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Xbox is a cousin of Windows, PS4/5 is a BSD. Well and good, but the fact that Nintendo still roll their own OS warms my heart. At least someone is trying a new

Xbox is a cousin of Windows, PS4/5 is a BSD. Well and good, but the fact that Nintendo still roll their own OS warms my heart. At least someone is trying a new thing!

written-beyond 2y ago
What?! I thought Nintendo was building on BSD.
- gjsman-1000 2y ago
  Nope, at least, not any more than Windows. It’s a homegrown microkernel OS. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_software https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softw... https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8941-console_security_-_switch https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8941-console_security_-_switch https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Main_Page https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Main_Page
  - written-beyond 2y ago
    This is insane, but don't their developers also hate them. Like I understand having the opportunity to engineer and OS from scratch and have millions of people using it. But after the honeymoon ends and you now have to build and add features to it as the platform grows and you realise you don't have an army of OSS contributors helping you ship and innovate. Isn't it frustrating for them?
    - gjsman-1000 2y ago
      Probably not. The Switch OS is very small - under 400MB. And that’s including the NVIDIA drivers and WebKit (which is maintained by a third party called NetFront, so not their problem) and all graphical assets. When you strip it down to the actual amount of code Nintendo maintains, by ripping out the NVIDIA, NetFront, graphical and audio assets, it’s manageable. Compared to the complexity of the hundreds of video games that Nintendo has worked on, it’s probably not as difficult as it would seem. There’s a reason why it’s small though - every game card comes with a copy of the required OS version and can self-update the console if needed. Not only can the game card update the console - other Switch players, using the version synchronization feature, can even update each other’s consoles wirelessly without internet for both the game and OS. > but don't their developers also hate them No idea where you got this from. The primary complaint regarding the Switch is the dated chip and performance metrics, not the system. Nintendo as a company meanwhile has a 98%+ retention rate. There were five people who worked on the original Super Mario Bros in 1985, all five of them worked in some capacity on Super Mario Bros Wonder in 2023.
      - written-beyond 2y ago
        But that retention rating seems more related to Japanese corporate dynamics, the whole silent contract of dont ask for more and we won't raise prices. Anyway if the entire OS is hand rolled how are they able to get WebKit and Nvidia drivers to run without much effort. Like I'm assuming they very much needed to build their own linker, their own executable format. Even their own libc, sounds like a lot of work to QC, document and implement. If it were their own flavour of Unix I wouldn't have so many questions. Unix already defines standards pretty well like file systems, process management, scheduler, drivers, a plethora of helpful daemons. So is it basically just a highly modified Unix, implying a lot of Unix things just has to be ported over to their micro kernel Unix or is it more proprietary. I ask this with just a thirst for this knowledge, I talked to a few enthusiast OS Devs that build their own toy kernels, bootloaders etc. from scratch and those things, though being great accomplishments, still have huge pains they never stop talking about. Like USB drivers are notorious to implement because of the standard being so complex. If Nintendo made their OS entirely from scratch did they go through all of that.

Xbox is a cousin of Windows, PS4/5 is a BSD. Well and good, but the fact that Nintendo still roll their own OS warms my heart. At least someone is trying a new thing!

written-beyond 2y ago

What?! I thought Nintendo was building on BSD.

gjsman-1000 2y ago
Nope, at least, not any more than Windows. It’s a homegrown microkernel OS. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_software https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Switch_system_softw... https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8941-console_security_-_switch https://media.ccc.de/v/34c3-8941-console_security_-_switch https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Main_Page https://switchbrew.org/wiki/Main_Page
- written-beyond 2y ago
  This is insane, but don't their developers also hate them. Like I understand having the opportunity to engineer and OS from scratch and have millions of people using it. But after the honeymoon ends and you now have to build and add features to it as the platform grows and you realise you don't have an army of OSS contributors helping you ship and innovate. Isn't it frustrating for them?
  - gjsman-1000 2y ago
    Probably not. The Switch OS is very small - under 400MB. And that’s including the NVIDIA drivers and WebKit (which is maintained by a third party called NetFront, so not their problem) and all graphical assets. When you strip it down to the actual amount of code Nintendo maintains, by ripping out the NVIDIA, NetFront, graphical and audio assets, it’s manageable. Compared to the complexity of the hundreds of video games that Nintendo has worked on, it’s probably not as difficult as it would seem. There’s a reason why it’s small though - every game card comes with a copy of the required OS version and can self-update the console if needed. Not only can the game card update the console - other Switch players, using the version synchronization feature, can even update each other’s consoles wirelessly without internet for both the game and OS. > but don't their developers also hate them No idea where you got this from. The primary complaint regarding the Switch is the dated chip and performance metrics, not the system. Nintendo as a company meanwhile has a 98%+ retention rate. There were five people who worked on the original Super Mario Bros in 1985, all five of them worked in some capacity on Super Mario Bros Wonder in 2023.
    - written-beyond 2y ago
      But that retention rating seems more related to Japanese corporate dynamics, the whole silent contract of dont ask for more and we won't raise prices. Anyway if the entire OS is hand rolled how are they able to get WebKit and Nvidia drivers to run without much effort. Like I'm assuming they very much needed to build their own linker, their own executable format. Even their own libc, sounds like a lot of work to QC, document and implement. If it were their own flavour of Unix I wouldn't have so many questions. Unix already defines standards pretty well like file systems, process management, scheduler, drivers, a plethora of helpful daemons. So is it basically just a highly modified Unix, implying a lot of Unix things just has to be ported over to their micro kernel Unix or is it more proprietary. I ask this with just a thirst for this knowledge, I talked to a few enthusiast OS Devs that build their own toy kernels, bootloaders etc. from scratch and those things, though being great accomplishments, still have huge pains they never stop talking about. Like USB drivers are notorious to implement because of the standard being so complex. If Nintendo made their OS entirely from scratch did they go through all of that.