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How I make a living working on SerenityOS

936 points by awesomekling 4y ago

longrod 4y ago
Thank you for sharing Andreas! It's absolutely phenomenal how far along SerenityOS has come and it's also a peek at how FOSS is supposed to be - a way to learn, hack on something fun, share it with others but without any huge expectations. Building the next unicorn is awesome and all but in my opinion, this has it's own place. I am glad some people out there get to work on their dream projects and actually can make a living out it. Kudos to all the supporters, obviously. I also love how focused SerenityOS is and what kind of audience it caters to. Some people might say, "make it for everyone" but that doesn't work most of the time. Having a focused audience allows a lot of freedom in the way of UX/DX, docs, communication etc. So I am glad Andreas set that down upfront.
- tootie 4y ago
  This is the thing that confused me. What exactly is the audience for this? It seems like more of an intricate art project than a useful piece of software.
  - ativzzz 4y ago
    The audience is the people who contribute to the art project and want to be part of the community. A community that serves itself for no other reason than to serve itself. Seems like a good time to me
    - hamreh0076 4y ago
  - azakai 4y ago
    It is exactly that - an art project. Maybe it will also be useful some day, maybe not, but to me at least that's not the point. It's really cool that we can fund some art projects like this in the software industry! Not a perfect comparison, but it's like how some people approach math simply for the beauty of it. That's enough of a reason! And sometimes that math ends up useful too - maybe because math has a connection to reality. So does software - it runs.
    - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
      I do that. I write software that I like, and want to use. I also have some experience with the Recovery community, and most of my work is actually designed for that community. I wish him the very best. I wonder if he uses any of the stuff I wrote?
      - savingsPossible 4y ago
        Recovery as in recovery from drugs? Or from data loss?
        ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        Consider the context. I do things One Day at A Time, and More Will Be Revealed.
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  - trashburger 4y ago
    https://justforfunnoreally.dev/ https://justforfunnoreally.dev/
  - BirAdam 4y ago
    Well, more or less, at the moment it’s for fun and art. It’s recreational. Odd thing is that SerenityOS has made so much progress so quickly that it may soon be a viable daily-use operating system.
    - mysterydip 4y ago
      I for one am looking forward to that. The pace of OS development has been inspiring, to say nothing of the appliations (a usable browser?!)
  - traverseda 4y ago
    It has a nice consistent ui toolkit that seems highly productive. I hope the user-space (window manager, default apps) eventually becomes an alternative linux user-space.
  - ar_lan 4y ago
    I was wondering the same. Nothing against the project, but from reading about it I’m confused why I would choose this over my preferred OS (and therefore how it makes enough money). But then again there are so many distros it’s not that surprising.
    - breakfastduck 4y ago
      It continues to baffle me how a newsboard called hackernews has countless people who are incapable of seeing the value in making something for the sake of making it.
      - ar_lan 4y ago
        Good for you!
        anon2020dot00 4y ago
        df
        ar_lan 4y ago
        eg
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  - severak_cz 4y ago
    This has educational value. If you are wondering "how this part of OS would be implemented" you can look up how Serenity team did that. Also even more interesting is trying to implement this for yourself (for Serenity), if you are brave enough.
    - hamreh0076 4y ago
  - pushedx 4y ago
    > On Monday, August 26, 1991 l 6:12:08 PM UTC+12, Linus Benedict Torvalds wrote: > Hello everybody out there using minix - > I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and > professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing > since april, and is starting to get ready.
    - klabb3 4y ago
      Goosebumps.
  - longrod 4y ago
    The audience is hackers as it should be. You can't cater to daily users at this stage. You want people who can potentially fix the bugs they come across or add the features they miss. A usable OS is no joke and it certainly isn't a one man project. If enough people get on this, it might actually become daily-usable.
gigel82 4y ago
It's surprising you can live off $4200 / month in Sweden (after tax I presume that's about $2000 / month). That is below minimum wage in a place like Seattle for example ($14.49 / hour ~ $2,500 / month gross).
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  It's on the low-end of average for a software developer salary in Sweden. Sort of thing you'd earn with 5 years of experience. Cost of living matters a lot when "translating" income.
  - Raydovsky 4y ago
    If you're earning 1.8k eur in Sweden with 5 years of experience, you're doing something really wrong. In Latvia, a much poorer EU country you're looking st 2.5k at least woth 5 years of exp.
    - marginalia_nu 4y ago
      May figures may be a few years out of date, but it's not that far off. Also varies with where you live. Stockholm pays a bit more, but is also significantly more expensive to live in. This is also assuming you're employed. Contractors will probably at least double that.
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  - tqh 4y ago
    It is not. If you studied three years at University you should ask for at least 35 300 kr a month before taxes. If you worked for five years you should earn a lot more. See https://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/lon/lonestatistik/ingangslon https://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/lon/lonestatistik/ingangsl... So donate more...
marginalia_nu 4y ago
It's interesting to see some people are making it work living off these types of projects. > I created a Patreon back in April of 2019. I felt a bit silly at the time, with thoughts like “who do I think I am” and “what am I even doing” echoing in my head. I still did it though. I was too curious to see what would happen, even though I expected nothing. Amazingly, a couple of people actually signed up! I'm definitely relating to this experience. Feels hella pretentious and weird to set up donations. Was likewise surprised to actually get people sending me money. I guess the moral of the story is if you build cool things, people are willing to chip in.
- IncRnd 4y ago
  > Feels hella pretentious and weird to set up donations. I'm not sure of your location, but in the US these are not donations but income on which taxes need to be paid.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    Yeah they're not de jure donations, but de facto.
  - treffer 4y ago
    Germany, IANAL but was curious because I've seen it differently here: "donations" that are clearly not tax deductible, the only real test for that wird in some sense. Lawyer Google tells me donations are just money gifts. Some organizations that are approved can hand you a recipe that allows you to tax deduct it. And I think those organizations also don't need to pay taxes on it. TIL. Not sure how well that resonates in Sweden though.
    - mysterydip 4y ago
      In the US a 501(c)(3) organization is considered "non-profit" and gifts to them are tax-deductible. I worked at one once and we had a paper we used at stores to pay no sales tax.
      - 4y ago
version_five 4y ago
How much time or focus is associated with "money making" activities would be my question? And is it less than it would take to earn than money part time and focus the rest on serenity OS? I'd also add that this model - contribution supported - may work for people who have already built something great, but it dangerous to aspire too because some people just end up being beggars and optimizing for trying to get handouts ("buy me a coffee") instead of putting their project first* (to be clear, I don't think that's the case here) *edit: not a unique problem to this model, same thing happens with "founders" trying to optimize for VC money instead of making something
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  At least of some of that "making money" stuff is just the sort of publicity you should be doing to help your project even if making money isn't the goal. I honestly think it's more common for projects to under-do that than to over-do it.
gigatexal 4y ago
"As you can see, the numbers above put me at roughly $4200 this month. My wife and I live a modest life, and while taxes in Sweden are high, this is enough to break even where we are right now." Break-even?! No, no, no. He's doing so much amazing work he should be making a lot more. In any case, congrats on living the dream and working on things you can be proud of. I hope it never ends (or it ends on your terms).
- systemvoltage 4y ago
  He was an engineer at Apple for many years I think. So that means he has some buffer to take on Serenity for last 2 years. I wish him good success and hope to see him having to not worry about money. Subscribe and support him!
- rjh29 4y ago
  He's working full time on a project he absolutely loves, with a community he loves. Sure more money would be good but we can't have everything!
  - akling 4y ago
    Indeed! But if I did suddenly have a lot more money, I would use it to pay people in said community to work on SerenityOS :^)
    - mtnGoat 4y ago
      This is a great statement! I think it’s a privilege to work on something you’d put your own money into, and have conviction about. I’m happy that you have found that thing.
- kaashif 4y ago
  > He's doing so much amazing work he should be making a lot more. What do you mean by this? His situation seems perfectly good - he has enough to live on without drawing down savings and gets to work on his passion project. If we think he should get more in donations, we should donate more, I guess?
julianeon 4y ago
Those of you using Serenity OS: this is an amazing value, and an incredible talent you have there. Consider contributing, even if only once. The market price for talent like that, if realistically priced, would be about 5 times what he’s earning.
- easygenes 4y ago
  Some senior engineers at big tech companies make more than a million US per year, so someone with an excellent diverse C++ skill set and an entrepreneurial bent could well make much more than that.
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  - ketzo 4y ago
    I don’t know about much more. The last time I saw the top ends of Google’s IC pay scale, it was ~$1.5 million TC, and that was for, like, two people. I’m being nit picky. But big tech isn’t THAT insane. 7 figure TC is incredibly, incredibly rare. It’s not just “senior engineer”, it’s “senior senior senior senior” or more.
    - vidarh 4y ago
      For C++ the top end of the market is more like trading systems and the like than Google. Still rare, though, but the C++ market has lots of weird little very high paid niches.
      - n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
        HFT firms require lots of domain knowledge on top of “just” C++. Those quants are elite mathematicians and highly knowledgeable in finance in addition to being great at C++ (or OCaml). I would say that C++ expertise is often actually “underpaid” compared to its level of difficult. If you’re doing OS stuff in C++ you’re working on something embedded. If you’re doing embedded, you’re probably selling hardware, which has low margins (compared to pure software plays). Meanwhile a Ruby on Rails dev who can iterate their web app quickly can start getting PMF and basically print money.
CobaltFire 4y ago
So many comments saying he should make more doing something else, how low his wage is, etc. He said he’s HAPPY doing this. For some people that, in itself, can be enough. It feels like so many here are trying to convince others of their world view instead of accepting the one this person shared. As someone in a position to do something similar: Thanks for sharing!
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- aliqot 4y ago
  Absolutely agree. The older I get the more I realize we all have a few callings in life, and not all of them are justly compensated for the purposes they fill, but it does not make them any less significant in my eyes.
- azakai 4y ago
  And to add to that, it also makes other people happy too, to contribute or just to follow. Really cool stuff, and meaningful.
rogerclark 4y ago
Andreas will always be the GOAT
BaculumMeumEst 4y ago
andreas, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for sharing your story of recovery. you have unimaginable courage.
kristoff_it 4y ago
This is awesome and I'm confident SerenityOS and all its related projects (eg Ladybird) will only grow in popularity over time. Andreas will eventually most definitely get a salary closer to what he could get elsewhere and in the meantime he doesn't have to compromise on his mental health by working for a company that forces him to write bad software on purpose. It's a pretty sweet deal, and it's a shame only few of us have a chance to experience this.
Accacin 4y ago
Great post, I'd been meaning to sponsor you for a while and completely forgot so I've signed up on Github :) Stay awesome!
- akling 4y ago
  Thank you so much for the support Accacin! I will do my best :)
labrador 4y ago
Andreas started this project to keep himself busy out of rehab for drug abuse. I did something similar out of rehab for alcohol. He named it Serenity OS from the Serenity Prayer for this reason. Being responsible and earning income to support your family is an important part of recovery. Beyond that, he's doing it for spiritual reasons. Sometimes the most debilitating feature of addiction is isolation and loneliness. He's created a community that is warm and friendly. I think what he's done is amazing for these reasons: He's created a viable operating system with hundreds of contributers He's supporting his family He's got himself well out of isolation with a big community of people Edit: forgot one. He's staying sober
- agumonkey 4y ago
  Quite a heart warming story. I hope this inspires a lot of people. Kudos to him.
- daniel-cussen 4y ago
- helmholtz 4y ago
  And, might I add, paid a fitting tribute to Terry Davis.
  - fb03 4y ago
    Nice! I didn't knew about that. Can you elaborate on this? I still mourn Terry Davis passing.I really enjoyed seeing him work on his Operating System and I was really saddened when his mental condition deteriorated to the point he got homeless, ultimately ending his life. With meds, he'd still be here and kicking :-(
    - mythz 4y ago
      Andreas's tribute video to Terry Davis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmV49ogMDEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmV49ogMDEI He also did a Commute talk about TempleOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr3xN52QYtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr3xN52QYtA
vasco 4y ago
> Once the channel grew large enough, I was able to enable monetization in the form of ads. I felt a bit weird about this, since I use an ad blocker myself, but I figured that the kind of person who watches my content is perfectly aware of ad blockers and can make their own decisions about them. The classic.
- deleted 4y ago
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- ec109685 4y ago
  Surprised he doesn’t use YouTube premium at least to ensure creators like him are paid.
  - akling 4y ago
    I do use YouTube Premium today, but I didn’t at the time of deciding to enable monetization. :)
ultrasounder 4y ago
Truly inspiring. Keep up the good work!
sebazzz 4y ago
Living on donations, especially recurring donations like Patreon, must be difficult. It is the first thing people cancel when the economy gets difficult like high energy prices, and you also can't ask for a raise.
- yrgulation 4y ago
  > and you also can't ask for a raise. Freedom is so confusing and foreign for some.
  - sebazzz 4y ago
    Well, you can of course increase the pricing of the Patreon tiers but then you run the risk that (1) forgotten recurring donations get a reminder and will be shut down, (2) people won't accept the new pricing and cancel their donation.
- oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
  > It is the first thing people cancel when the economy gets difficult That sounds logical, but I'd hypothesize that a lot of donors are themselves fairly well off, so the effect may be less than you suggest.
asddubs 4y ago
>I’ve also been approached by a handful of folks from VC firms and while I have nothing against them, I’m not taking any meetings. I’m not interested in selling influence over the things I work on, and I’d much rather have many small donors who believe in me than one huge investor telling me what to do. I wonder why. I love SerenityOS but it doesn't seem the kind of thing a venture capitalist would be interested in
- convolvatron 4y ago
  at the bottom of the barrel these people have moderate amounts of money and _noone_ to throw it at
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  i wonder what sort of stuff these guys would even propose "i will pay you 17 million dollars to add web 3.0 to serenity os"
nasalter 4y ago
There is an interview with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS on the CoRecursive podcast here: https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/ https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/
- adamgordonbell 4y ago
  Fun fact: I was super nervous to interview Andreas. I knew the way to really understand the backstory of Serenity was to ask Andreas about directly about his early days of recovery. It felt invasive, but Andreas just shared and shared. Amazing person and his youtube car videos are so good and raw and honest. We also actually spent sometime playing around with Serenity and that was fun (and was never released). But yeah, I love the boldness of just starting to build something, taking a step in the direction and not worrying that it seems so large.
jstummbillig 4y ago
Ah, Andreas YT programming sessions. The length, the sincerity, the mood. The way he is able to communicate with us while being alone in a room. His very conscious effort to not get side tracked. And, of course, him just being a really effective programmer, while not being flashy or pretentious about tech or tooling in the least (and also probably because of it). Sometimes I watch and listen intently, and learn a lot. Sometimes I zone a little. It's perfect. If you are interested in programming in general I can just highly recommend checking it out.
- dvko 4y ago
  For someone who has heard about Andreas and SerenityOS on occasion but has never actually seen one of his livestreams, where do you suggest I start? Any special episode recommendations? Don’t see myself catching up with all of his videos, haha.
  - asddubs 4y ago
    the videos are all fairly self contained. usually limited to trying to fix a specific bug, or implement a specific feature. the livestreams are just q&a, focused on (but not exclusive to) technical questions. just pick something that sounds interesting, basically. there's no need to have watched prior videos to understand what's going on, generally. Either way, most of the code encountered in the video will mostly have been written without being recorded
  - vimsee 4y ago
    You don`t have to "catch up" per se. You will get into it by just watching some bits here and there. Open his youtube channel [0] and pick a video that has a title that seems interesting. If you want to get the latest about SerenityOS, he does this "Office Hours" thing live every friday. Which might be the answer you are looking for. https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasKling/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasKling/videos
  - ljosifov 4y ago
    I had never seen any of his videos, nor followed SerenityOS. Regardless, I found this one "Browser hacking: A most satisfying refactor to hide constructors" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5799GySdWqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5799GySdWqY interesting and relateable enough to watch to the end.
sendfoods 4y ago
Congratulations. I have only listened to your awesome programming sessions once or twice, and did find them very enjoyable! On an unrelated note, regarding your setup: which theme are you using in CLion? Thanks!
edpichler 4y ago
This inspiring dude is does awesome projects. I am not a regular donor, but every time I see him working in something, I do it. It also makes me happy to know that he is Swedish, a country that I love very much.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
An inspiring story.
williamstein 4y ago
There was also an amazing new talk on porting Zig to SerenityOS today on youtube: https://youtu.be/Ug3p8vELJqQ https://youtu.be/Ug3p8vELJqQ
ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago
Absolute legend and an amazing role model for people learning how to be a hacker. Not a lot of them remaining. Most are just grinding leetcode.
brunojppb 4y ago
Andreas is a truly inspiring individual. I follow his videos on YouTube for a long time and his calmness and direction while coding the SerenityOS is something I try to learn from him.
trykondev 4y ago
This is so fantastic to read -- congrats Andreas! I admit I am very envious reading this. I would love to be in a similar situation, able to focus full time on a passion project (in my case, video game development). Maybe it's time to start planning my own Patreon...
GekkePrutser 4y ago
Interesting. I've never taken a keen interest in the project because I think the WIndows 95 look reminds me too much of Microsoft and fvwm95 :) I'd love to see a remake of HP-UX's VUE (there is in fact a remake of the later CDE, and CDE itself is open-sourced). And it has almost the same UI but it's much more boring than VUE. VUE was from HP had smooth non-serif fonts and wild colour schemes. CDE was a followup joint-venture from HP, Sun and IBM and as a result they made it much more businessy. Serif fonts and boring brownish colours. But all these things are super niche obviously, and it's really good to hear that he can still make a living from it.
toastal 4y ago
Definitely happy patronage is keeping the developer and the projects afloat, but boy am I worried about Microsoft controlling the GitHub Sponsor space and what that could mean for the future.
yrgulation 4y ago
If i could do this i would be so happy.
pencilguin 4y ago
It distresses me to see how little Andreas is making from his YT channel; distressed enough so that I am adding him on Patreon.
- pencilguin 4y ago
  Done.
hardwaregeek 4y ago
One aspect worth pointing out is how much more difficult this would be without public health care. It’s doable sure, but you’d need to either get insurance from a spouse, buy your own healthcare (expensive) or rely on free insurance (very low quality and poor coverage).
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DeathArrow 4y ago
I guess doing things for fun is ok. I just newer see myself investing years in something just for fun. Supposing I'm rich and I don't need to work for money (which is not the case) I still want to work on something that people will find value using. The more people finding that something useful, the better. Even when I wrote code just for learning or wrote a PoC, I tried to make it something usable by someone else. It's not that what I do is great, is that I derive more joy from building something useful than from the mere process of building something. To me code that sits unused is dead code and a loss of the most important human resource: time. So I can see a value in writing something like Minix or a RTOS for microcontrollers or even research OSes, but I can't see value in writing another OS, browser engine and building a programming language to rewrite the OS in without a clear purpose. There might be an entertaining value in it, a learning experience, fun but I guess you can derive all of that by working on something that has a purpose. It's not a critique of the author, who I am sure it's a nice guy, and I wrote this hoping to be contradicted, hoping that someone can give me reasons why endeavors like this might be valuable.
- galaxyLogic 4y ago
  They are "valuable" because people are paying for it. Maybe the value is only in learning how a project like this turns out in the end. But as long as people pay for it that demonstrates there is value in it.
- saberience 4y ago
  I find this take to be totally opposite to my way of thinking. Surely doing things for fun is the most important part of life? That is, if you don’t enjoy doing something then doing that something is a much bigger waste of time than doing something you genuinely enjoy. Are you suggesting the OP would be better off doing something boring or annoying or something he dislikes? Would you suggest to your children that they should do a job or work in a field they don’t enjoy? The world is moved forward by people following their passions and interests, and I would argue that the OP is likely to advance his life AND career much faster by pursuing his passions than doing something he dislikes.
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sndo 4y ago
Andreas, this is pretty cool. Do you think it may be plausible at some point that you do you development and make your YT screencasts (not necessarily the recodings itself, but the desktop/software used there) from inside SerenityOS?
bilekas 4y ago
I've been absolutely loving his videos on SerenityOS and especially the browser Ladybird, the problems and challenges that are faced are so much fun to work through. It's really great to see someone with such a passion being able to make a living from it.
keepquestioning 4y ago
He should work on something with greater commercial potential
- emptyparadise 4y ago
  please for the love of god let us have just one fun thing for fun and not for profit just one thing in this rat race of a life that's not about money!!!!!!!
ThinkBeat 4y ago
I could not / can not be as brave as Andreas. There would seem to be great uncertainty in how much money he will make per month. He does have multiple income streams which is great, but none of them fixed (I think). I was a freelance / independent developer for a while, but I worried far too much about not having work that I wanted to have multiple projects going at the same time in case one got cancelled / ended. However, they all kept getting extended, which was good but also bad. I was working on 3 contracts concurrently. working from home and working 95% of the day I managed to to keep then all happy, but it was taking a toll with stress and no life outside of work. I was making good money. Yet I was too risk adverse. Once they had all finished, I ran to a corporate job again. (which meant turning down several contracts offered) I think most people on HN are a lot better at handling being a freelancer and being independent.
- paintman252 4y ago
  I mean, can't you just save up a nest egg so , in case one of the projects get cancelled, you don't end up destitute? Seems like a simple solution
- em-bee 4y ago
  it's part personality and attitude and part skill and planning. (and for me, coming from a country with a strong social support net helps with the attitude at least) the personality/attitude part for me is, that i grew up with the assurance that no matter how bad it gets, i will always have a safe place to live and enough food to eat. so i am not worried when i am not making money. this obviously is more difficult in a country where such support doesn't exist. but the skill and planing part applies everywhere. i currently have a financial buffer of more than a year. i have had it for a while, and it's not shrinking. that means i am earning enough each month to cover my expenses. should i stop earning anything, then i'd still have more than a years time to find something new before things get dire. though if possible, now that i have this buffer, i want to try to keep it. if i dip below a years worth of savings, then i want to focus on earning more in order to refill the buffer.
consultSKI 4y ago
Cool. Where did the name Serenity come from?

936 points by awesomekling 4y ago

Thank you for sharing Andreas! It's absolutely phenomenal how far along SerenityOS has come and it's also a peek at how FOSS is supposed to be - a way to learn, hack on something fun, share it with others but without any huge expectations. Building the next unicorn is awesome and all but in my opinion, this has it's own place. I am glad some people out there get to work on their dream projects and actually can make a living out it. Kudos to all the supporters, obviously. I also love how focused SerenityOS is and what kind of audience it caters to. Some people might say, "make it for everyone" but that doesn't work most of the time. Having a focused audience allows a lot of freedom in the way of UX/DX, docs, communication etc. So I am glad Andreas set that down upfront.

tootie 4y ago
This is the thing that confused me. What exactly is the audience for this? It seems like more of an intricate art project than a useful piece of software.
- ativzzz 4y ago
  The audience is the people who contribute to the art project and want to be part of the community. A community that serves itself for no other reason than to serve itself. Seems like a good time to me
  - hamreh0076 4y ago
- azakai 4y ago
  It is exactly that - an art project. Maybe it will also be useful some day, maybe not, but to me at least that's not the point. It's really cool that we can fund some art projects like this in the software industry! Not a perfect comparison, but it's like how some people approach math simply for the beauty of it. That's enough of a reason! And sometimes that math ends up useful too - maybe because math has a connection to reality. So does software - it runs.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
    I do that. I write software that I like, and want to use. I also have some experience with the Recovery community, and most of my work is actually designed for that community. I wish him the very best. I wonder if he uses any of the stuff I wrote?
    - savingsPossible 4y ago
      Recovery as in recovery from drugs? Or from data loss?
      - ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago
        Consider the context. I do things One Day at A Time, and More Will Be Revealed.
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- trashburger 4y ago
  https://justforfunnoreally.dev/ https://justforfunnoreally.dev/
- BirAdam 4y ago
  Well, more or less, at the moment it’s for fun and art. It’s recreational. Odd thing is that SerenityOS has made so much progress so quickly that it may soon be a viable daily-use operating system.
  - mysterydip 4y ago
    I for one am looking forward to that. The pace of OS development has been inspiring, to say nothing of the appliations (a usable browser?!)
- traverseda 4y ago
  It has a nice consistent ui toolkit that seems highly productive. I hope the user-space (window manager, default apps) eventually becomes an alternative linux user-space.
- ar_lan 4y ago
  I was wondering the same. Nothing against the project, but from reading about it I’m confused why I would choose this over my preferred OS (and therefore how it makes enough money). But then again there are so many distros it’s not that surprising.
  - breakfastduck 4y ago
    It continues to baffle me how a newsboard called hackernews has countless people who are incapable of seeing the value in making something for the sake of making it.
    - ar_lan 4y ago
      Good for you!
      - anon2020dot00 4y ago
        df
        ar_lan 4y ago
        eg
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- severak_cz 4y ago
  This has educational value. If you are wondering "how this part of OS would be implemented" you can look up how Serenity team did that. Also even more interesting is trying to implement this for yourself (for Serenity), if you are brave enough.
  - hamreh0076 4y ago
- pushedx 4y ago
  > On Monday, August 26, 1991 l 6:12:08 PM UTC+12, Linus Benedict Torvalds wrote: > Hello everybody out there using minix - > I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and > professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing > since april, and is starting to get ready.
  - klabb3 4y ago
    Goosebumps.
- longrod 4y ago
  The audience is hackers as it should be. You can't cater to daily users at this stage. You want people who can potentially fix the bugs they come across or add the features they miss. A usable OS is no joke and it certainly isn't a one man project. If enough people get on this, it might actually become daily-usable.

gigel82 4y ago

It's surprising you can live off $4200 / month in Sweden (after tax I presume that's about $2000 / month). That is below minimum wage in a place like Seattle for example ($14.49 / hour ~ $2,500 / month gross).

marginalia_nu 4y ago
It's on the low-end of average for a software developer salary in Sweden. Sort of thing you'd earn with 5 years of experience. Cost of living matters a lot when "translating" income.
- Raydovsky 4y ago
  If you're earning 1.8k eur in Sweden with 5 years of experience, you're doing something really wrong. In Latvia, a much poorer EU country you're looking st 2.5k at least woth 5 years of exp.
  - marginalia_nu 4y ago
    May figures may be a few years out of date, but it's not that far off. Also varies with where you live. Stockholm pays a bit more, but is also significantly more expensive to live in. This is also assuming you're employed. Contractors will probably at least double that.
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- tqh 4y ago
  It is not. If you studied three years at University you should ask for at least 35 300 kr a month before taxes. If you worked for five years you should earn a lot more. See https://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/lon/lonestatistik/ingangslon https://www.sverigesingenjorer.se/lon/lonestatistik/ingangsl... So donate more...

marginalia_nu 4y ago

It's interesting to see some people are making it work living off these types of projects. > I created a Patreon back in April of 2019. I felt a bit silly at the time, with thoughts like “who do I think I am” and “what am I even doing” echoing in my head. I still did it though. I was too curious to see what would happen, even though I expected nothing. Amazingly, a couple of people actually signed up! I'm definitely relating to this experience. Feels hella pretentious and weird to set up donations. Was likewise surprised to actually get people sending me money. I guess the moral of the story is if you build cool things, people are willing to chip in.

IncRnd 4y ago
> Feels hella pretentious and weird to set up donations. I'm not sure of your location, but in the US these are not donations but income on which taxes need to be paid.
- marginalia_nu 4y ago
  Yeah they're not de jure donations, but de facto.
- treffer 4y ago
  Germany, IANAL but was curious because I've seen it differently here: "donations" that are clearly not tax deductible, the only real test for that wird in some sense. Lawyer Google tells me donations are just money gifts. Some organizations that are approved can hand you a recipe that allows you to tax deduct it. And I think those organizations also don't need to pay taxes on it. TIL. Not sure how well that resonates in Sweden though.
  - mysterydip 4y ago
    In the US a 501(c)(3) organization is considered "non-profit" and gifts to them are tax-deductible. I worked at one once and we had a paper we used at stores to pay no sales tax.
    - 4y ago

version_five 4y ago

How much time or focus is associated with "money making" activities would be my question? And is it less than it would take to earn than money part time and focus the rest on serenity OS? I'd also add that this model - contribution supported - may work for people who have already built something great, but it dangerous to aspire too because some people just end up being beggars and optimizing for trying to get handouts ("buy me a coffee") instead of putting their project first* (to be clear, I don't think that's the case here) *edit: not a unique problem to this model, same thing happens with "founders" trying to optimize for VC money instead of making something

marginalia_nu 4y ago
At least of some of that "making money" stuff is just the sort of publicity you should be doing to help your project even if making money isn't the goal. I honestly think it's more common for projects to under-do that than to over-do it.

gigatexal 4y ago

"As you can see, the numbers above put me at roughly $4200 this month. My wife and I live a modest life, and while taxes in Sweden are high, this is enough to break even where we are right now." Break-even?! No, no, no. He's doing so much amazing work he should be making a lot more. In any case, congrats on living the dream and working on things you can be proud of. I hope it never ends (or it ends on your terms).

systemvoltage 4y ago
He was an engineer at Apple for many years I think. So that means he has some buffer to take on Serenity for last 2 years. I wish him good success and hope to see him having to not worry about money. Subscribe and support him!
rjh29 4y ago
He's working full time on a project he absolutely loves, with a community he loves. Sure more money would be good but we can't have everything!
- akling 4y ago
  Indeed! But if I did suddenly have a lot more money, I would use it to pay people in said community to work on SerenityOS :^)
  - mtnGoat 4y ago
    This is a great statement! I think it’s a privilege to work on something you’d put your own money into, and have conviction about. I’m happy that you have found that thing.
kaashif 4y ago
> He's doing so much amazing work he should be making a lot more. What do you mean by this? His situation seems perfectly good - he has enough to live on without drawing down savings and gets to work on his passion project. If we think he should get more in donations, we should donate more, I guess?

julianeon 4y ago

Those of you using Serenity OS: this is an amazing value, and an incredible talent you have there. Consider contributing, even if only once. The market price for talent like that, if realistically priced, would be about 5 times what he’s earning.

easygenes 4y ago
Some senior engineers at big tech companies make more than a million US per year, so someone with an excellent diverse C++ skill set and an entrepreneurial bent could well make much more than that.
- deleted 4y ago
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- ketzo 4y ago
  I don’t know about much more. The last time I saw the top ends of Google’s IC pay scale, it was ~$1.5 million TC, and that was for, like, two people. I’m being nit picky. But big tech isn’t THAT insane. 7 figure TC is incredibly, incredibly rare. It’s not just “senior engineer”, it’s “senior senior senior senior” or more.
  - vidarh 4y ago
    For C++ the top end of the market is more like trading systems and the like than Google. Still rare, though, but the C++ market has lots of weird little very high paid niches.
    - n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
      HFT firms require lots of domain knowledge on top of “just” C++. Those quants are elite mathematicians and highly knowledgeable in finance in addition to being great at C++ (or OCaml). I would say that C++ expertise is often actually “underpaid” compared to its level of difficult. If you’re doing OS stuff in C++ you’re working on something embedded. If you’re doing embedded, you’re probably selling hardware, which has low margins (compared to pure software plays). Meanwhile a Ruby on Rails dev who can iterate their web app quickly can start getting PMF and basically print money.

CobaltFire 4y ago

So many comments saying he should make more doing something else, how low his wage is, etc. He said he’s HAPPY doing this. For some people that, in itself, can be enough. It feels like so many here are trying to convince others of their world view instead of accepting the one this person shared. As someone in a position to do something similar: Thanks for sharing!

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aliqot 4y ago
Absolutely agree. The older I get the more I realize we all have a few callings in life, and not all of them are justly compensated for the purposes they fill, but it does not make them any less significant in my eyes.
azakai 4y ago
And to add to that, it also makes other people happy too, to contribute or just to follow. Really cool stuff, and meaningful.

rogerclark 4y ago

Andreas will always be the GOAT

BaculumMeumEst 4y ago

andreas, from the bottom of my heart, thank you so much for sharing your story of recovery. you have unimaginable courage.

kristoff_it 4y ago

This is awesome and I'm confident SerenityOS and all its related projects (eg Ladybird) will only grow in popularity over time. Andreas will eventually most definitely get a salary closer to what he could get elsewhere and in the meantime he doesn't have to compromise on his mental health by working for a company that forces him to write bad software on purpose. It's a pretty sweet deal, and it's a shame only few of us have a chance to experience this.

Accacin 4y ago

Great post, I'd been meaning to sponsor you for a while and completely forgot so I've signed up on Github :) Stay awesome!

akling 4y ago
Thank you so much for the support Accacin! I will do my best :)

labrador 4y ago

Andreas started this project to keep himself busy out of rehab for drug abuse. I did something similar out of rehab for alcohol. He named it Serenity OS from the Serenity Prayer for this reason. Being responsible and earning income to support your family is an important part of recovery. Beyond that, he's doing it for spiritual reasons. Sometimes the most debilitating feature of addiction is isolation and loneliness. He's created a community that is warm and friendly. I think what he's done is amazing for these reasons: He's created a viable operating system with hundreds of contributers He's supporting his family He's got himself well out of isolation with a big community of people Edit: forgot one. He's staying sober

agumonkey 4y ago
Quite a heart warming story. I hope this inspires a lot of people. Kudos to him.
daniel-cussen 4y ago
helmholtz 4y ago
And, might I add, paid a fitting tribute to Terry Davis.
- fb03 4y ago
  Nice! I didn't knew about that. Can you elaborate on this? I still mourn Terry Davis passing.I really enjoyed seeing him work on his Operating System and I was really saddened when his mental condition deteriorated to the point he got homeless, ultimately ending his life. With meds, he'd still be here and kicking :-(
  - mythz 4y ago
    Andreas's tribute video to Terry Davis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmV49ogMDEI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmV49ogMDEI He also did a Commute talk about TempleOS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr3xN52QYtA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wr3xN52QYtA

vasco 4y ago

> Once the channel grew large enough, I was able to enable monetization in the form of ads. I felt a bit weird about this, since I use an ad blocker myself, but I figured that the kind of person who watches my content is perfectly aware of ad blockers and can make their own decisions about them. The classic.

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ec109685 4y ago
Surprised he doesn’t use YouTube premium at least to ensure creators like him are paid.
- akling 4y ago
  I do use YouTube Premium today, but I didn’t at the time of deciding to enable monetization. :)

ultrasounder 4y ago

Truly inspiring. Keep up the good work!

sebazzz 4y ago

Living on donations, especially recurring donations like Patreon, must be difficult. It is the first thing people cancel when the economy gets difficult like high energy prices, and you also can't ask for a raise.

yrgulation 4y ago
> and you also can't ask for a raise. Freedom is so confusing and foreign for some.
- sebazzz 4y ago
  Well, you can of course increase the pricing of the Patreon tiers but then you run the risk that (1) forgotten recurring donations get a reminder and will be shut down, (2) people won't accept the new pricing and cancel their donation.
oneeyedpigeon 4y ago
> It is the first thing people cancel when the economy gets difficult That sounds logical, but I'd hypothesize that a lot of donors are themselves fairly well off, so the effect may be less than you suggest.

asddubs 4y ago

>I’ve also been approached by a handful of folks from VC firms and while I have nothing against them, I’m not taking any meetings. I’m not interested in selling influence over the things I work on, and I’d much rather have many small donors who believe in me than one huge investor telling me what to do. I wonder why. I love SerenityOS but it doesn't seem the kind of thing a venture capitalist would be interested in

convolvatron 4y ago
at the bottom of the barrel these people have moderate amounts of money and _noone_ to throw it at
emptyparadise 4y ago
i wonder what sort of stuff these guys would even propose "i will pay you 17 million dollars to add web 3.0 to serenity os"

nasalter 4y ago

There is an interview with Andreas Kling about SerenityOS on the CoRecursive podcast here: https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/ https://corecursive.com/serenity-os-with-andreas-kling/

adamgordonbell 4y ago
Fun fact: I was super nervous to interview Andreas. I knew the way to really understand the backstory of Serenity was to ask Andreas about directly about his early days of recovery. It felt invasive, but Andreas just shared and shared. Amazing person and his youtube car videos are so good and raw and honest. We also actually spent sometime playing around with Serenity and that was fun (and was never released). But yeah, I love the boldness of just starting to build something, taking a step in the direction and not worrying that it seems so large.

jstummbillig 4y ago

Ah, Andreas YT programming sessions. The length, the sincerity, the mood. The way he is able to communicate with us while being alone in a room. His very conscious effort to not get side tracked. And, of course, him just being a really effective programmer, while not being flashy or pretentious about tech or tooling in the least (and also probably because of it). Sometimes I watch and listen intently, and learn a lot. Sometimes I zone a little. It's perfect. If you are interested in programming in general I can just highly recommend checking it out.

dvko 4y ago
For someone who has heard about Andreas and SerenityOS on occasion but has never actually seen one of his livestreams, where do you suggest I start? Any special episode recommendations? Don’t see myself catching up with all of his videos, haha.
- asddubs 4y ago
  the videos are all fairly self contained. usually limited to trying to fix a specific bug, or implement a specific feature. the livestreams are just q&a, focused on (but not exclusive to) technical questions. just pick something that sounds interesting, basically. there's no need to have watched prior videos to understand what's going on, generally. Either way, most of the code encountered in the video will mostly have been written without being recorded
- vimsee 4y ago
  You don`t have to "catch up" per se. You will get into it by just watching some bits here and there. Open his youtube channel [0] and pick a video that has a title that seems interesting. If you want to get the latest about SerenityOS, he does this "Office Hours" thing live every friday. Which might be the answer you are looking for. https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasKling/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/AndreasKling/videos
- ljosifov 4y ago
  I had never seen any of his videos, nor followed SerenityOS. Regardless, I found this one "Browser hacking: A most satisfying refactor to hide constructors" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5799GySdWqY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5799GySdWqY interesting and relateable enough to watch to the end.

sendfoods 4y ago

Congratulations. I have only listened to your awesome programming sessions once or twice, and did find them very enjoyable! On an unrelated note, regarding your setup: which theme are you using in CLion? Thanks!

edpichler 4y ago

This inspiring dude is does awesome projects. I am not a regular donor, but every time I see him working in something, I do it. It also makes me happy to know that he is Swedish, a country that I love very much.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

An inspiring story.

williamstein 4y ago

There was also an amazing new talk on porting Zig to SerenityOS today on youtube: https://youtu.be/Ug3p8vELJqQ https://youtu.be/Ug3p8vELJqQ

ilrwbwrkhv 4y ago

Absolute legend and an amazing role model for people learning how to be a hacker. Not a lot of them remaining. Most are just grinding leetcode.

brunojppb 4y ago

Andreas is a truly inspiring individual. I follow his videos on YouTube for a long time and his calmness and direction while coding the SerenityOS is something I try to learn from him.

trykondev 4y ago

This is so fantastic to read -- congrats Andreas! I admit I am very envious reading this. I would love to be in a similar situation, able to focus full time on a passion project (in my case, video game development). Maybe it's time to start planning my own Patreon...

GekkePrutser 4y ago

Interesting. I've never taken a keen interest in the project because I think the WIndows 95 look reminds me too much of Microsoft and fvwm95 :) I'd love to see a remake of HP-UX's VUE (there is in fact a remake of the later CDE, and CDE itself is open-sourced). And it has almost the same UI but it's much more boring than VUE. VUE was from HP had smooth non-serif fonts and wild colour schemes. CDE was a followup joint-venture from HP, Sun and IBM and as a result they made it much more businessy. Serif fonts and boring brownish colours. But all these things are super niche obviously, and it's really good to hear that he can still make a living from it.

toastal 4y ago

Definitely happy patronage is keeping the developer and the projects afloat, but boy am I worried about Microsoft controlling the GitHub Sponsor space and what that could mean for the future.

yrgulation 4y ago

If i could do this i would be so happy.

pencilguin 4y ago

It distresses me to see how little Andreas is making from his YT channel; distressed enough so that I am adding him on Patreon.

pencilguin 4y ago
Done.

hardwaregeek 4y ago

One aspect worth pointing out is how much more difficult this would be without public health care. It’s doable sure, but you’d need to either get insurance from a spouse, buy your own healthcare (expensive) or rely on free insurance (very low quality and poor coverage).

hamreh 4y ago

hamreh0076 4y ago

DeathArrow 4y ago

I guess doing things for fun is ok. I just newer see myself investing years in something just for fun. Supposing I'm rich and I don't need to work for money (which is not the case) I still want to work on something that people will find value using. The more people finding that something useful, the better. Even when I wrote code just for learning or wrote a PoC, I tried to make it something usable by someone else. It's not that what I do is great, is that I derive more joy from building something useful than from the mere process of building something. To me code that sits unused is dead code and a loss of the most important human resource: time. So I can see a value in writing something like Minix or a RTOS for microcontrollers or even research OSes, but I can't see value in writing another OS, browser engine and building a programming language to rewrite the OS in without a clear purpose. There might be an entertaining value in it, a learning experience, fun but I guess you can derive all of that by working on something that has a purpose. It's not a critique of the author, who I am sure it's a nice guy, and I wrote this hoping to be contradicted, hoping that someone can give me reasons why endeavors like this might be valuable.

galaxyLogic 4y ago
They are "valuable" because people are paying for it. Maybe the value is only in learning how a project like this turns out in the end. But as long as people pay for it that demonstrates there is value in it.
saberience 4y ago
I find this take to be totally opposite to my way of thinking. Surely doing things for fun is the most important part of life? That is, if you don’t enjoy doing something then doing that something is a much bigger waste of time than doing something you genuinely enjoy. Are you suggesting the OP would be better off doing something boring or annoying or something he dislikes? Would you suggest to your children that they should do a job or work in a field they don’t enjoy? The world is moved forward by people following their passions and interests, and I would argue that the OP is likely to advance his life AND career much faster by pursuing his passions than doing something he dislikes.
- 4y ago

eventhorizonpl 4y ago

sndo 4y ago

Andreas, this is pretty cool. Do you think it may be plausible at some point that you do you development and make your YT screencasts (not necessarily the recodings itself, but the desktop/software used there) from inside SerenityOS?

bilekas 4y ago

I've been absolutely loving his videos on SerenityOS and especially the browser Ladybird, the problems and challenges that are faced are so much fun to work through. It's really great to see someone with such a passion being able to make a living from it.

keepquestioning 4y ago

He should work on something with greater commercial potential

emptyparadise 4y ago
please for the love of god let us have just one fun thing for fun and not for profit just one thing in this rat race of a life that's not about money!!!!!!!

ThinkBeat 4y ago

I could not / can not be as brave as Andreas. There would seem to be great uncertainty in how much money he will make per month. He does have multiple income streams which is great, but none of them fixed (I think). I was a freelance / independent developer for a while, but I worried far too much about not having work that I wanted to have multiple projects going at the same time in case one got cancelled / ended. However, they all kept getting extended, which was good but also bad. I was working on 3 contracts concurrently. working from home and working 95% of the day I managed to to keep then all happy, but it was taking a toll with stress and no life outside of work. I was making good money. Yet I was too risk adverse. Once they had all finished, I ran to a corporate job again. (which meant turning down several contracts offered) I think most people on HN are a lot better at handling being a freelancer and being independent.

paintman252 4y ago
I mean, can't you just save up a nest egg so , in case one of the projects get cancelled, you don't end up destitute? Seems like a simple solution
em-bee 4y ago
it's part personality and attitude and part skill and planning. (and for me, coming from a country with a strong social support net helps with the attitude at least) the personality/attitude part for me is, that i grew up with the assurance that no matter how bad it gets, i will always have a safe place to live and enough food to eat. so i am not worried when i am not making money. this obviously is more difficult in a country where such support doesn't exist. but the skill and planing part applies everywhere. i currently have a financial buffer of more than a year. i have had it for a while, and it's not shrinking. that means i am earning enough each month to cover my expenses. should i stop earning anything, then i'd still have more than a years time to find something new before things get dire. though if possible, now that i have this buffer, i want to try to keep it. if i dip below a years worth of savings, then i want to focus on earning more in order to refill the buffer.

consultSKI 4y ago

Cool. Where did the name Serenity come from?