5 ms·

How did it compare to, say, Serenity and Haiku?

still_grokking 4y ago
Serenity is still on the list of things I need to try out. Can't say anything about it at the moment. But I have to admit that regardless the hype around it I don't think that it's particularly interesting. I see it as just yet another Unix clone; with exactly zero innovation behind it. Even Redox, which I consider being a complete failure, tried some seemingly new concepts (and uses a micro kernel which makes it at least a little bit less "mainstream"). Haiku is rock solid. Very interesting project! But I would not put it in the basket with toy or research OSes, though. It's based on something that had even quite some commercial success. But yes, Haiku is definitely an "alternative OS". It would have been better if I worded this part differently, I guess, as I'm mostly interested in "experimental" OS architectures and less in "random" alternative OSes. (So, for example I've never tried to run TempleOS, or such things; also I didn't put much effort to run historic ones, when they where just Unix clones; there are quite some of these out there I guess). Haiku is much more complete than HelenOS of course. You can do all the basic computer things with it. It has quite some applications. I still remember the time when BeOS, its successor, was actually even much more usable in a GUI setting than Linux, which barely run X and some fvwm2 windows with terminal emulators—whereas BeOS had fancy multi-media players and 3D graphics at that time. Haiku has this apps still, but that's much less impressive today of course. Haiku is for example much more polished than say Hurd. There is a "working" Debian/Hurd version out there. But it was so buggy last time I've tried! Things were constantly crashing or not working at all. The last time I've tried to run Haiku I didn't find anything that was servery broken there. HelenOS feels comparable stable to Haiku. But there is almost nothing besides the bare OS. I think it had a kind of "packet manager" the last time I've tried but this didn't work well for me. Also there were almost no applications available. But that's not a bad sign as I think the most work goes into the OS as such. Which is good! The few things that were there on the surface were like I've said snappy and working without crashes. Which is imho already an achievement when compared with a lot of other OS projects (e.g. Redox, Hurd, unikernel / library-OSes, or just a "tuned" Linux build ;-)).
- emfax 4y ago
  Could you expand on why you think Redox is a failure? Maybe also what you think it got right and what it got wrong?
- JPLeRouzic 4y ago
  >> I still remember the time when BeOS, its successor... English is not my native tongue but didn't you mean "BeOS, its predecessor" ? BeOS lived from 1995 to 2001, and Haiku development started in 2001 with a first release in 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)#Release_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)#Relea...
  - still_grokking 4y ago
    Oh, yes, of course! I'm also not a native speaker… I've expanded on my initial version and didn't double check the lengthy edit with some translation service because I didn't want to miss the edit window. But I guess the oversight should be clear form context. Can't edit it anyway. Thanks for pointing out this mistake! :-) (Now I'm going to check this particular word pair more thoroughly next time).
- snvzz 4y ago
  Go have a blast with Genode[0] and Managarm[1]. 0. https://www.genode.org https://www.genode.org 1. https://managarm.org/ https://managarm.org/
- LeFantome 4y ago
  SerenityOS is interesting because of its monolithic repository concept with everything from the kernel to the web browser as a single unified project. They even write their own image and video codecs and stuff like TLS and OpenGL that everybody just lifts from somewhere else. I would say that creating their own language to write the system in is pretty innovative. The power of the mono repo is really going to come through when they convert everything from C++ to Jakt. Perhaps the most impressive and innovative thing about SerenityOS is the way they are building their community though. I cannot think of another project with so many contributors developing so openly on YouTube. The rate at which the project is evolving is amazing. The SerenityOS project is extremely pragmatic so it is not going to charge off in truly experimental directions. That said, they borrow an impressive number of ideas from a fairly diverse set of influences. The pledge / unveil stuff from OpenBSD is interesting. The way they propagate errors throughout the stack is cool, and the fact that they built their own standard library for C++ is quite interesting. One area where SerenityOS may truly innovate is in the browser since the project founder used to build web browser engines for a living. If you do not think SerenityOS is interesting, maybe take a deeper look.

Serenity is still on the list of things I need to try out. Can't say anything about it at the moment. But I have to admit that regardless the hype around it I don't think that it's particularly interesting. I see it as just yet another Unix clone; with exactly zero innovation behind it. Even Redox, which I consider being a complete failure, tried some seemingly new concepts (and uses a micro kernel which makes it at least a little bit less "mainstream"). Haiku is rock solid. Very interesting project! But I would not put it in the basket with toy or research OSes, though. It's based on something that had even quite some commercial success. But yes, Haiku is definitely an "alternative OS". It would have been better if I worded this part differently, I guess, as I'm mostly interested in "experimental" OS architectures and less in "random" alternative OSes. (So, for example I've never tried to run TempleOS, or such things; also I didn't put much effort to run historic ones, when they where just Unix clones; there are quite some of these out there I guess). Haiku is much more complete than HelenOS of course. You can do all the basic computer things with it. It has quite some applications. I still remember the time when BeOS, its successor, was actually even much more usable in a GUI setting than Linux, which barely run X and some fvwm2 windows with terminal emulators—whereas BeOS had fancy multi-media players and 3D graphics at that time. Haiku has this apps still, but that's much less impressive today of course. Haiku is for example much more polished than say Hurd. There is a "working" Debian/Hurd version out there. But it was so buggy last time I've tried! Things were constantly crashing or not working at all. The last time I've tried to run Haiku I didn't find anything that was servery broken there. HelenOS feels comparable stable to Haiku. But there is almost nothing besides the bare OS. I think it had a kind of "packet manager" the last time I've tried but this didn't work well for me. Also there were almost no applications available. But that's not a bad sign as I think the most work goes into the OS as such. Which is good! The few things that were there on the surface were like I've said snappy and working without crashes. Which is imho already an achievement when compared with a lot of other OS projects (e.g. Redox, Hurd, unikernel / library-OSes, or just a "tuned" Linux build ;-)).

emfax 4y ago
Could you expand on why you think Redox is a failure? Maybe also what you think it got right and what it got wrong?
JPLeRouzic 4y ago
>> I still remember the time when BeOS, its successor... English is not my native tongue but didn't you mean "BeOS, its predecessor" ? BeOS lived from 1995 to 2001, and Haiku development started in 2001 with a first release in 2009. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)#Release_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku_(operating_system)#Relea...
- still_grokking 4y ago
  Oh, yes, of course! I'm also not a native speaker… I've expanded on my initial version and didn't double check the lengthy edit with some translation service because I didn't want to miss the edit window. But I guess the oversight should be clear form context. Can't edit it anyway. Thanks for pointing out this mistake! :-) (Now I'm going to check this particular word pair more thoroughly next time).
snvzz 4y ago
Go have a blast with Genode[0] and Managarm[1]. 0. https://www.genode.org https://www.genode.org 1. https://managarm.org/ https://managarm.org/
LeFantome 4y ago
SerenityOS is interesting because of its monolithic repository concept with everything from the kernel to the web browser as a single unified project. They even write their own image and video codecs and stuff like TLS and OpenGL that everybody just lifts from somewhere else. I would say that creating their own language to write the system in is pretty innovative. The power of the mono repo is really going to come through when they convert everything from C++ to Jakt. Perhaps the most impressive and innovative thing about SerenityOS is the way they are building their community though. I cannot think of another project with so many contributors developing so openly on YouTube. The rate at which the project is evolving is amazing. The SerenityOS project is extremely pragmatic so it is not going to charge off in truly experimental directions. That said, they borrow an impressive number of ideas from a fairly diverse set of influences. The pledge / unveil stuff from OpenBSD is interesting. The way they propagate errors throughout the stack is cool, and the fact that they built their own standard library for C++ is quite interesting. One area where SerenityOS may truly innovate is in the browser since the project founder used to build web browser engines for a living. If you do not think SerenityOS is interesting, maybe take a deeper look.