6 ms·
Dusk OS
- 90s_dev 1y ago> https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/io/kbd.fs https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/io/kbd... I don't know forth. Is this a driver? How does it talk to the hardware?
- 7thaccount 1y agoForth is usually kind of like a macro later on top of Assembly or even machine code in the case of very simple CPUs, although it can be written on top of anything (example: Python). I think a layer on top of C is pretty common these days as the processors keep getting crazy complicated. Another important note is that although there are some conventions, almost everyone rolls their own Forth, so they're all unique in a lot of ways. The old saying is if you've seen one forth, then you've seen one forth. There is an ANS standard, but it isn't used a whole lot to my knowledge. So I assume it talks to drivers like you would with Assembly? That's just a guess and probably a bad one.
- kjander79 1y agoIt's just an event loop, watching for status changes in a memory location. Talking to the hardware just occurs when the keyboard changes the values in memory.
- skupig 1y agoThe USB host code is in fs/drv/usb: https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/drv/usb/kbd.fs https://git.sr.ht/~vdupras/duskos/tree/master/item/fs/drv/us... Not that I can read any of it... Forth looks unlike any other language I've ever seen o_O
- Calwestjobs 1y agoMandatory question for all OSes - Does it run EMACS or does it run inside of a EMACS?
- p0w3n3d 1y agoTbh I agree with almost every word there, but I can't believe this OS would be of any help in such a situation. In dusk of our civilization it will not be possible to boot this OS from any modern computer. Those things nowadays don't even have CD. everything is dependent on internet, our data is being disowned by us and put into cloud. In case of broken internet the knowledge is going to be lost. And how we're going to connect to this site using http? Via dialup?
- GTP 1y agoI think the idea would be to prepare beforehand and have your own copy, alongside your own Wikipedia dump.
- etskinner 1y agoYou don't need a CD drive to boot an OS. A humble USB stick does the trick. And nearly every computer made in the last 10 years has a USB port and the ability to boot from it
- p0w3n3d 1y agoSometimes it's only usb c. But... We're speaking about dusk of civilization. Pendrive don't live as long as CDs
- BenjiWiebe 1y agoI have a stack of CD drives. I'll trade you one for food and medications.
- alpaca128 1y agoWhat kind of apocalyptic event that wipes out all computer manufacturing capability would let USB drives (and compatible computers) survive? And how would you power that thing?
- jollyllama 1y agoSeems like a wishful thinking about the first stage portion of collapse. You're going to be more interested in running some obsolete version of Windows that controls some proprietary infrastructure hardware, not running calculations of whatever kind or building things from scratch.
- markstos 1y agoBut if you an need an OS for which no viruses or exploits have been develop yet, you may be in luck!
- alpaca128 1y agoWould be funny to finally find an undamaged computer, boot it up and see a ransomware notice.
- Mainan_Tagonist 1y agoWhile it is most likely a very fanciful pet project borne out of post-apo fantasy doomporn, there is one fatal fly in the ointment: In a post apocalyptic situation, who will have THE TIME (nevermind the resources) to dedicate to "operating" one such OS? Apocalypse is generally synonymous with population collapse. Many less humans to interact with means a greatly diminished division of labour and rebuilding civilisation will require first and foremost food production, 14 hours of daily work in the fields, scavenging, hunting, etc.... Taking one worker away from these (tedious) activities would likely be considered an investment that requires significant returns, results, be it only to justify this to other workers who would also like to be sat in front of a computer. Hard to justify having swapped a hard days work for some code on a computer screen. For that kind of scenario, a lightweight Android rom with some ham-radio driver would probably be more appropriate.
- vdupras 1y agoSee https://collapseos.org/why.html https://collapseos.org/why.html , under "Aren't there more important things to do than an operating system?"
- ummonk 1y agoThere's a lot of idiosyncratic verbiage about stuff like collapse of civilization and users vs. operators, but it's not clear to me what makes this more lightweight or hackable than a typical lightweight RTOS or even just baremetal drivers running on a microcontroller.
- nonethewiser 1y agoOr why an "almost C compiler" is better than a C compiler.
- GTP 1y agoI think that having an "almost" C compiler is a trick they use to minimize the size of the codebase.
- vdupras 1y agoYes, this is it. A C compiler in 50 kilobytes of code is pretty innovative. It's also doesn't lie about the "almost". It's really almost C. It's just that C's stdlib is POSIX centric and doesn't fit Forth well, so it's not implemented as is.
- yencabulator 1y agoTCC is 100 kB, already exists, and is a real C compiler (+preprocessor+assembler+linker). It can build Linux too! https://bellard.org/tcc/ https://bellard.org/tcc/
- vdupras 1y ago100kb binary. I'm talking about source code size. TinyCC's source is 1400kb in size.
- kaoD 1y agoOr rather, why is it not much worse than an actual C compiler. In an apocalyptic event energy would be precious. You'd rather have an optimizing compiler to run longer off your solar-charged car battery or whatever. I like the roleplay/lore and the tech effort is impressive but I don't think it fits the idea.
- os2warpman 1y ago>Its primary purpose is to be maximally useful during the first stage of civilizational collapse, that is, when we can't produce modern computers anymore but that there's still many modern computers around. Any event or series of events that removes mankind's ability to produce modern computers is a global extinction-level event and rather than dicking around with computers one should really be considering suicide to avoid a slow, painful, inevitable death in a hostile world surrounded by misery. People act like computers are complicated. They are but they also aren't. Any moderately-sized US state university can (and some have) build one from scratch: as in from fucking sand to "Shall we play a game?", all in one go. The state university nearest to me has a complete nanofab that can make-- and package!-- ICs (somewhere around 14nm-ish), a different lab that can make wafers from scratch, a chemistry department where undergrads could make the plastics, and all of the software guys you can shake a stick at. The loss of the ability to make many things, including computers but also other more important things like the industrial process for making ammonia, globally, simultaneously, is the end of humanity. The knowledge and ability is so widely globally distributed that taking it all out is death. Do not mistake the centralization of consumer goods assembly with the centralization of the knowledge needed to assemble consumer goods. Is this OS just for the brief period of time between the loss and the ultimate end? To like, play some rounds of solitaire while awaiting the inevitable?
- nonethewiser 1y ago>Any moderately-sized US state university can (and some have) build one from scratch: as in from fucking sand to "Shall we play a game?", all in one go. I am quite surprised to hear that. Really?
- os2warpman 1y agoYup! Here's one in Utah: https://www.nanofab.utah.edu/ https://www.nanofab.utah.edu/ Here's one in Pennsylvania: https://www.mri.psu.edu/nanofabrication-lab https://www.mri.psu.edu/nanofabrication-lab Here's one in California: https://nanofab.ucsb.edu/ https://nanofab.ucsb.edu/
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- nancyminusone 1y agoI hope the author doesn't take this the wrong way, but this feels like another Temple OS driven by a different (perhaps milder) kind of insanity. It's quite technically impressive, but I'm not sure I'd know what to do with it if I were experiencing an apocalypse, in a way that would be more useful to me than an install of Windows XP or Linux or Freedos would be
- theletterf 1y agoTemple OS came to my mind, too. At least that one had a UI and games; a much better option if civilization collapses.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- emchammer 1y agoIt's just such a boutique thing, saying you're prepared to run 32-bit software on hardware during an apocalypse. If CPUs suddenly become scarce, I would have figured a tube-based, relay-based, or Enigma-type machine with specific useful applications would be more practical.
- zeroq 1y agoYou do realize that your usb charger has a microprocesor that is as capable as computers you used to play on as a child? Seriously, finding a running 386 today will probably be more challanging than finding a PC capable of running Cyberpunk in 4k 5 years after the fallout. Like others have mentioned at worst it's another TempleOS or subtle way to point out to your acquaintance that they shouldn't stay with you alone at best.
- aziaziazi 1y ago> years after the fallout. Ok, but that's not the purpose of the OS. I recommend you to read the Why page: https://collapseos.org/why.html https://collapseos.org/why.html Two relevants parts: > Computers, after a few decades, will break down beyond repair and we won't be able to program microcontrollers any more. > It's not that modern ICs are more fragile than old ones (maybe they are, after all, more can go wrong with millions of transistors than with thousands), it's that old designs are simpler than modern ones and thus more repairable. The complete reflexion and arguments are way deeper and interesting through. The most interesting parts is under "Electronics evolved rapidly without any help before. Why can't we pull it again?"
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- NunoSempere 1y agoI've seen this before, thought it was super interesting, kudos to the author. Leaving this comment for contrast with some other negative comments.
- jpk 1y agoIf you actually want to offer substantive contrast, then I'd suggest elaborating on what you find interesting.
- etskinner 1y agoAccording to the "Linking to this website" section: If you want to link to this website, please use http:// links rather than https:// ones. While http:// links are trivially "upgradable" to HTTPS, the opposite is not. Mods should update the link in this post
- munificent 1y agoI think many of us feel a lot of existential dread about the future these days, and if hacking on an OS helps the author cope with those feelings and improves their psychology, then I'm all for it. Whatever keeps you sane.
- zeroq 1y agoThat "civilizational collapse" scenario must be straight out of the Fallout game. In my mind I was reading their page with the voice of Ron Perlman - "FAT, FAT never changes...".
- blturner 1y agoRecent issue of Wired has an interview with the author https://www.wired.com/story/forth-collapse-os-apocalypse-programming-language/ https://www.wired.com/story/forth-collapse-os-apocalypse-pro...
- lykahb 1y agoI think that in the event of a such a collapse, there would be two new directions: turning the surviving advanced digital devices into general computers, and building new electronics. Reusing existing common software would be easier than building something from scratch. So, I'd expect that postmarketOS and flavours of Linux for low-power machines meets most needs. Also, it'd be fantastic if iPhones have a doomsday switch that untethers them from Apple - that'd be the difference between a useless brick and a precious artifact of a bygone era. The post-apocalyptic setting has potential for a game that comes from the perspective of a builder, and goes deeply into civil engineering and IT - build architecture that can withstand the elements, design a water chip, write embedded software for it.
- r14c 1y agoI think forth is fun, but I can't really take the collapse narrative of this project seriously. IG it's disrespectful, but I kinda view it as a performance art piece with fallout vibes.
- nntwozz 1y agoThat's nice, but it won't replace the trusty abacus. That's what you need for a real apocalypse.
- tgma 1y agoLet me preface that I do not subscribe to the ideology at all, but the concept of bootstrapping a complex system is intellectually worthwhile and often practical in its use-cases. For example, imagine a tech company with a bunch of datacenters that boot from the network, have redundancy etc, but if you somehow turn the macthines off all at once, no one knows if they can reboot safely (say, service discovery cannot find the machine hosting OS images anymore). As a practical matter, you can flip the author's mental pessimism and look at the optimistic situation where we conquer other planets, in which case thinking about an optimal bootstrapping path is going to be essential for the society and its industrial needs. It is also true that some fairly local shocks in human society can cause a cascading failure and doing this analysis fairly regularly can help identify and minimize the cascade.
- dang 1y agoRelated: Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43482705 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43482705 - March 2025 (199 comments) Running CollapseOS on an Esp8266 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645124 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38645124 - Dec 2023 (1 comment) Dusk OS: 32-bit Forth OS. Useful during first stage of civilizational collapse - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36751422 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36751422 - July 2023 (141 comments) DuskOS: Successor to CollapseOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36688676 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36688676 - July 2023 (4 comments) Collapse OS – Why? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35672677 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35672677 - April 2023 (1 comment) Collapse OS: Winter is coming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207852 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33207852 - Oct 2022 (2 comments) Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340518 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31340518 - May 2022 (8 comments) Collapse OS Status: Completed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26922146 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26922146 - April 2021 (2 comments) Collapse OS – bootstrap post-collapse technology - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25910108 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25910108 - Jan 2021 (116 comments) Collapse OS Web Emulators - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24138496 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24138496 - Aug 2020 (1 comment) Collapse OS, an OS for When the Unthinkable Happens - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23535720 - June 2020 (2 comments) Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453575 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23453575 - June 2020 (15 comments) Collapse OS – Why Forth? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23450287 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23450287 - June 2020 (166 comments) Collapse OS – Why? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901002 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22901002 - April 2020 (3 comments) 'Collapse OS' Is an Open Source Operating System for the Post-Apocalypse - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21815588 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21815588 - Dec 2019 (3 comments) Collapse OS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21182628 - Oct 2019 (303 comments)
- WorldPeas 1y agoWhenever I see something like this I wonder: how is it more valuable than porting freeDOS/busybox to the same environments, with its dearth of existing software and hardware support
- aziaziazi 1y agoMany comments strawman the author then argue with what they imagine he images. Guys just read the 'Why' page [0] and argue with his thesis. I'm not sure to agree with everything but it still is a very interesting and questioning read. Kudos to the author for writing it. This OS is not for: - you or your child - a planet with working computers - a planet with cheap and abundant 'bootstrap' energy like we had from 1850 to 1960 - a planet where humans really struggle to get food ("you're running away from cannibals", but I think this metaphor is a bad choice after the mad-max refutation) That page [1] is also a core part of the theory: "What makes collapse inevitable and imminent". [0] https://collapseos.org/why.html https://collapseos.org/why.html [1] https://collapseos.org/civ.html https://collapseos.org/civ.html
- siddthesquid 1y agoI feel I can empathize with the ideology, and I want to argue that an idea like this is a big piece of some puzzle. The puzzle: During the collapse, I think the biggest thing we would lose is our ability to communicate with each other in a reliable way. Like telecommunications and internet and all that. Who and what do we trust? I imagine that before a collapse like this would happen, people would get a hint to gather as much as they can to help with their survival. Those things would include: this OS, the knowledge to load a sequence of bytes from whatever device is holding the OS to as many CPUs/controllers as possible, strategies to connect any number of arbitrary CPUs to radio devices, some knowledge of public keys and private keys. maybe all neatly organized into a handbook The OS itself would be responsible for providing as easy an interface for any average joe to generate public/private keys, communicate with other people who have followed their same protocol, and use those public keys to build trust from communications. before the collapse happens, you may even collect a list of public keys you are likely to already trust. The OS could maybe even have software for building communities of trust or even handling adhoc finances through (don't hate me for this) cryptocurrency. anyways, this is all based on an assumption that the ability to communicate quickly (and build trust in a decentralized yet controllable way) is the best mitigation we have to a collapse this answer is slightly influenced by the movie leave the world behind lol
- taylorallred 1y agoWhere can I go to learn how to scavenge for microcontrollers and load/operate an OS like this on them? (Low-key would like to know that I could do that if need be).
- holyfuck 1y ago[flagged]
- commisson 1y ago[dead]