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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 head

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.
  - beardog 5y ago
    The reason isn't so much that xen doesn't support it but more so that graphics cards are not very well intended for isolation. Correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think you're supposed to compute 1 thing on a gpu and expect another thing to not get access. In recent time Qubes has made progress on making a GPU VM where you can compute on a secondary GPU, but it only works for amd currently. I use nvidia every day with qubes, but just for display output. I sometimes see memory leaks where it will draw screen buffers from booting alternate OSes on another drive.
    - walrus01 5y ago
      yes that as well, I would doubt highly that the people at nvidia writing the driver for their pci-e desktop graphics cards (in my case was an NVS 510) are putting much consideration into things like xen. the card hardware and driver design is intended for single-user environments...
- slater 5y ago
  Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20220113063412/https://blog.openw3b.org/crosvm-for-os-and-app-virtualization-on-linux/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220113063412/https://blog.open...
- frozenport 5y ago
  >> Currently stuck on plumbing problems. As is everything written in nix!
EGreg 5y ago
Well if you are looking for a Social Operating System… https://github.com/Qbix/Platform https://github.com/Qbix/Platform Labor of love for a decade
- hulitu 5y ago
  " There are lots of frameworks out there for making websites. You've probably encountered them. Well, Qbix is different. It was designed from the ground up to power social apps.". To me it looks more like a web app than an OS.
  - EGreg 5y ago
    That’s because you’re seeing web apps built on it. Kind of like MacPaint is an App but MacOS is an OS
beardog 5y ago
There was SubgraphOS which used namespaces, but it seems pretty dead. Qubes is the best and most currently complete thing i've seen (In the last couple years its also made progress supporting GPU domain). Its not perfect and has some controversial opinions like default passwordless sudo in VMs, but it is still far ahead of most distro's security. For me Qubes 4.1 performs well though I have it on an m.2 and have plenty of ram. It boots quickly, with the only seriously slow thing being VM startup. I'm able to do all my dev work and use Windows for work related things on it as well as have disposable browsers for banking and sketchy sites.
- yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
  > There was SubgraphOS which used namespaces, but it seems pretty dead. Knowing nothing more than what you've just told me: That doesn't sound like a bad thing, IMO; if you're using that kind of system, you probably care a lot about security, and I'm not sure I'd trust a shared-kernel system against malicious code. (I appreciate that other people may make that trade-off very differently)
stackbutterflow 5y ago
Redox: https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/ Written in Rust.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
squarefoot 5y ago
> this isn't going to have any real-world use any time soon. If it was ported to ARM and had a decent GUI interface builder, it could become a killer OS for making interface panels for appliances. Some manufacturers are repurposing Android for this task, however this forces them to use much powerful hardware, and their UX is still laggy.
- digitalsankhara 5y ago
  Agreed. I do think there is plenty of real-world application for Essence. I have some professional experience in this space (forth, embedded SBCs, micros) and a number of times designs got rejected on production costs because of the need to have hardware specified to the needs of the OS/GUI and not the small control program running in tens of KB of memory. On first glance, Essence looks like it makes efficient use of hardware resources and, as you say, an ARM port makes sense. I can visualise an OS version of web packer type tools where you rollup your app/gui and just enough OS to run them on the target. I can say that people who I've worked for would pay good money for that sort of kit. Not suggesting closed source, but in terms of the usual caveat to management - paid support, open source longevity etc.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  The easiness to hire contractors to take care of programming the respective apps wins over the possibility of cheaper hardware, that is why they are moving into Android and not a POSIX OS with Qt or something like that.
throwawaywat251 5y ago
Fuchsia is open source, though it's Google, so don't know how open. Wikipedia lists licenses BSD, MIT and Apache 2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)
fsflover 5y ago
> I know about Qubes, but that's more like a heavy layer on top of a heavy duty GUI Actually Qubes has relatively small CPU overhead due to its utilization of hardware VT-d virtualization. RAM usage is huge though. Source: using it as my daily driver. I wonder if I can have a Qubes VM with Essence working.

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.
- beardog 5y ago
  The reason isn't so much that xen doesn't support it but more so that graphics cards are not very well intended for isolation. Correct me if i'm wrong but i don't think you're supposed to compute 1 thing on a gpu and expect another thing to not get access. In recent time Qubes has made progress on making a GPU VM where you can compute on a secondary GPU, but it only works for amd currently. I use nvidia every day with qubes, but just for display output. I sometimes see memory leaks where it will draw screen buffers from booting alternate OSes on another drive.
  - walrus01 5y ago
    yes that as well, I would doubt highly that the people at nvidia writing the driver for their pci-e desktop graphics cards (in my case was an NVS 510) are putting much consideration into things like xen. the card hardware and driver design is intended for single-user environments...
slater 5y ago
Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20220113063412/https://blog.openw3b.org/crosvm-for-os-and-app-virtualization-on-linux/ https://web.archive.org/web/20220113063412/https://blog.open...
frozenport 5y ago
>> Currently stuck on plumbing problems. As is everything written in nix!

EGreg 5y ago

Well if you are looking for a Social Operating System… https://github.com/Qbix/Platform https://github.com/Qbix/Platform Labor of love for a decade

hulitu 5y ago
" There are lots of frameworks out there for making websites. You've probably encountered them. Well, Qbix is different. It was designed from the ground up to power social apps.". To me it looks more like a web app than an OS.
- EGreg 5y ago
  That’s because you’re seeing web apps built on it. Kind of like MacPaint is an App but MacOS is an OS

beardog 5y ago

There was SubgraphOS which used namespaces, but it seems pretty dead. Qubes is the best and most currently complete thing i've seen (In the last couple years its also made progress supporting GPU domain). Its not perfect and has some controversial opinions like default passwordless sudo in VMs, but it is still far ahead of most distro's security. For me Qubes 4.1 performs well though I have it on an m.2 and have plenty of ram. It boots quickly, with the only seriously slow thing being VM startup. I'm able to do all my dev work and use Windows for work related things on it as well as have disposable browsers for banking and sketchy sites.

yjftsjthsd-h 5y ago
> There was SubgraphOS which used namespaces, but it seems pretty dead. Knowing nothing more than what you've just told me: That doesn't sound like a bad thing, IMO; if you're using that kind of system, you probably care a lot about security, and I'm not sure I'd trust a shared-kernel system against malicious code. (I appreciate that other people may make that trade-off very differently)

stackbutterflow 5y ago

Redox: https://www.redox-os.org/ https://www.redox-os.org/ Written in Rust.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

squarefoot 5y ago

> this isn't going to have any real-world use any time soon. If it was ported to ARM and had a decent GUI interface builder, it could become a killer OS for making interface panels for appliances. Some manufacturers are repurposing Android for this task, however this forces them to use much powerful hardware, and their UX is still laggy.

digitalsankhara 5y ago
Agreed. I do think there is plenty of real-world application for Essence. I have some professional experience in this space (forth, embedded SBCs, micros) and a number of times designs got rejected on production costs because of the need to have hardware specified to the needs of the OS/GUI and not the small control program running in tens of KB of memory. On first glance, Essence looks like it makes efficient use of hardware resources and, as you say, an ARM port makes sense. I can visualise an OS version of web packer type tools where you rollup your app/gui and just enough OS to run them on the target. I can say that people who I've worked for would pay good money for that sort of kit. Not suggesting closed source, but in terms of the usual caveat to management - paid support, open source longevity etc.
pjmlp 5y ago
The easiness to hire contractors to take care of programming the respective apps wins over the possibility of cheaper hardware, that is why they are moving into Android and not a POSIX OS with Qt or something like that.

throwawaywat251 5y ago

Fuchsia is open source, though it's Google, so don't know how open. Wikipedia lists licenses BSD, MIT and Apache 2.0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuchsia_(operating_system)

fsflover 5y ago

> I know about Qubes, but that's more like a heavy layer on top of a heavy duty GUI Actually Qubes has relatively small CPU overhead due to its utilization of hardware VT-d virtualization. RAM usage is huge though. Source: using it as my daily driver. I wonder if I can have a Qubes VM with Essence working.