3 ms·

I can see the freedom of FreeBSD part, but not the finesse of macOS. And without that, why not just use FreeBSD?

by steve1977 3y ago

blackhaz 3y ago
What is an OS finesse?
- 1oooqooq 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - steve1977 3y ago
    Don’t worry, I grew up with things like a Commodore 64 and DOS, I‘ve never tried to skin my current computers like that.
    - 1oooqooq 3y ago
      using CRT filters on emulators also count ;)
- steve1977 3y ago
  In the case of macOS, for me it’s for example things like automation via AppleScript, a coherent UI for native apps, the „polish“ of the interface if that makes any sense
- fragebogen 3y ago
  My interpretation would be that it's about the same level of polish ux/ui-wise as macOS. As with OP, unfortunately I don't see it either - the screenshots show some resemblance with macOS but without any of the finesse.
  - alpaca128 3y ago
    It's not completed yet. The features are listed under the section "project goals" and the download button has a note calling it a developer preview image. In my experience with some Linux distros goals alone don't necessarily work out, but the approach with trying to be compatible with actual Mac OS apps is already more notable than an Ubuntu reskin.
    - steve1977 3y ago
      It will never be completed. GNUstep has been failing at that for decades already.
- henriquez 3y ago
  It appears like they’ve aped some of MacOS design language, but it’s clear they’re engineers, not designers. There’s enough “uncanny valley” between this OS and actual modern Apple UI design that it comes off a bit like all those versions of KDE that tried to look and act exactly like Windows XP and always felt a bit “off.” Their screenshots page is a Frankenstein mess of poor font quality and Apple themes mixed together dating back to OS X.1 I think it’s better when a team actually has designers working for them and comes up with their own real UI standards, (see Pop!_OS). IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to Linux.
  - 9dev 3y ago
    > IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to Linux. It may not be perfect, but it’s pretty darn good - as especially visible when comparing to this effort presented here. There’s a lot of detail and polish in MacOS interface design and UX people don’t realise until it’s missing.
    - steve1977 3y ago
      And that’s exactly what I would call „finesse“
  - steve1977 3y ago
    > IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to FreeBSD. Fixed that for you…
  - bjelkeman-again 3y ago
    Apple’s UI design certainly has flaws. I really don’t understand why they changed the way the System Settings in Ventura/Sonoma(?) now looks like and behaves more like iOS, as an example. However, as someone who has used GUIs from SunView/Irix Desktop/DECwindows to iPadOS/MacOS, via Windows 2.0/3.0/95/NT/etc. I am of the opinion that Apple is still the most consistent and easy to learn GUI. Even my 80-year old mother manages quite well with her Mac and iPhone.
hospitalJail 3y ago
Yeah, its just a nod to their fellow Apple believers. Its fascinating to watch their members behave.
scythe 3y ago
One moderately frustrating thing about using FreeBSD is that it's always been treated as sort of a second-class citizen by GNOME, and therefore Gtk, and therefore most of the Linux ecosystem which depends on Gtk. So probably the most popular desktop environment is KDE, and it's nice, but it is a certain kind of interface which doesn't appeal to everyone. Meanwhile, OS X shares a little code with FreeBSD and was partially derived from it around 30 years ago. And the design philosophy of OS X is roughly the opposite of KDE. This situation has engendered at least half a dozen projects over the years, most of which are never really complete, to make a FreeBSD-first DE/UI that works like Mac. And if it can run Mac applications, so much the better! Unfortunately, this is really hard. Cocoa is a moving target, and contra Wine, Apple is not as pertinaciously obsessed with backwards compatibility as Microsoft. Even much less ambitious (in my estimation) projects like enlightenment 17 and Wayland have struggled to replace major components of the desktop from the ground up.
- bityard 3y ago
  > OS X shares a little code with FreeBSD and was partially derived from it around 30 years ago. The first release of FreeBSD was 30 years ago, OS X a little over 20.
  - steve1977 3y ago
    Well Rhapsody was released 25 years ago. So you’re both right, now go back playing ;-)
  - scythe 3y ago
    OS X is derived from NeXTSTEP, first released in 1989 and based on 4.3BSD-Tahoe. Meanwhile, this was updated to 4.3BSD-Reno and ported to the x86 as 386BSD, from which NetBSD was forked in early 1993; it was subsequently reorganized to become FreeBSD in late 1993. NeXTSTEP and OS X later imported a few system components from FreeBSD, while replacing others, particularly replacing parts of the kernel with Mach.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Not only is Cocoa a moving target, it’s deep and wide. The amount of functionality it offers is staggering and extensive enough that for many types of apps, a dev may not need to import any third party libraries if they don’t want to, with no negative impact on the quality of the final product. That’s extremely difficult to reimplement, even if you lock compatibility to a particular macOS release.
replete 3y ago
Because its still in major development? Huge refactors are going on still under the hood. It's a project with a small team working in their free time with a big goal and its some way off. I mean, a BSD-based open source OS binary compatible with mach binaries ... it's very cool IMO and I hope more people get involved
- steve1977 3y ago
  Apple‘s secret sauce is not mach binaries but Cocoa. And tons of resources. And clear leadership. We have decades-old projects like GNOME, KDE and GNUstep and none of them come close to macOS in terms of „finesse“. Despite some of them having corporate backing. So I just don’t see that happening for a project with a small team working on it in their free time. Far too ambitious, I‘ve seen projects like this fail too often in the last two decades.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

I can see the freedom of FreeBSD part, but not the finesse of macOS. And without that, why not just use FreeBSD?

blackhaz 3y ago

What is an OS finesse?

1oooqooq 3y ago
[flagged]
- steve1977 3y ago
  Don’t worry, I grew up with things like a Commodore 64 and DOS, I‘ve never tried to skin my current computers like that.
  - 1oooqooq 3y ago
    using CRT filters on emulators also count ;)
steve1977 3y ago
In the case of macOS, for me it’s for example things like automation via AppleScript, a coherent UI for native apps, the „polish“ of the interface if that makes any sense
fragebogen 3y ago
My interpretation would be that it's about the same level of polish ux/ui-wise as macOS. As with OP, unfortunately I don't see it either - the screenshots show some resemblance with macOS but without any of the finesse.
- alpaca128 3y ago
  It's not completed yet. The features are listed under the section "project goals" and the download button has a note calling it a developer preview image. In my experience with some Linux distros goals alone don't necessarily work out, but the approach with trying to be compatible with actual Mac OS apps is already more notable than an Ubuntu reskin.
  - steve1977 3y ago
    It will never be completed. GNUstep has been failing at that for decades already.
henriquez 3y ago
It appears like they’ve aped some of MacOS design language, but it’s clear they’re engineers, not designers. There’s enough “uncanny valley” between this OS and actual modern Apple UI design that it comes off a bit like all those versions of KDE that tried to look and act exactly like Windows XP and always felt a bit “off.” Their screenshots page is a Frankenstein mess of poor font quality and Apple themes mixed together dating back to OS X.1 I think it’s better when a team actually has designers working for them and comes up with their own real UI standards, (see Pop!_OS). IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to Linux.
- 9dev 3y ago
  > IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to Linux. It may not be perfect, but it’s pretty darn good - as especially visible when comparing to this effort presented here. There’s a lot of detail and polish in MacOS interface design and UX people don’t realise until it’s missing.
  - steve1977 3y ago
    And that’s exactly what I would call „finesse“
- steve1977 3y ago
  > IMO Apple’s UI design isn’t particularly good so it’s not like some holy grail we should copy and paste to FreeBSD. Fixed that for you…
- bjelkeman-again 3y ago
  Apple’s UI design certainly has flaws. I really don’t understand why they changed the way the System Settings in Ventura/Sonoma(?) now looks like and behaves more like iOS, as an example. However, as someone who has used GUIs from SunView/Irix Desktop/DECwindows to iPadOS/MacOS, via Windows 2.0/3.0/95/NT/etc. I am of the opinion that Apple is still the most consistent and easy to learn GUI. Even my 80-year old mother manages quite well with her Mac and iPhone.

hospitalJail 3y ago

Yeah, its just a nod to their fellow Apple believers. Its fascinating to watch their members behave.

scythe 3y ago

One moderately frustrating thing about using FreeBSD is that it's always been treated as sort of a second-class citizen by GNOME, and therefore Gtk, and therefore most of the Linux ecosystem which depends on Gtk. So probably the most popular desktop environment is KDE, and it's nice, but it is a certain kind of interface which doesn't appeal to everyone. Meanwhile, OS X shares a little code with FreeBSD and was partially derived from it around 30 years ago. And the design philosophy of OS X is roughly the opposite of KDE. This situation has engendered at least half a dozen projects over the years, most of which are never really complete, to make a FreeBSD-first DE/UI that works like Mac. And if it can run Mac applications, so much the better! Unfortunately, this is really hard. Cocoa is a moving target, and contra Wine, Apple is not as pertinaciously obsessed with backwards compatibility as Microsoft. Even much less ambitious (in my estimation) projects like enlightenment 17 and Wayland have struggled to replace major components of the desktop from the ground up.

bityard 3y ago
> OS X shares a little code with FreeBSD and was partially derived from it around 30 years ago. The first release of FreeBSD was 30 years ago, OS X a little over 20.
- steve1977 3y ago
  Well Rhapsody was released 25 years ago. So you’re both right, now go back playing ;-)
- scythe 3y ago
  OS X is derived from NeXTSTEP, first released in 1989 and based on 4.3BSD-Tahoe. Meanwhile, this was updated to 4.3BSD-Reno and ported to the x86 as 386BSD, from which NetBSD was forked in early 1993; it was subsequently reorganized to become FreeBSD in late 1993. NeXTSTEP and OS X later imported a few system components from FreeBSD, while replacing others, particularly replacing parts of the kernel with Mach.
jwells89 3y ago
Not only is Cocoa a moving target, it’s deep and wide. The amount of functionality it offers is staggering and extensive enough that for many types of apps, a dev may not need to import any third party libraries if they don’t want to, with no negative impact on the quality of the final product. That’s extremely difficult to reimplement, even if you lock compatibility to a particular macOS release.

replete 3y ago

Because its still in major development? Huge refactors are going on still under the hood. It's a project with a small team working in their free time with a big goal and its some way off. I mean, a BSD-based open source OS binary compatible with mach binaries ... it's very cool IMO and I hope more people get involved

steve1977 3y ago
Apple‘s secret sauce is not mach binaries but Cocoa. And tons of resources. And clear leadership. We have decades-old projects like GNOME, KDE and GNUstep and none of them come close to macOS in terms of „finesse“. Despite some of them having corporate backing. So I just don’t see that happening for a project with a small team working on it in their free time. Far too ambitious, I‘ve seen projects like this fail too often in the last two decades.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]