a pretty advanced feature!
- blondin 5y ago
  incredible work indeed. kudos to the author! there is definitely a place for operating systems like this one in the future. the author is creating something many of us want: a system where the user is in control of their computer! fancy that! imagine not having to go retro but having total control of a modern machine. i hope the author pulls this off.
juice_bus 5y ago
Are we in an (hobby) OS renaissance? I feel like more and more of these amazing projects are popping up.
- ReactiveJelly 5y ago
  Maybe! It's not like the compilers, documentation, and emulators needed to launch a hobby OS are getting any harder or more expensive!
- Fnoord 5y ago
  Its a sign of all times. QNX, V2OS [1] (written in x86 assembly), SkyOS to name a few. I mention QNX because I remember running it from a floppy in end of 90s. Unix system with GUI, from one 1"44 floppy. In the 00s, the website OSnews often covered all kind of alternative OSes (how I came across SkyOS). Which recent ones are you aware of? [1] https://github.com/joostfaassen/v2os https://github.com/joostfaassen/v2os
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    QNX was never an hobby OS, and that floppy (which I also have somewhere), was mostly to demo it to prospective buyers than anything else. Nowadays it is chosen OS used by NVidia for their autonomous vehicles (Linux is for development mostly).
- monax 5y ago
  COVID gave us a lot of free time to spend on personal projects
sys_64738 5y ago
It certainly looked super fast but no networking or web browser from what I saw.
- bitva77 5y ago
  hrmm, gitlab page mentions a full networking stack. Not sure on the web browser though
- BlackLotus89 5y ago
  It has networking https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence#features https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence#features Even has an irc client ;) everything you need
  - sys_64738 5y ago
    I watched the video which said no networking. Maybe the video is old.
- dmitriid 5y ago
  These days it's easier to create an OS from scratch than a web browser.
  - mrweasel 5y ago
    That’s actually pretty scarry. Someone can write and entire graphical operating system, including filesystem and everything, but that same person have no hope of writing a browser to go with it. There’s almost no commercial insentive to create a browser/rendering engine (Opera couldn’t make it work), and it almost to much work for an open source project to take on. As sad as it might be, Google won and Chromium will be the final browser, everything else is just customization. At least Microsoft had the courtesy of slowing down progress with Internet Explorer, allowing others to more easily catch up.
    - asddubs 5y ago
      The SerenityOS people are implementing their own browser. It's nowhere near usable for the modern web yet, but it's slowly chugging along, inching closer. Of course the difference between building an OS and a browser is that for an OS, you just have to build something that is usable, how you get there and what that looks like is up to you, and you can really get creative with it and break norms. For a browser engine, by definition, you have to build something that behaves basically exactly the same as any other modern browser. So you're implementing a gargantuan spec to a very high level of precision (since you have no control over how it's used), and the end result is a technical feat that's only impressive in the fact that it was done, not in that you get to use it now, and it does anything a reskinned chrome wouldn't do.
kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
Here’s to all the people who make their own operating systems. It’s great to see what a unified vision and some offbeat thinking can produce.
- a-dub 5y ago
  it's neat. there's like a whole indie os dev scene these days. kinda like when people used write os gui shell fanfiction, now they're writing their own novels with kernels from scratch and everything.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    You can look around the osdev.org forums for plenty of that.
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    AFAIK this was a thing for a long time and not something recent. IIRC Bochs for example was written by someone making their own OS and wanting a way to debug it.
yeetaccount4 5y ago
This reminds me of an OS built with asm for Dell desktop PC’s around 2005-ish. The DE had most things you’d expect from a Linux distro at the time, including true transparency (IIRC), and the whole thing fit on a floppy. Saw it in a Linux mag at the time.
- robsalasco 5y ago
  http://menuetos.net http://menuetos.net
  - JPLeRouzic 5y ago
    And its fork: http://kolibrios.org/en/ http://kolibrios.org/en/
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
So first off: Very cool. Amazingly polished, and self-hosting! Especially since it looks to be an actually-independent project with POSIX as an optional compat layer. I feel like the features that are unique are mostly in 3 groups: 1. Features that shouldn't be unique to this system. Tabbed windows have occasionally happened on other systems, and probably should become more common, and there's no reason it shouldn't work on other systems. I hope this inspires other people to copy;) 2. Features that only work if you have really tight integration or different primitives than most OSs are using. Programs updating file name when you rename from the file manager, or the file manager showing when files are open... might be possible to graft on to other systems, but it'd be a right pain. Even systems like MacOS are going to struggle - the whole OS is under one company that could do cross-functional stuff like that, but any time it touches applications you need external developers to support it and that may or may not work out. 3. Features that are possible, but nobody else does it because it's impractical - possibly only impractical from their starting points, though. Showing total size of subdirectories is expensive on ex. Linux because you have to walk every file recursively. I don't know if they're just eating the cost because they haven't hit a case where it matters, or if their system actually makes it cheap (I could easily imagine a filesystem that moved the calculation cost up front).
- thom 5y ago
  What’s the state of the art for file systems in the age of M2 drives that are bonkers fast? I dunno about everyone else, but knowing hierarchically where my disk space is going is a really common concern.
  - harikb 5y ago
    I would imagine, the “m2 fast” is visible more in reading medium sized files than 100k tiny reads (when recursively querying directories like this case GP is taking about) To make GP’s use case better, FS really needs an custom index or require that every write also update all hierarchy. Unless of course they work like indexers and just work with delayed data
    - 5y ago
chungy 5y ago
Gives me very strong BeOS vibes.
- Ygg2 5y ago
  Stronger than Haiku? https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/
  - yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
    I've never used the original: Is there a difference between BeOS vibes and Haiku vibes?
  - chungy 5y ago
    No, Haiku is basically a carbon-copy of BeOS. Still, Essence's BeOS vibe comes from the tabbed windows and the strong emphasis on single-user computing.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Not on the C++ APIs it doesn't.
- tekknik 5y ago
  I wonder why they didn’t just contribute to Haiku instead of doing this.
jhgb 5y ago
> Essence will happily run on low-powered hardware The thing is, when I see a mention of "low-powered hardware", I'm instantly thinking of a Raspberry Pi 4. I assume this isn't supported (yet).
- TheFreim 5y ago
  I have multiple RPi devices but I don't really think of it when I heard "low-powered hardware", I think of a low end laptop from ~2010.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    Whereas my first reaction hearing “low powered hardware” was to think of computers which require a low amount of input power, as measured in watts.
  - 7thaccount 5y ago
    But wouldn't this also run on a laptop that is much older? My pentium 4 computer from when I was not much older than my daughter had much better specs than the minimum they need here. I'm sure there are some other limitations though.
- Zomatree 5y ago
  Its x86 only currently. I know the owner does want to add arm support but its not being worked on.
  - nodesocket 5y ago
    Curious, is porting complex C++ projects to arm64 just a matter of updating build/CI systems or does it actually involve changing core code and adding branches if (x64) {} ... if (arm64) {}.
    - estebarb 5y ago
      For common programs it's not very difficult, usually just recompile. But if it uses assembly then you are out of luck. Also if it requires a library that uses it. For an OS it is different, you need to reimplement many parts: bootloader, drivers, task scheduler, virtual memory...
purplecats 5y ago
this is really pretty! this was created by one person?
xeeeeeeeeeeenu 5y ago
Previous discussion (5 months ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123530
- dang 5y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: The Essence operating system at Handmade Seattle 2021 [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29386605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29386605 - Nov 2021 (39 comments) Essence – An Operating System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123530 - Aug 2021 (42 comments)
b0ner_t0ner 5y ago
The UI looks like early Chrome.
- markstos 5y ago
  It sure does, which I find a weird inspiration for an desktop environment design.
  - userbinator 5y ago
    Very ironic to see that along with the tagline "An operating system that respects the user".
nsonha 5y ago
What is a "desktop operating system"? Why do you need to reinvent operating system when all you create is a (rather traditional looking) desktop environment?
- codeonline 5y ago
  As a learning exercise As a labor of love To scratch an itch To explore an idea Many reasons
  - nsonha 5y ago
    that is fine, but one these projects cross some point, the creators have the tendency to forget their motivation being selfish in the first place, and try to promote their creation as if what they had in mind was to solve problem for other people.
    - ksec 5y ago
      Selfish? Seriously, what are you talking about?
      - nsonha 5y ago
        "labor of love To scratch an itch To explore an idea" that by no mean is a bad thing, it just means doing things for themselves, to express, to learn etc, typical of creative work. People do that all the time. However in OSS there is this thing when people feel they need to present their work as useful to others eventhough clearly what drives their work has nothing to do with other peoples' needs, it's just their itch.
        d_tr 5y ago
        I cannot be inside anyone's mind, but I know that one can have more than one equally strong motives when doing something.
        5y ago
gk1256 5y ago
I like the UI, but I'm disappointed to find that the author is using orthodox C++ instead Modern C++
- __float 5y ago
  What do you mean by "orthodox C++"?
  - ani-ani 5y ago
    "Although the operating system is written in C++, most C++ features are avoided." From https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence/-/blob/master/help/Contributing.md https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence/-/blob/master/help/Contribu...
    - ncmncm 5y ago
      Yes, this is kind of stupid. Certain people have been doing this sort of thing forever. It was never a good idea. Whenever you probe why they thought it was a good idea, all the reasons (where they are expressible at all) turn out to depend on falsehoods. Most usually, though, it amounts to laziness about learning anything new. You can see effective use of Modern C++ in SerenityOS, to excellent effect.
  - iqanq 5y ago
    It reminds me of Carmack's subset of C++. In other words, it doesn't suck.
  - fault1 5y ago
    Usually orthodox c++ looks something like: https://gist.github.com/bkaradzic/2e39896bc7d8c34e042b https://gist.github.com/bkaradzic/2e39896bc7d8c34e042b this is from bgfx
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      > UPDATE As of January 14th 2019, Orthodox C++ committee approved use of C++14. So it is basically Modern C++, just a few years later.
the_biot 5y ago
This is an amazing piece of work, but it's clearly a labor of love: this isn't going to have any real-world use any time soon. Where operating systems are headed is more towards security (process isolation, bulletproof input etc), not lightweight GUIs on top of thin kernels like this. Are there any passion (or other) projects that explore this? I know about Qubes, but that's more like a heavy layer on top of a heavy duty GUI, on top of a Linux kernel.
- olliej 5y ago
  Secure systems are lightweight kernels with thin UI layers, that’s part of how surface reduction is accomplished. And yeah, it’s not going to have real world adoption soon. Neither did linux. Every non-commercial OS starts out as a labour of love. Good luck to them :)
  - smoldesu 5y ago
    > Every non-commercial OS starts out as a labour of love. Tell that to Andrew Tanenbaum
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      I think he does love his work.
- markstos 5y ago
  Spectrum OS, meant be a more usable upgrade from Qubes. Based on NixOS. Currently stuck on plumbing problems. https://spectrum-os.org/ https://spectrum-os.org/ Bheem OS, "a next generation secure operating system." Inspired some by Spectrum. So new they can't keep their blog online. Here's a snapshot of a recent blog post about the security features https://blog.openw3b.org/crosvm-for-os-and-app-virtualization-on-linux/ https://blog.openw3b.org/crosvm-for-os-and-app-virtualizatio...
  - walrus01 5y ago
    the main problem I ran into with qubes is that having a xen hypervisor and an nvidia desktop graphics card in use (with proprietary nvidia drivers in use for proper performance) seem to be mutually exclusive. a xen dom0 needs to use the host system RAM in some way that causes kernel panics and crashes when the nvidia DKMS driver is loaded. I would wager that 99% of xen related development is intended, as it should be, for dom0 server environments that will never have a keyboard, mouse or 3D capable video card plugged into the bare metal.
licnep 5y ago
This is insane, I can't imagine how much work went into it. I had a similar idea as a kid, I was pissed at all the bloat consuming my cpu and ram on windows so I wanted to build my own os that would run a single app taking advantage of 100% of the hardware. I learned some assembly and managed to create a bootable floppy disk, then quickly gave up, realizing how much work a functioning os would take...
- Sunspark 5y ago
  It's a lot of work. One guy pulled it off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
  - unixhero 5y ago
    Yes, and several others since.
  - busymom0 5y ago
    SerenityOS is another one which was posted recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29270776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29270776 Video demo: https://vimeo.com/641406697 https://vimeo.com/641406697
    - Aeolun 5y ago
      SerenityOS is great too. But it doesn’t run on real hardware yet I think?
      - exikyut 5y ago
        Apparently it worked on specific hardware configurations a couple years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT-ME3PsKtc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT-ME3PsKtc In terms of general minimal-viable support, that's probably hit-and-miss (perhaps around where Linux distros were at in the early 90s - probably worked, except for everywhere it didn't), particularly with the increasing ossification and variability of BIOS/legacy emulation in current-era systems.
pojntfx 5y ago
This is very cool! Love the "everything is a tab" approach and default icon theme!
pleb_nz 5y ago
This is so amazing. I couldn't even begin to imagine the work that goes into just what's there already.
AbuAssar 5y ago
"No tasks run in the background" This.
genpfault 5y ago
> * Graphics: BGA and SVGA. ...BGA?
erichocean 5y ago
- josephcsible 5y ago
  Why do you need one?
  - defanor 5y ago
    Not GP, but just was about to skim the sources and changed my mind upon seeing GitLab: its UI is sluggish to the point where FF occasionally asks whether it should stop JS execution, at least with larger projects.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
abnercoimbre 5y ago
If you want a fleshed out demo [0], we had the author present at our conference recently. Worth a watch. [0] https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/ https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/
- myself248 5y ago
  Thank you, that's a really great overview. Wow. Just wow. I wish everything in my life was designed like this.
- HellsMaddy 5y ago
  I wasn't really that interested in this project from the website, but this video sold me. Super cool, wow!
  - zw123456 5y ago
    Agreed, the video really impressed me. He mentioned that you can't delete files yet, I am wondering what the idea would be if you delete a file that is open in an app, change it to untitled in the app maybe ? Very impressive, amazing amount of work went into it clearly.
- digitalsankhara 5y ago
  Thanks for the link. Appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this, very well done to the author(s), super work. Stunning attention to detail - font choice on install, dynamic file renaming, open file highlighting, tabbed windows with apps inside. These felt so intuitive to me as I watched. Vector based UI - excellent choice! Watching the demo brought back memories of OS/2 and BeOS in terms of aesthetics and usability. The theme designer blew me away - it looked like Sketch or Adobe XD in terms of UI prototyping. If this offers a way to draw your UI with vector based tools and have it "attached" to the OS's API then that's really exciting. Further, if this could be extended to a VB style application where one can code in actions, events etc in a user accessible way [1] then I think it would be a killer app for this OS where a user/developer could shape the entire OS to fit the needs of the design. I'm thinking here of a single use OS on a USB stick - for example, a writer's OS where the whole OS/Apps just provide a rich environment for wordsmiths to work in creative isolation. Like the "Zen" mode of many editors, but taken to the next level. Glorious looking dictionaries, pinboards for notes and research etc etc. Design the UI, apps and utilities and compile it all into a single, bootable OS would be wonderful. That would be very satisfying to me the way my mind is wired. [1] To be clear, a language which is approachable by beginners, e.g. BASIC like or some high level scripting language. Also pluggable languages would be very cool for advanced workers.
debdut 5y ago
Pretty neat! All previous personal OS projects didn't have such neat interface. 30 MB ram with such a great interface, kudos :)
- kubafu 5y ago
  The homepage mentions 30 MB of disk space, and even less RAM. Kudos indeed!
debdut 5y ago
Whoever noticed the simple lists app in place of spreadsheets, mind blowing!
- nhooyr 5y ago
  Can you clarify what you mean here?
Skunkleton 5y ago
Spent some time reading through the networking stack, scheduler, synchronization, and networking device driver. It was a total breath of fresh air to read code in this area that wasn't a total spaghetti of years of maintenance and feature creep. Really happy to see a project like this!
- roeles 5y ago
  I've had some classes from Sape Mullender where he showed Plan 9 source code. It was also quite beautiful. Each function fit on 1 slide and was clear enough to need no documentation.
bronlund 5y ago
jbverschoor 5y ago
Very cool. Nice that it runs without all the processes... But that will come at a certain point haha. I like that they implemented composing tabs between different applications. This is the way I try to organize work/projecta/projectb/personal use, but it never works with current osses. Spaces in macOS is actually kind of useless, because certain applications have windows across screens (finder, chrome). Tabbed Finder windows are the most useless thing ever.. It's Apple listening to HN haha. Anyway, screenshot on twitter: https://twitter.com/_nakst/status/1477247856805351425/photo/1 https://twitter.com/_nakst/status/1477247856805351425/photo/... and gitlab https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence
- divs1210 5y ago
  > Tabbed Finder windows are the most useless thing ever. Hard disagree. I use them all the time.
  - jbverschoor 5y ago
    In what way?
  - mromanuk 5y ago
    I don't use finder tabs much. I just use them to create a new tab, when I need to copy something inside a directory without losing my current "state". I tend to use finder tabs very differently than the browser tabs where I can have many different websites, but later I tend to forget why I have those there. I'm glad that MacOS can restore everything pretty well after a logout/login. A major focus of OS should be on managing these "work state" through new UI paradigms/tools. edit: typos
- kevincox 5y ago
  > Tabbed Finder windows are the most useless thing ever.. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I had to switch off of Nautilus because it kept trying to make me open things in new tabs instead of new windows. The thing is that I don't use the file manager much and 9/10 times I want to open directories is because I want to move files between them or less often visually compare which doesn't work well with tabs.
phendrenad2 5y ago
There are a lot of experimental/hobby OSs coming out recently, and it's great to see new ideas. I'd love to see more experimentation with stable driver API/ABIs. Decoupling drivers from the kernel might improve hardware support, because those with deep hardware knowledge could come in, write a driver, and then no one would ever have to update it just because of kernel changes.
fairramone 5y ago
To the author: I just wanted to say this is amazing. Thank you for working on this and I'm looking forward to running this on hardware one day.
zoom6628 5y ago
This is very cool and minmlst. Agree that desktops carry ever increasing amounts of stuff and the word is not necessarily better because of it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
robertoandred 5y ago
Can Windows/Linux not rename a file while it’s open, show a folder’s size, or rename a document from within its app window?
bobske4 5y ago
Does it run Skyrim?
pmarreck 5y ago
New OS’es are sorely needed IMHO.
pjmlp 5y ago
Why I see a new OS I always like to see what it brings to the table, specially if they take the effort of not being yet another POSIX clone written in C, without anything else to brag about. So it is nice that it makes use of C++ and there are some frameworks already like the GUI stack, however this is missing from the website.
busymom0 5y ago
Is there a way to run this or SerenityOS (another indie developed OS) on mobile devices? Like on an android phone?
faisal_ksa 5y ago
It looks very cool
starbugs 5y ago
Amazing work! I just watched the author's video about the UI features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxt-tQ5BtM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxt-tQ5BtM The app in a tab approach seems really neat. I guess if big tech decides to stop developing new useful features, we will have to start doing it on our own.
gjvc 5y ago
This is a Jobsian-quality presentation. Well done, Nakst!
pshirshov 5y ago
That's cool. Though that's C/C++ again, unmanaged memory can't be considered safe in 2021. We need different things.
- cartesius13 5y ago
  This type of comment is getting so old I wonder what can be done about it. Maybe the reason why we don't have "different things" is because users of these so called safe languages are too busy arguing online about how safe their programs are instead of actually writing anything worthwhile. Meanwhile operating systems will continue to be written primarily in C/C++ for the forseeable future
  - pshirshov 5y ago
    In case you check what I'm doing with my safe language you may be surprised. That's something new and worthwhile. Not an OS unfortunately, I would be happy to work on that but I can't live from that. > Meanwhile operating systems will continue to be written primarily in C/C++ for the forseeable future And we will continue reading about lifes ruined by bugs and people killed by exploits. There is no sustainable future with unsafe foundation.
    - tekknik 5y ago
      > And we will continue reading about lifes ruined by bugs and people killed by exploits. There is no sustainable future with unsafe foundation. Really? people die because of c++? it’s pretty hard to take the rust crew seriously if this is the point of view.
      - pshirshov 5y ago
        They do. At least some zero-days were used by some state actors to track, detain and kill people. Also I don't like Rust.
        tekknik 5y ago
jokoon 5y ago
I love minimalist stuff, but I don't really believe this is a good idea. It's not compatible with a lot of things. Sure it's cool, but the problem will always be the lack of open hardware. Personally I will always be more curious about smartphone OS made from scratch. The only think I want right now, is to use old smartphones with a lightweight OS.
- UltraViolence 5y ago
  Yes, hardware support will always be a problem unless there's a large uptake. Developers should therefore focus on more hardware support instead of adding unnecessary features.
UltraViolence 5y ago
Is this OS a fork of SerenityOS (also completely written from scratch in C++)? I'm amazed how many single person or small team developed operating systems are out there. Another one I like is RedoxOS (written in Rust) and Resea (microkernel written in C). Also, there's KolibriOS (written entirely in Assembler).
davidgerard 5y ago
You definitely need to watch the video of the OS in action. Ten minutes well spent.
Santosh83 5y ago
So many interesting/fascinating concepts and ideas that will remain relegated to niche communities because of basically one problem: lack of drivers. This is the problem that must be solved if we ever want to move away from the dominance of a few OSes "too big to fail" and their million compromises to a thriving field where competent programmers can create new OSes as easily as now they can create new apps.
- torginus 5y ago
  I wonder if this could be solved by picking a widely available but fairly stable platform for it - like a Raspberry Pi, and making sure it works there. Atm, it seems like it's an x86-based OS, so I'm not sure how difficult would it be to port it to ARM.
  - mysterydip 5y ago
    This is a really good idea. If I was making a hobby OS (someday!), this is the route I would choose.
  - scoutt 5y ago
    > I wonder if this could be solved by picking a widely available but fairly stable platform for it. For buses and basic IO it might be a solution. For a broader picture, it may be not. For example: your favorite USB device that requires a custom driver won't work (like a USB-to-Serial FTDI chip). Starting from there, now imagine giving support for every printer in existence.
- southerntofu 5y ago
  Unfortunately this will likely continue, as hardware vendors sacrifice both the environment and human rights (quasi-slavery in the mines/factories, as well as user freedoms) in the quest for profit. On the topic of drivers and specifications, I strongly recommend a talk entitled "It's time for the OS to rediscover hardware" [0]. If you prefer a written form, "OK Lenovo, we need to talk" is a great article on the same topics. [1] [0] https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-keynote https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-ke... [1] https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/mmu_man/2021-10-04_ok_lenovo_we_need_to_talk/ https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/mmu_man/2021-10-04_ok_lenovo_w...
crawl_soever 5y ago
This is part of the handmade software movement. An effort to focus down on elegant software development using primitives rather than generic libraries and testing the status quo. Exciting to see this project move along!
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1079 points by nbaksalyar 5y ago

Absolutely amazing. That's a lot of work.

I really think this is impressive. I also like the unique take on windowing. There's a video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxt-tQ5BtM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxt-tQ5BtM Great job!

Gualdrapo 5y ago
I recall KDE4 had sort of the same feature, tabbing windows. Haiku has a similar approach too. Though here they're taking it a little step further. Was more impressed with the USB unplug/replug thing and the "live update" on renaming files. Pretty cool.
- nsonha 5y ago
  I really think tabbing should be the job of the DE, I hate having different shortcuts for switching windows and switching tabs.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
The "open a window and then put an application in it" thing reminds me of Plan 9; in that case, IIRC, you open windows and they start as a terminal, but if you execute anything else the new program just "inherits" the same window.
- yiyus 5y ago
  Slightly similar in practice, but very different concept. In Plan 9, every process draws interacting with a screen file (in fact, it is a whole filesystem, also including keyboard, mouse, control files, ...). What rio, the Plan 9 window manager, does is to "multiplex" this screen file (again, file system) so that each process has its own screen which does not correspond to the physical monitor, but to a window. An uncommon feature that derives from this design is that you can run a new rio instance inside a rio window. More important, you can just connect to other machines and interact with their windowing filesystems, getting network transparency "for free".
sneak 5y ago
Oh wow, the file picker has a thumbnail view. That's a pretty advanced feature!
blondin 5y ago
incredible work indeed. kudos to the author! there is definitely a place for operating systems like this one in the future. the author is creating something many of us want: a system where the user is in control of their computer! fancy that! imagine not having to go retro but having total control of a modern machine. i hope the author pulls this off.

juice_bus 5y ago

Are we in an (hobby) OS renaissance? I feel like more and more of these amazing projects are popping up.

ReactiveJelly 5y ago
Maybe! It's not like the compilers, documentation, and emulators needed to launch a hobby OS are getting any harder or more expensive!
Fnoord 5y ago
Its a sign of all times. QNX, V2OS [1] (written in x86 assembly), SkyOS to name a few. I mention QNX because I remember running it from a floppy in end of 90s. Unix system with GUI, from one 1"44 floppy. In the 00s, the website OSnews often covered all kind of alternative OSes (how I came across SkyOS). Which recent ones are you aware of? [1] https://github.com/joostfaassen/v2os https://github.com/joostfaassen/v2os
- pjmlp 5y ago
  QNX was never an hobby OS, and that floppy (which I also have somewhere), was mostly to demo it to prospective buyers than anything else. Nowadays it is chosen OS used by NVidia for their autonomous vehicles (Linux is for development mostly).
monax 5y ago
COVID gave us a lot of free time to spend on personal projects

sys_64738 5y ago

It certainly looked super fast but no networking or web browser from what I saw.

bitva77 5y ago
hrmm, gitlab page mentions a full networking stack. Not sure on the web browser though
BlackLotus89 5y ago
It has networking https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence#features https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence#features Even has an irc client ;) everything you need
- sys_64738 5y ago
  I watched the video which said no networking. Maybe the video is old.
dmitriid 5y ago
These days it's easier to create an OS from scratch than a web browser.
- mrweasel 5y ago
  That’s actually pretty scarry. Someone can write and entire graphical operating system, including filesystem and everything, but that same person have no hope of writing a browser to go with it. There’s almost no commercial insentive to create a browser/rendering engine (Opera couldn’t make it work), and it almost to much work for an open source project to take on. As sad as it might be, Google won and Chromium will be the final browser, everything else is just customization. At least Microsoft had the courtesy of slowing down progress with Internet Explorer, allowing others to more easily catch up.
  - asddubs 5y ago
    The SerenityOS people are implementing their own browser. It's nowhere near usable for the modern web yet, but it's slowly chugging along, inching closer. Of course the difference between building an OS and a browser is that for an OS, you just have to build something that is usable, how you get there and what that looks like is up to you, and you can really get creative with it and break norms. For a browser engine, by definition, you have to build something that behaves basically exactly the same as any other modern browser. So you're implementing a gargantuan spec to a very high level of precision (since you have no control over how it's used), and the end result is a technical feat that's only impressive in the fact that it was done, not in that you get to use it now, and it does anything a reskinned chrome wouldn't do.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago

Here’s to all the people who make their own operating systems. It’s great to see what a unified vision and some offbeat thinking can produce.

a-dub 5y ago
it's neat. there's like a whole indie os dev scene these days. kinda like when people used write os gui shell fanfiction, now they're writing their own novels with kernels from scratch and everything.
- userbinator 5y ago
  You can look around the osdev.org forums for plenty of that.
- badsectoracula 5y ago
  AFAIK this was a thing for a long time and not something recent. IIRC Bochs for example was written by someone making their own OS and wanting a way to debug it.

yeetaccount4 5y ago

This reminds me of an OS built with asm for Dell desktop PC’s around 2005-ish. The DE had most things you’d expect from a Linux distro at the time, including true transparency (IIRC), and the whole thing fit on a floppy. Saw it in a Linux mag at the time.

robsalasco 5y ago
http://menuetos.net http://menuetos.net
- JPLeRouzic 5y ago
  And its fork: http://kolibrios.org/en/ http://kolibrios.org/en/

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

So first off: Very cool. Amazingly polished, and self-hosting! Especially since it looks to be an actually-independent project with POSIX as an optional compat layer. I feel like the features that are unique are mostly in 3 groups: 1. Features that shouldn't be unique to this system. Tabbed windows have occasionally happened on other systems, and probably should become more common, and there's no reason it shouldn't work on other systems. I hope this inspires other people to copy;) 2. Features that only work if you have really tight integration or different primitives than most OSs are using. Programs updating file name when you rename from the file manager, or the file manager showing when files are open... might be possible to graft on to other systems, but it'd be a right pain. Even systems like MacOS are going to struggle - the whole OS is under one company that could do cross-functional stuff like that, but any time it touches applications you need external developers to support it and that may or may not work out. 3. Features that are possible, but nobody else does it because it's impractical - possibly only impractical from their starting points, though. Showing total size of subdirectories is expensive on ex. Linux because you have to walk every file recursively. I don't know if they're just eating the cost because they haven't hit a case where it matters, or if their system actually makes it cheap (I could easily imagine a filesystem that moved the calculation cost up front).

thom 5y ago
What’s the state of the art for file systems in the age of M2 drives that are bonkers fast? I dunno about everyone else, but knowing hierarchically where my disk space is going is a really common concern.
- harikb 5y ago
  I would imagine, the “m2 fast” is visible more in reading medium sized files than 100k tiny reads (when recursively querying directories like this case GP is taking about) To make GP’s use case better, FS really needs an custom index or require that every write also update all hierarchy. Unless of course they work like indexers and just work with delayed data
  - 5y ago

chungy 5y ago

Gives me very strong BeOS vibes.

Ygg2 5y ago
Stronger than Haiku? https://www.haiku-os.org/ https://www.haiku-os.org/
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  I've never used the original: Is there a difference between BeOS vibes and Haiku vibes?
- chungy 5y ago
  No, Haiku is basically a carbon-copy of BeOS. Still, Essence's BeOS vibe comes from the tabbed windows and the strong emphasis on single-user computing.
pjmlp 5y ago
Not on the C++ APIs it doesn't.
tekknik 5y ago
I wonder why they didn’t just contribute to Haiku instead of doing this.

jhgb 5y ago

> Essence will happily run on low-powered hardware The thing is, when I see a mention of "low-powered hardware", I'm instantly thinking of a Raspberry Pi 4. I assume this isn't supported (yet).

TheFreim 5y ago
I have multiple RPi devices but I don't really think of it when I heard "low-powered hardware", I think of a low end laptop from ~2010.
- simondotau 5y ago
  Whereas my first reaction hearing “low powered hardware” was to think of computers which require a low amount of input power, as measured in watts.
- 7thaccount 5y ago
  But wouldn't this also run on a laptop that is much older? My pentium 4 computer from when I was not much older than my daughter had much better specs than the minimum they need here. I'm sure there are some other limitations though.
Zomatree 5y ago
Its x86 only currently. I know the owner does want to add arm support but its not being worked on.
- nodesocket 5y ago
  Curious, is porting complex C++ projects to arm64 just a matter of updating build/CI systems or does it actually involve changing core code and adding branches if (x64) {} ... if (arm64) {}.
  - estebarb 5y ago
    For common programs it's not very difficult, usually just recompile. But if it uses assembly then you are out of luck. Also if it requires a library that uses it. For an OS it is different, you need to reimplement many parts: bootloader, drivers, task scheduler, virtual memory...

purplecats 5y ago

this is really pretty! this was created by one person?

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 5y ago

Previous discussion (5 months ago): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123530

dang 5y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: The Essence operating system at Handmade Seattle 2021 [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29386605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29386605 - Nov 2021 (39 comments) Essence – An Operating System - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123530 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28123530 - Aug 2021 (42 comments)

b0ner_t0ner 5y ago

The UI looks like early Chrome.

markstos 5y ago
It sure does, which I find a weird inspiration for an desktop environment design.
- userbinator 5y ago
  Very ironic to see that along with the tagline "An operating system that respects the user".

nsonha 5y ago

What is a "desktop operating system"? Why do you need to reinvent operating system when all you create is a (rather traditional looking) desktop environment?

codeonline 5y ago
As a learning exercise As a labor of love To scratch an itch To explore an idea Many reasons
- nsonha 5y ago
  that is fine, but one these projects cross some point, the creators have the tendency to forget their motivation being selfish in the first place, and try to promote their creation as if what they had in mind was to solve problem for other people.
  - ksec 5y ago
    Selfish? Seriously, what are you talking about?
    - nsonha 5y ago
      "labor of love To scratch an itch To explore an idea" that by no mean is a bad thing, it just means doing things for themselves, to express, to learn etc, typical of creative work. People do that all the time. However in OSS there is this thing when people feel they need to present their work as useful to others eventhough clearly what drives their work has nothing to do with other peoples' needs, it's just their itch.
      - d_tr 5y ago
        I cannot be inside anyone's mind, but I know that one can have more than one equally strong motives when doing something.
        5y ago

gk1256 5y ago

I like the UI, but I'm disappointed to find that the author is using orthodox C++ instead Modern C++

__float 5y ago
What do you mean by "orthodox C++"?
- ani-ani 5y ago
  "Although the operating system is written in C++, most C++ features are avoided." From https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence/-/blob/master/help/Contributing.md https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence/-/blob/master/help/Contribu...
  - ncmncm 5y ago
    Yes, this is kind of stupid. Certain people have been doing this sort of thing forever. It was never a good idea. Whenever you probe why they thought it was a good idea, all the reasons (where they are expressible at all) turn out to depend on falsehoods. Most usually, though, it amounts to laziness about learning anything new. You can see effective use of Modern C++ in SerenityOS, to excellent effect.
- iqanq 5y ago
  It reminds me of Carmack's subset of C++. In other words, it doesn't suck.
- fault1 5y ago
  Usually orthodox c++ looks something like: https://gist.github.com/bkaradzic/2e39896bc7d8c34e042b https://gist.github.com/bkaradzic/2e39896bc7d8c34e042b this is from bgfx
  - badsectoracula 5y ago
    > UPDATE As of January 14th 2019, Orthodox C++ committee approved use of C++14. So it is basically Modern C++, just a few years later.

the_biot 5y ago

This is an amazing piece of work, but it's clearly a labor of love: this isn't going to have any real-world use any time soon. Where operating systems are headed is more towards security (process isolation, bulletproof input etc), not lightweight GUIs on top of thin kernels like this. Are there any passion (or other) projects that explore this? I know about Qubes, but that's more like a heavy layer on top of a heavy duty GUI, on top of a Linux kernel.

olliej 5y ago
Secure systems are lightweight kernels with thin UI layers, that’s part of how surface reduction is accomplished. And yeah, it’s not going to have real world adoption soon. Neither did linux. Every non-commercial OS starts out as a labour of love. Good luck to them :)
- smoldesu 5y ago
  > Every non-commercial OS starts out as a labour of love. Tell that to Andrew Tanenbaum
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    I think he does love his work.
markstos 5y ago
Spectrum OS, meant be a more usable upgrade from Qubes. Based on NixOS. Currently stuck on plumbing problems. https://spectrum-os.org/ https://spectrum-os.org/ Bheem OS, "a next generation secure operating system." Inspired some by Spectrum. So new they can't keep their blog online. Here's a snapshot of a recent blog post about the security features https://blog.openw3b.org/crosvm-for-os-and-app-virtualization-on-linux/ https://blog.openw3b.org/crosvm-for-os-and-app-virtualizatio...
- walrus01 5y ago
  the main problem I ran into with qubes is that having a xen hypervisor and an nvidia desktop graphics card in use (with proprietary nvidia drivers in use for proper performance) seem to be mutually exclusive. a xen dom0 needs to use the host system RAM in some way that causes kernel panics and crashes when the nvidia DKMS driver is loaded. I would wager that 99% of xen related development is intended, as it should be, for dom0 server environments that will never have a keyboard, mouse or 3D capable video card plugged into the bare metal.

licnep 5y ago

This is insane, I can't imagine how much work went into it. I had a similar idea as a kid, I was pissed at all the bloat consuming my cpu and ram on windows so I wanted to build my own os that would run a single app taking advantage of 100% of the hardware. I learned some assembly and managed to create a bootable floppy disk, then quickly gave up, realizing how much work a functioning os would take...

Sunspark 5y ago
It's a lot of work. One guy pulled it off. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TempleOS
- unixhero 5y ago
  Yes, and several others since.
- busymom0 5y ago
  SerenityOS is another one which was posted recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29270776 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29270776 Video demo: https://vimeo.com/641406697 https://vimeo.com/641406697
  - Aeolun 5y ago
    SerenityOS is great too. But it doesn’t run on real hardware yet I think?
    - exikyut 5y ago
      Apparently it worked on specific hardware configurations a couple years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT-ME3PsKtc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT-ME3PsKtc In terms of general minimal-viable support, that's probably hit-and-miss (perhaps around where Linux distros were at in the early 90s - probably worked, except for everywhere it didn't), particularly with the increasing ossification and variability of BIOS/legacy emulation in current-era systems.

pojntfx 5y ago

This is very cool! Love the "everything is a tab" approach and default icon theme!

pleb_nz 5y ago

This is so amazing. I couldn't even begin to imagine the work that goes into just what's there already.

AbuAssar 5y ago

"No tasks run in the background" This.

genpfault 5y ago

> * Graphics: BGA and SVGA. ...BGA?

erichocean 5y ago

josephcsible 5y ago
Why do you need one?
- defanor 5y ago
  Not GP, but just was about to skim the sources and changed my mind upon seeing GitLab: its UI is sluggish to the point where FF occasionally asks whether it should stop JS execution, at least with larger projects.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

abnercoimbre 5y ago

If you want a fleshed out demo [0], we had the author present at our conference recently. Worth a watch. [0] https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/ https://media.handmade-seattle.com/essence/

myself248 5y ago
Thank you, that's a really great overview. Wow. Just wow. I wish everything in my life was designed like this.
HellsMaddy 5y ago
I wasn't really that interested in this project from the website, but this video sold me. Super cool, wow!
- zw123456 5y ago
  Agreed, the video really impressed me. He mentioned that you can't delete files yet, I am wondering what the idea would be if you delete a file that is open in an app, change it to untitled in the app maybe ? Very impressive, amazing amount of work went into it clearly.
digitalsankhara 5y ago
Thanks for the link. Appreciate the amount of work that has gone into this, very well done to the author(s), super work. Stunning attention to detail - font choice on install, dynamic file renaming, open file highlighting, tabbed windows with apps inside. These felt so intuitive to me as I watched. Vector based UI - excellent choice! Watching the demo brought back memories of OS/2 and BeOS in terms of aesthetics and usability. The theme designer blew me away - it looked like Sketch or Adobe XD in terms of UI prototyping. If this offers a way to draw your UI with vector based tools and have it "attached" to the OS's API then that's really exciting. Further, if this could be extended to a VB style application where one can code in actions, events etc in a user accessible way [1] then I think it would be a killer app for this OS where a user/developer could shape the entire OS to fit the needs of the design. I'm thinking here of a single use OS on a USB stick - for example, a writer's OS where the whole OS/Apps just provide a rich environment for wordsmiths to work in creative isolation. Like the "Zen" mode of many editors, but taken to the next level. Glorious looking dictionaries, pinboards for notes and research etc etc. Design the UI, apps and utilities and compile it all into a single, bootable OS would be wonderful. That would be very satisfying to me the way my mind is wired. [1] To be clear, a language which is approachable by beginners, e.g. BASIC like or some high level scripting language. Also pluggable languages would be very cool for advanced workers.

debdut 5y ago

Pretty neat! All previous personal OS projects didn't have such neat interface. 30 MB ram with such a great interface, kudos :)

kubafu 5y ago
The homepage mentions 30 MB of disk space, and even less RAM. Kudos indeed!

debdut 5y ago

Whoever noticed the simple lists app in place of spreadsheets, mind blowing!

nhooyr 5y ago
Can you clarify what you mean here?

Skunkleton 5y ago

Spent some time reading through the networking stack, scheduler, synchronization, and networking device driver. It was a total breath of fresh air to read code in this area that wasn't a total spaghetti of years of maintenance and feature creep. Really happy to see a project like this!

roeles 5y ago
I've had some classes from Sape Mullender where he showed Plan 9 source code. It was also quite beautiful. Each function fit on 1 slide and was clear enough to need no documentation.

bronlund 5y ago

jbverschoor 5y ago

Very cool. Nice that it runs without all the processes... But that will come at a certain point haha. I like that they implemented composing tabs between different applications. This is the way I try to organize work/projecta/projectb/personal use, but it never works with current osses. Spaces in macOS is actually kind of useless, because certain applications have windows across screens (finder, chrome). Tabbed Finder windows are the most useless thing ever.. It's Apple listening to HN haha. Anyway, screenshot on twitter: https://twitter.com/_nakst/status/1477247856805351425/photo/1 https://twitter.com/_nakst/status/1477247856805351425/photo/... and gitlab https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence https://gitlab.com/nakst/essence

divs1210 5y ago
> Tabbed Finder windows are the most useless thing ever. Hard disagree. I use them all the time.
- jbverschoor 5y ago
  In what way?
- mromanuk 5y ago
  I don't use finder tabs much. I just use them to create a new tab, when I need to copy something inside a directory without losing my current "state". I tend to use finder tabs very differently than the browser tabs where I can have many different websites, but later I tend to forget why I have those there. I'm glad that MacOS can restore everything pretty well after a logout/login. A major focus of OS should be on managing these "work state" through new UI paradigms/tools. edit: typos
kevincox 5y ago
> Tabbed Finder windows are the most useless thing ever.. I'm glad I'm not the only one. I had to switch off of Nautilus because it kept trying to make me open things in new tabs instead of new windows. The thing is that I don't use the file manager much and 9/10 times I want to open directories is because I want to move files between them or less often visually compare which doesn't work well with tabs.

phendrenad2 5y ago

There are a lot of experimental/hobby OSs coming out recently, and it's great to see new ideas. I'd love to see more experimentation with stable driver API/ABIs. Decoupling drivers from the kernel might improve hardware support, because those with deep hardware knowledge could come in, write a driver, and then no one would ever have to update it just because of kernel changes.

fairramone 5y ago

To the author: I just wanted to say this is amazing. Thank you for working on this and I'm looking forward to running this on hardware one day.

zoom6628 5y ago

This is very cool and minmlst. Agree that desktops carry ever increasing amounts of stuff and the word is not necessarily better because of it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

robertoandred 5y ago

Can Windows/Linux not rename a file while it’s open, show a folder’s size, or rename a document from within its app window?

bobske4 5y ago

Does it run Skyrim?

pmarreck 5y ago

New OS’es are sorely needed IMHO.

pjmlp 5y ago

Why I see a new OS I always like to see what it brings to the table, specially if they take the effort of not being yet another POSIX clone written in C, without anything else to brag about. So it is nice that it makes use of C++ and there are some frameworks already like the GUI stack, however this is missing from the website.

busymom0 5y ago

Is there a way to run this or SerenityOS (another indie developed OS) on mobile devices? Like on an android phone?

faisal_ksa 5y ago

It looks very cool

starbugs 5y ago

Amazing work! I just watched the author's video about the UI features: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxt-tQ5BtM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxt-tQ5BtM The app in a tab approach seems really neat. I guess if big tech decides to stop developing new useful features, we will have to start doing it on our own.

gjvc 5y ago

This is a Jobsian-quality presentation. Well done, Nakst!

pshirshov 5y ago

That's cool. Though that's C/C++ again, unmanaged memory can't be considered safe in 2021. We need different things.

cartesius13 5y ago
This type of comment is getting so old I wonder what can be done about it. Maybe the reason why we don't have "different things" is because users of these so called safe languages are too busy arguing online about how safe their programs are instead of actually writing anything worthwhile. Meanwhile operating systems will continue to be written primarily in C/C++ for the forseeable future
- pshirshov 5y ago
  In case you check what I'm doing with my safe language you may be surprised. That's something new and worthwhile. Not an OS unfortunately, I would be happy to work on that but I can't live from that. > Meanwhile operating systems will continue to be written primarily in C/C++ for the forseeable future And we will continue reading about lifes ruined by bugs and people killed by exploits. There is no sustainable future with unsafe foundation.
  - tekknik 5y ago
    > And we will continue reading about lifes ruined by bugs and people killed by exploits. There is no sustainable future with unsafe foundation. Really? people die because of c++? it’s pretty hard to take the rust crew seriously if this is the point of view.
    - pshirshov 5y ago
      They do. At least some zero-days were used by some state actors to track, detain and kill people. Also I don't like Rust.
      - tekknik 5y ago

jokoon 5y ago

I love minimalist stuff, but I don't really believe this is a good idea. It's not compatible with a lot of things. Sure it's cool, but the problem will always be the lack of open hardware. Personally I will always be more curious about smartphone OS made from scratch. The only think I want right now, is to use old smartphones with a lightweight OS.

UltraViolence 5y ago
Yes, hardware support will always be a problem unless there's a large uptake. Developers should therefore focus on more hardware support instead of adding unnecessary features.

UltraViolence 5y ago

Is this OS a fork of SerenityOS (also completely written from scratch in C++)? I'm amazed how many single person or small team developed operating systems are out there. Another one I like is RedoxOS (written in Rust) and Resea (microkernel written in C). Also, there's KolibriOS (written entirely in Assembler).

davidgerard 5y ago

You definitely need to watch the video of the OS in action. Ten minutes well spent.

Santosh83 5y ago

So many interesting/fascinating concepts and ideas that will remain relegated to niche communities because of basically one problem: lack of drivers. This is the problem that must be solved if we ever want to move away from the dominance of a few OSes "too big to fail" and their million compromises to a thriving field where competent programmers can create new OSes as easily as now they can create new apps.

torginus 5y ago
I wonder if this could be solved by picking a widely available but fairly stable platform for it - like a Raspberry Pi, and making sure it works there. Atm, it seems like it's an x86-based OS, so I'm not sure how difficult would it be to port it to ARM.
- mysterydip 5y ago
  This is a really good idea. If I was making a hobby OS (someday!), this is the route I would choose.
- scoutt 5y ago
  > I wonder if this could be solved by picking a widely available but fairly stable platform for it. For buses and basic IO it might be a solution. For a broader picture, it may be not. For example: your favorite USB device that requires a custom driver won't work (like a USB-to-Serial FTDI chip). Starting from there, now imagine giving support for every printer in existence.
southerntofu 5y ago
Unfortunately this will likely continue, as hardware vendors sacrifice both the environment and human rights (quasi-slavery in the mines/factories, as well as user freedoms) in the quest for profit. On the topic of drivers and specifications, I strongly recommend a talk entitled "It's time for the OS to rediscover hardware" [0]. If you prefer a written form, "OK Lenovo, we need to talk" is a great article on the same topics. [1] [0] https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-keynote https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi21/presentation/fri-ke... [1] https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/mmu_man/2021-10-04_ok_lenovo_we_need_to_talk/ https://www.haiku-os.org/blog/mmu_man/2021-10-04_ok_lenovo_w...

crawl_soever 5y ago

This is part of the handmade software movement. An effort to focus down on elegant software development using primitives rather than generic libraries and testing the status quo. Exciting to see this project move along!

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