4 ms·

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?

by nsonha 5y ago

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.
        nsonha 5y ago
        they can, but don't have to, again there is nothing wrong with doing thing for yourself. Saying people always have others' interest in mind when doing side project does not reflect reality. Many of these projects are built with minimal feedback, so if they solve other people's problem it's by coincidence. I'm talking past the project in discussion of course, I don't know anything about it.
      - badsectoracula 5y ago
        And that is a problem because...? Remember that one of the original motivators behind "Open Source" is scratching your own itch.
        nsonha 5y ago
        > the original motivators behind "Open Source" is scratching your own itch. that's what I said, and you repeated it, as if it's some new insight or supports some argument. Is there not an issue in OSS where thing that should not be used in commercial context, are used in commercial context, they break, then people blame the adopters for expecting too much from OSS? Rarely the other side of the coin is addressed which is creators (not all of them) went out of their way to promote adoption of these things. Here is an analogy: art design chair sold as office work chair. Of course if you are smart you would not buy them because over time the ergonomic would kill you. But that doesn't mean no one would. When some gullible people buys these chair, you say: idiots. However, I bet you also think about the people who made these chairs paid for TV commercials that never show the ergonomics of the thing, and question their responsibility. Now replace "art" with "hobbyist software"
        d_tr 5y ago
        You are saying a different thing now. Your previous comment touched a philosophical matter. Now it's about using, in a commercial product, OSS software people develop in their own time and that they might promote too much (I read this as "irresponsibly"). Both of these do not apply only to this kind of software and even if they did, what is the point of having this discussion (which could be an interesting one) here? If anything, we should encourage people that choose do this sort of work in this day and age.
        nsonha 5y ago
        the conversation derailed long time ago, I originally commented about why they need a new OS because it seems too me it's easier to just create a DE.
  - gjvc 5y ago
    That's exactly right -- they put the work in to fix the problem they had in mind.
yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> Why do you need to reinvent operating system when all you create is a (rather traditional looking) desktop environment? Because a lot of the things they're doing are vanishingly unlikely to work on an existing system. (I discussed my breakdown of whether features could be portable more above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29952283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29952283)
Ostrogodsky 5y ago
Why would you write a novel after Dostoevski? Why would you write a song after Chico Buarque? Why anybody would pay football after Pelé? And so on and so forth...
hungryforcodes 5y ago
He says on GitHub that "Essence will happily run on low-powered hardware. It can take less than 30MB of drive space, and boot with even less RAM" which is pretty cool. ESP32s already have 8MB of RAM and access to SD cards. With 16MB could it run this? That would be amazing. It's in a very interesting little spot between no OS (ala Arduino / Espruino), and an OS like Armbian, which is just huge really -- too big to fit in a microcontroller properly.
d_tr 5y ago
Microsoft has been reinventing their GUI constantly starting at the API level. Maybe they 'll get it right after a few more tens of billions of dollars. Meanwhile when I open the file manager in Windows 11 with Microsoft's own dark theme, it flashes white before it settles. I guess it is hard to get it right when you are swimming in an ocean full of your own excrement, and even harder when you have other priorities, like inventing more garbage protocols on top of your "Chromium: Reskinned" browser to make it harder for me to select a different default web browser.

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?

by 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.
      - nsonha 5y ago
        they can, but don't have to, again there is nothing wrong with doing thing for yourself. Saying people always have others' interest in mind when doing side project does not reflect reality. Many of these projects are built with minimal feedback, so if they solve other people's problem it's by coincidence. I'm talking past the project in discussion of course, I don't know anything about it.
    - badsectoracula 5y ago
      And that is a problem because...? Remember that one of the original motivators behind "Open Source" is scratching your own itch.
      - nsonha 5y ago
        > the original motivators behind "Open Source" is scratching your own itch. that's what I said, and you repeated it, as if it's some new insight or supports some argument. Is there not an issue in OSS where thing that should not be used in commercial context, are used in commercial context, they break, then people blame the adopters for expecting too much from OSS? Rarely the other side of the coin is addressed which is creators (not all of them) went out of their way to promote adoption of these things. Here is an analogy: art design chair sold as office work chair. Of course if you are smart you would not buy them because over time the ergonomic would kill you. But that doesn't mean no one would. When some gullible people buys these chair, you say: idiots. However, I bet you also think about the people who made these chairs paid for TV commercials that never show the ergonomics of the thing, and question their responsibility. Now replace "art" with "hobbyist software"
        d_tr 5y ago
        You are saying a different thing now. Your previous comment touched a philosophical matter. Now it's about using, in a commercial product, OSS software people develop in their own time and that they might promote too much (I read this as "irresponsibly"). Both of these do not apply only to this kind of software and even if they did, what is the point of having this discussion (which could be an interesting one) here? If anything, we should encourage people that choose do this sort of work in this day and age.
        nsonha 5y ago
        the conversation derailed long time ago, I originally commented about why they need a new OS because it seems too me it's easier to just create a DE.
- gjvc 5y ago
  That's exactly right -- they put the work in to fix the problem they had in mind.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago

> Why do you need to reinvent operating system when all you create is a (rather traditional looking) desktop environment? Because a lot of the things they're doing are vanishingly unlikely to work on an existing system. (I discussed my breakdown of whether features could be portable more above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29952283 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29952283)

Ostrogodsky 5y ago

Why would you write a novel after Dostoevski? Why would you write a song after Chico Buarque? Why anybody would pay football after Pelé? And so on and so forth...

hungryforcodes 5y ago

He says on GitHub that "Essence will happily run on low-powered hardware. It can take less than 30MB of drive space, and boot with even less RAM" which is pretty cool. ESP32s already have 8MB of RAM and access to SD cards. With 16MB could it run this? That would be amazing. It's in a very interesting little spot between no OS (ala Arduino / Espruino), and an OS like Armbian, which is just huge really -- too big to fit in a microcontroller properly.

d_tr 5y ago

Microsoft has been reinventing their GUI constantly starting at the API level. Maybe they 'll get it right after a few more tens of billions of dollars. Meanwhile when I open the file manager in Windows 11 with Microsoft's own dark theme, it flashes white before it settles. I guess it is hard to get it right when you are swimming in an ocean full of your own excrement, and even harder when you have other priorities, like inventing more garbage protocols on top of your "Chromium: Reskinned" browser to make it harder for me to select a different default web browser.