8 ms·

Snakeware – Linux distro with Python userspace inspired by Commodore 64

182 points by marcodiego 4y ago

jonjacky 4y ago
Previously, Jun 2020, 158 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391380
pipeline_peak 4y ago
They should integrate Portage from Gentoo as it’s written in Python. Then they could have a precompiled package manager based off it. The same way FreeBSD had Pkg and Ports systems.
- unsafecast 4y ago
  I don't think that aligns with their goals.
ohiovr 4y ago
For the last month or so I was thinking it would be awesome to have a desktop with a lot of the most common GUI utilities written in python so that average programmers could have a stab at customizing it for their needs. But this is too much work for me and I'm kind of following a different dream right now.
- sprak 4y ago
  An easy modified Desktop Environment written in Python was one of the goals of the "One Laptop per Child" project. They succeeded[1], it's now separate from the hardware and can run on anything from your phone, raspberry pi, regular computer and the OLPC-machines. (Another goal was better sandboxing bitween apps. Their project was called Bitfrost and was in many ways the first step towards flatpak that we use today) [1]: https://www.sugarlabs.org/ https://www.sugarlabs.org/
- mhd 4y ago
  I think a few of us thought about that. It seems the "Hello" System[1] wants to got that way. Write most applications in PyQt, have the source somewhat accesible (I would think a direct menu item or button in the "About" dialog would improve on the UX of that, though) Not sure whether I'd personally go with PyQt. (Or a post-1.x Python feature set in general). What would be neat is some kind of "My first Github" social coding platform, where you could push your homegrown new features, discuss & share them. [1]: https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/user/components/applications.html https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/user/components/applicati...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kristopolous 4y ago
  Nobody seriously goes into things intentionally making them obtuse. The current complexity is a product of poor design from a sincere effort for simplicity. Trying to be easy, lightweight, simple, is the silver bullet way to create a mess and it's why when you see those words in software names it's always just a sprawling stochastic tangle. The easiest way to avoid the mess is to make things dumb.
bb88 4y ago
Did xonsh ever take off? I was using it briefly a while back, and I kinda sorta enjoyed being able to write python code directly in the shell.
- adelrune 4y ago
  I don't think it has "taken off" but last time I looked it was very usable and feature rich and I found no reason not to use it.
  - bb88 4y ago
    I'm going to look at it again. It looks like they weren't forwarding keyboard interrupts to executables gracefully. But instead capturing them themselves. I haven't needed to intercept ctrl-c and forward it on in a program ever, but it seems like that should be a basic thing a shell should do easily enough.
askvictor 4y ago
Ooh, nice; I had half a mind to do something like this a few years ago (called PyOS), but never had the time. My rationale was that getting python code running on boot on a raspberry pi required learning about Linux sysadmin, rather than just coding (which, for high-school students, is important to make it quick and easy to see results). Micropython does this - drop a main.py and/or boot.py and it runs on boot; or you have a repl. Why not on a fully fledged computer?
daitangio 4y ago
Nice. I think a RasaperryPI 4 version would be nice... See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289506
- AlexeyBrin 4y ago
  It already works on RPi4, they provide an image for RPi and the demo video from the linked page was recorded on RPi4.
dTal 4y ago
I love this concept. I've always wanted to see this, but in Scheme.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- paride5745 4y ago
  GuixSD and Emacs as shell or EXWM for window manager achieve a similar result.
boffinAudio 4y ago
I've always wanted to take antirez' LOAD81 and turn it into a full-blown user execution environment/desktop: http://github.com/antirez/load81.git http://github.com/antirez/load81.git It also has a C64-inspired interface to a REPL (Lua, yay!) - and it wouldn't need a lot of effort to expose more services to the VM for programmers to use in building better apps. Would be cool to have a sophisticated desktop environment entirely based on Lua scripting .. especially with a built-in editor. The fulfillment of a lot of dreams.
thesuperbigfrog 4y ago
Very cool project. There were similar ones done with Perl: https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol5_2/tpj0502-0009.html https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol5_2/tpj0502-0009.html https://blog.sudobits.com/2012/08/18/perl-linux-a-linux-distro-for-perl-lovers/ https://blog.sudobits.com/2012/08/18/perl-linux-a-linux-dist... All of these projects seem to be reaching for an integrated programming language / operating system like the Lisp machines of yore. It was before my time, so I never got to use one, but from what I have read, they were quite amazing to use.
- indigochill 4y ago
  Smalltalk also did this. These days my impression is the most active tendril is https://pharo.org/ https://pharo.org/. What I find especially interesting about that relative to this Python distro is that the Pharo executable runs in a host OS (e.g. whatever your daily driver is) and can maintain different image files for different Pharo system states. So not only do you have the integrated language/OS (which is very cool on its own), but you also have something that feels like Docker containers. And it even goes beyond containers because those image files really are the state of the system at the time they're saved, which means you can ask for that file in a bug report and get guaranteed bug reproduction, which is pretty incredible.
  - tyingq 4y ago
    Sounds like maybe they took inspiration from the old Lisp machines and session saving, like this: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw61/IDE-M/html/ide-m-104.htm#pgfId-865809 http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw61/IDE-M/html/ide-m...
    - bitwize 4y ago
      No -- the old Lisp machines were inspired by Smalltalk! A complete environment with persistent heap images was one of the innovations brought by Xerox PARC's Smalltalk research.
      - 4y ago
cmrdporcupine 4y ago
Nice More "authentic" (but also way less useful) if it booted to "bare metal" with no OS, just a Python (or similar) unikernel. So one could do peek/poke, right to the hardware etc.
- shakna 4y ago
  Like MicroPython [0]? I use that for a few hobby projects. It works fairly well for all the little things, like the weather station I built with it. Being able to drop to REPL and rewrite functions on the fly is a little magic, too. [0] https://micropython.org/ https://micropython.org/

182 points by marcodiego 4y ago

Previously, Jun 2020, 158 comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391380 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23391380

pipeline_peak 4y ago

They should integrate Portage from Gentoo as it’s written in Python. Then they could have a precompiled package manager based off it. The same way FreeBSD had Pkg and Ports systems.

unsafecast 4y ago
I don't think that aligns with their goals.

ohiovr 4y ago

For the last month or so I was thinking it would be awesome to have a desktop with a lot of the most common GUI utilities written in python so that average programmers could have a stab at customizing it for their needs. But this is too much work for me and I'm kind of following a different dream right now.

sprak 4y ago
An easy modified Desktop Environment written in Python was one of the goals of the "One Laptop per Child" project. They succeeded[1], it's now separate from the hardware and can run on anything from your phone, raspberry pi, regular computer and the OLPC-machines. (Another goal was better sandboxing bitween apps. Their project was called Bitfrost and was in many ways the first step towards flatpak that we use today) [1]: https://www.sugarlabs.org/ https://www.sugarlabs.org/
mhd 4y ago
I think a few of us thought about that. It seems the "Hello" System[1] wants to got that way. Write most applications in PyQt, have the source somewhat accesible (I would think a direct menu item or button in the "About" dialog would improve on the UX of that, though) Not sure whether I'd personally go with PyQt. (Or a post-1.x Python feature set in general). What would be neat is some kind of "My first Github" social coding platform, where you could push your homegrown new features, discuss & share them. [1]: https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/user/components/applications.html https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/user/components/applicati...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kristopolous 4y ago
Nobody seriously goes into things intentionally making them obtuse. The current complexity is a product of poor design from a sincere effort for simplicity. Trying to be easy, lightweight, simple, is the silver bullet way to create a mess and it's why when you see those words in software names it's always just a sprawling stochastic tangle. The easiest way to avoid the mess is to make things dumb.

bb88 4y ago

Did xonsh ever take off? I was using it briefly a while back, and I kinda sorta enjoyed being able to write python code directly in the shell.

adelrune 4y ago
I don't think it has "taken off" but last time I looked it was very usable and feature rich and I found no reason not to use it.
- bb88 4y ago
  I'm going to look at it again. It looks like they weren't forwarding keyboard interrupts to executables gracefully. But instead capturing them themselves. I haven't needed to intercept ctrl-c and forward it on in a program ever, but it seems like that should be a basic thing a shell should do easily enough.

askvictor 4y ago

Ooh, nice; I had half a mind to do something like this a few years ago (called PyOS), but never had the time. My rationale was that getting python code running on boot on a raspberry pi required learning about Linux sysadmin, rather than just coding (which, for high-school students, is important to make it quick and easy to see results). Micropython does this - drop a main.py and/or boot.py and it runs on boot; or you have a repl. Why not on a fully fledged computer?

daitangio 4y ago

Nice. I think a RasaperryPI 4 version would be nice... See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289506 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28289506

AlexeyBrin 4y ago
It already works on RPi4, they provide an image for RPi and the demo video from the linked page was recorded on RPi4.

dTal 4y ago

I love this concept. I've always wanted to see this, but in Scheme.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
paride5745 4y ago
GuixSD and Emacs as shell or EXWM for window manager achieve a similar result.

boffinAudio 4y ago

I've always wanted to take antirez' LOAD81 and turn it into a full-blown user execution environment/desktop: http://github.com/antirez/load81.git http://github.com/antirez/load81.git It also has a C64-inspired interface to a REPL (Lua, yay!) - and it wouldn't need a lot of effort to expose more services to the VM for programmers to use in building better apps. Would be cool to have a sophisticated desktop environment entirely based on Lua scripting .. especially with a built-in editor. The fulfillment of a lot of dreams.

thesuperbigfrog 4y ago

Very cool project. There were similar ones done with Perl: https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol5_2/tpj0502-0009.html https://www.foo.be/docs/tpj/issues/vol5_2/tpj0502-0009.html https://blog.sudobits.com/2012/08/18/perl-linux-a-linux-distro-for-perl-lovers/ https://blog.sudobits.com/2012/08/18/perl-linux-a-linux-dist... All of these projects seem to be reaching for an integrated programming language / operating system like the Lisp machines of yore. It was before my time, so I never got to use one, but from what I have read, they were quite amazing to use.

indigochill 4y ago
Smalltalk also did this. These days my impression is the most active tendril is https://pharo.org/ https://pharo.org/. What I find especially interesting about that relative to this Python distro is that the Pharo executable runs in a host OS (e.g. whatever your daily driver is) and can maintain different image files for different Pharo system states. So not only do you have the integrated language/OS (which is very cool on its own), but you also have something that feels like Docker containers. And it even goes beyond containers because those image files really are the state of the system at the time they're saved, which means you can ask for that file in a bug report and get guaranteed bug reproduction, which is pretty incredible.
- tyingq 4y ago
  Sounds like maybe they took inspiration from the old Lisp machines and session saving, like this: http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw61/IDE-M/html/ide-m-104.htm#pgfId-865809 http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/lw61/IDE-M/html/ide-m...
  - bitwize 4y ago
    No -- the old Lisp machines were inspired by Smalltalk! A complete environment with persistent heap images was one of the innovations brought by Xerox PARC's Smalltalk research.
    - 4y ago

cmrdporcupine 4y ago

Nice More "authentic" (but also way less useful) if it booted to "bare metal" with no OS, just a Python (or similar) unikernel. So one could do peek/poke, right to the hardware etc.

shakna 4y ago
Like MicroPython [0]? I use that for a few hobby projects. It works fairly well for all the little things, like the weather station I built with it. Being able to drop to REPL and rewrite functions on the fly is a little magic, too. [0] https://micropython.org/ https://micropython.org/