6 ms·
Visopsys: OS maintained by a single developer since 1997
- sam0x17 1y agoThe most impressive thing is being on 0.9 after nearly 30 years
- grg0 1y agoIt's so old, that the 3D icons and window borders will be new again when 1.0 is released. Talk about some long-term vision. But jokes aside, I always enjoy reading about custom OSes.
- WD-42 1y agoYou joke but the first thing I thought when I saw the icons was that they were nice. Flat everything has run its course.
- ndiddy 1y agohttps://0ver.org/ https://0ver.org/
- 65 1y agoI always found semantic versioning a little too verbose. Particularly when deciding when to release major versions. OSX was on version 10 for many years but of course released a new "major" version every year. Semantic versioning is just something everyone does in software development, but is is really that necessary?
- rswail 1y agoSemantic versioning is for APIs, not for functionality. So it's for developers consuming that API (whether a library, or a service). For releases in production, use a calendar version. v2025-11-02 is a clear release tag. Add preciseness as required. There should be a SBOM/Manifest (Bill Of Materials) of the versioned major components and configuration for that overall release. For users, it depends on the type of user and what they expect. Their focus is on functionality. So when there's a new feature, bump the number. It's a bit like the car model. It can be random extension letters like "-X", or "6Si".
- necovek 1y agoDevelopers are "users" (of a library, API, tool...), and "API functionality" is a subset of "functionality": what purpose would such distinction serve? For example, in end user desktop software (say a text editor), how would you indicate a security bug fix for an old version v2023-11-02 without forcing users to pay for a new version of v2025-09-15? Again, versioning is a tool, and depending on the release structure of a project, SemVer might work well or it might not (including for APIs/libraries).
- rswail 1y agoSemver is semantic. It tells you about the changes in the API, not in the implementation. So it's relevant to the users (ie developers) of that API. If I fix a bug in the implementation that doesn't affect the API itself, the semver doesn't change. So it works to define the versioning of an interface. Release versioning (like vyyyy-mm-dd) is about SRE and configuration management, it's about documenting what is actually operating in production. User versioning is about user expectations. If you're doing a security bug fix, then a) it should be free to users affected, and b) it should be documented as the reason for the release. For a security bug fix of v2023-11-02, you can add a "hotfix" extension to the numbering so v2023-11-02.001 or equivalent.
- necovek 1y agoI can see how you are using the multiple versioning schemes to achieve certain goals, but that does not make your approach "one true way". "Semantic" really means "has some background meaning", and SemVer meaning behind all the numbers is in no way limited to API versioning: I am confused if you are making a proposal to consider it only that, arguing that different schemes should be used for different types of software, or stating that this is the only thing SemVer can be used for? On any of those points, I disagree and you haven't made a convincing argument why that would make sense. Note that I am not saying that SemVer is the only true way to do versioning (very much not so) for all software, just that it depends on your release strategy what is most applicable, and not on the type of software you are shipping.
- necovek 1y agoVersioning is a tool to communicate changes and backwards compatibility to the users. SemVer makes sense in a lot of cases, but it neither covers everything (eg. compare with Debian/Ubuntu packaging versions), nor is it always needed (think of REST API versions which usually only go with major versions, and commonly multiple major versions from the same codebase).
- GaryBluto 1y ago> zerZerover Jesus Christ.
- sen 1y agoThis is very very cool, and unlike a lot of other "hobby" OSes actually looks usable as a daily driver if your needs are basic (kids, elderly, older/cheaper hardware, etc). While for nerds computers have become these monstrously powerful things that can do everything under the sun, there's definitely still plenty of people who just want a computer to write down notes, keep a calendar, use the calculator... eg the things home computers were originally made to do.
- voidfunc 1y agoWhat youre describing is called iOS on a large iPad. Everyone from 4 year olds to my 77 year old computer illiterate Dad can figure it out. This doesn't look very usable at all by someone who isn't basically a computer nerd.
- honeybadger1 1y agoI agree with you. I see this as a passion project, and I think it's really cool.
- Nextgrid 1y agoTrue in theory, but in practice due to our economy being based on growth at all costs, iOS doesn’t really fit the bill anymore. Nowadays even iOS will randomly change its UI and send you “notifications” or “suggestions” (modern euphemism for “ads”) to subscribe to Apple TV* or iCloud.
- deaddodo 1y agoI was forced to buy a new iPhone recently (my 16 was stolen), and had iOS 26 foisted on me. My god, is it bad (for me, I'm sure some like it). The ugly glass UX, the weird floating controls, the always on display, blah blah. It's not innovative at all, it's like they just had to redo everything simply to make it seem "new".
- Nextgrid 1y ago
- ciroduran 1y agoVery impressed by the screenshots in the website. This is no small feat.
- _false 1y agoTook me a while to realize it's not a linux distro. Incredible!
- sorbusherra 1y agoAmazing! I find it extremely fascinating that somebody is able to create entire operating system. Not a easy task!
- grepfru_it 1y agotake a look at AtheOS it's successor SyllableOS. created by a single developer, another single developer took it over (syllable) and it shortly became an open source project before it went defunct again. But it made impressive gains in the 3 years of initial development. i miss those days of everyone and their mom creating an OS for giggles
- wowczarek 1y agoDon't forget SkyOS. And there's plenty more, with SerenityOS being one of the latest notable examples. Those days never ended. Also ekhem ekhem TempleOS, as single developer as you can get.
- pkphilip 1y agoSkyOS ? I actually paid to be on the Beta program and then suddenly out of the blue the developer pulled the plug on the project completely. Not sure what happened but there were rumours that the code may have "borrowed" from other operating systems but I am not sure.
- pjmlp 1y agoCP/M was also created by one person.
- iamgopal 1y agoBy now, especially in linux, there should emerge an OS that is purely scripts to generate OS. Or is it already ?
- yjftsjthsd-h 1y agoDepending on how you mean it, that exists variously in at least yocto, gentoo, or ALFS. Although I should point out this (visopsys) isn't Linux distro
- mehackernewsacc 1y agoNixOS is what you are describing: https://nixos.org https://nixos.org
- khimaros 1y agoit took me a while to find. here is the source code: https://sourceforge.net/projects/visopsys/files/visopsys-0.92-src.zip/download https://sourceforge.net/projects/visopsys/files/visopsys-0.9...
- RockieYang 1y agoThanks for digging it out. It is still quite large code base. 274052 lines.
- kragen 1y agoThat's 4000 pages, small enough that you could easily lift it. You could read it all in a week, though that wouldn't be enough time to understand much of it. It's half the size of glibc and a hundredth the size of Firefox or the Linux kernel.
- dang 1y agoSurprisingly only one small previous thread: Visopsys - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18147201 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18147201 - Oct 2018 (6 comments)
- dylan604 1y agoEven dang was like "dang, this topic has only been submitted once before now?"
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- dustractor 1y agoIt mentions preemptive multitasking as one of its features. Are there any operating systems that still use cooperative multitasking?
- andsoitis 1y ago> Are there any operating systems that still use cooperative multitasking? RISC OS uses cooperative multitasking: http://www.riscos.info/index.php/Preemptive_multitasking http://www.riscos.info/index.php/Preemptive_multitasking
- throw-qqqqq 1y agoMany RTOS support it, eg FreeRTOS’s co-routines: https://www.freertos.org/Documentation/02-Kernel/02-Kernel-features/01-Tasks-and-co-routines/00-Tasks-and-co-routines https://www.freertos.org/Documentation/02-Kernel/02-Kernel-f...
- jonjacky 1y agoThere is Wirth and Gutknecht's Oberon System. It's still available but is older than Visopsys -- it was created around 1990, then updated in 2013. I think it's now considered an historical artifact. https://www.projectoberon.net/ https://www.projectoberon.net/
- bigstrat2003 1y agoI think it's worth mentioning on a hobby OS, just because it's a decent bit more work to do preemptive multitasking. It's a badge of honor to have successfully implemented it.
- hulitu 1y ago> Are there any operating systems that still use cooperative multitasking? Android ? /s Still not able to run 2 programs in the same time after all these years.
- seabrookmx 1y agoAndroid literally has a desktop Window manager now: https://www.androidauthority.com/working-android-16-desktop-mode-3567057/ https://www.androidauthority.com/working-android-16-desktop-...
- jonhermansen 1y agoMichael MJD did a video on this recently :) https://youtu.be/5MZljgXW2WA https://youtu.be/5MZljgXW2WA
- arjie 1y agoSpeaking of these, does anyone recall the AtheneOS distribution/OS. There’s an archive.org copy of the desktop environment version of it, but I recall there was a really fast version with only 2D graphics and it was a full distribution. Can anyone validate whether this is real? I tried contacting the guy who wrote it but the Companies House address for his company (Rocklyte) bounced the letter.
- anthk 1y agoSyllabe OS?
- arjie 1y agoHuh, SyllableOS might well be it. I thought for sure it was a different version of Athene that I was running but now looking at the screenshots they have a weird familiarity to them so maybe it was just around the same time that I tried both and the memory of two decades has blurred. Thank you!
- globalnode 1y agostill getting 403 after a few hours
- globalnode 1y agooh i get it, geo blocked. had to fire up tor out of spite just to have a look
- liqilin1567 1y ago[dead]
- zxcvgm 1y agoAhh this OS is small enough that a university professor used it as the basis for his class assignments: write a device driver for it, or a pipe implementation, if I recall correctly. I thought it was pretty genius at the time, and it was certainly quite a challenge for the students too.
- stuxnet79 1y agoDoes this class have a public web page? I would love to take a look and do something similar in my spare time.
- visopsys 1y agoI took an OS in college in 2006 and the big project that my prof required us to do was to make modification of visopsys. The software was primitive at that time but still had UI interface. I emailed the author to ask some questions in my project. The author had connection with my prof and informed my prof about this. My prof told me that I was not allowed to ask the author regarding this project. So I had to figured out on my own. It was fun to play around with and learnt how things work at deep OS level. It was a good memory for me :) And you guys notice anything about my username? :)
- tsoukase 1y agoReading your post until the end was like watching a movie...
- ctxc 1y agoSounds like an insane ride xD
- 7thaccount 1y agoI can't tell if OP just really enjoyed the experience or if he is the actual author of the OS.
- ilaksh 1y agoHe just named himself in honor of something he remembered fondly.
- visopsys 1y agoNo, I am not the author. I just liked the project and the name that I chose it for my hackernews account 14 years ago. No intention to misrepresent the project or the author.
- phendrenad2 1y ago> liked the project and the name that I chose it for my hackernews account 14 years ago Some people name themselves `__xXx_ultimatEWeapon420_xXx__` and some people name themselves after a random toy operating system.
- marenVoyant88 1y agoIt’s amazing how one person kept this project alive since 1997, that’s real passion and love for coding!
- alcover 1y agoNaive question: would using such an OS bring some security by obscurity ?
- GaryBluto 1y ago> PC compatible computers That takes me back.
- tanepiper 1y agoTempleOS with a BeOS GUI - that's the vibe
- malomalsky 1y agoJust use temple os
- Rochus 1y agoInteresting. Never heard of this system before. It's apparently a monolithic kernel, developed almost exclusively by originally Canadian programmer Andy McLaughlin since 1997. The system has a graphical user interface, preemptive multitasking, and virtual memory. It is implemented in C and IA-32 assembly language. Here is a 2012 interview with the author: https://www.pingdom.com/blog/visopsys-operating-system/ https://www.pingdom.com/blog/visopsys-operating-system/.
- pavlov 1y agoIt’s short for “visual operating system” but there are no screenshots anywhere. That would have felt off even in 1997. Maybe they mean something else by visual.
- hi_hello 1y agohttps://visopsys.org/about/screenshots/ https://visopsys.org/about/screenshots/
- wjnc 1y agoAround 1997 I learned the concept of RTFM! Obviously my father already taught me to look in the DOS and WordPerfect manuals to learn about features and commands one might use. Great learnings. Oh and: https://visopsys.org/about/screenshots/ https://visopsys.org/about/screenshots/
- velocity3230 1y ago> Great learnings. Lessons. The word is lessons.
- wjnc 1y agoHaha, have you missed your etymology and poetry classes? A lesson is something you learn. A learning is an act or experience. A joke telling someone of when you’ve learned to RTFM is intended to feel like a yoke.
- fb03 1y agoIn the homepage there's literally a link on the top bar called "Screenshots"
- Jemm 1y agoI can't seem to find if it has a web browser or if you can install the web browser
- anta40 1y agoHmmm nice to see the OS is still under development. First time I saw it was during undergraduate days.... 2006 or 2007?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- phendrenad2 1y agoI'm surprised there aren't more hand-crafted OSs popping up on HN. Agentic AI can give you the basics of an OS in 15 minutes. It gets confused when debugging assembly code, but it can give you a good framework and walk you though the remainder of the steps.
- BoredPositron 1y agoI am intrigued. Go ahead and show us ONE 15 minute agentic ai os that runs on metal.
- anthk 1y agoThe parent commenter should get an Altair Z80 emulator with CP/M 2.2 and begin writting stuff in assembly. Even a simple Tetris would be a daunting task. He could even try high level languages such as T3X, which is very Pascal-like to my eyes in order to be familiar with CP/M 2.2 and after some months I would switch to Z80 assembly in order to write stuff for CP/M. These AI's would be clueless about T3X OFC, or almost, because of the nasty scrappers. Still, it would be an ideal exercise to avoid the AI completely. You learn by the book. Literally.
- phendrenad2 1y agoWait, I'm confused. Why would I use an obscure language that no one knows about, or could find a book on, when I could just have the AI write Z80 assembly, or even have it make a Z80 C compiler for me? (You laugh because you haven't tried it)
- trueismywork 1y agoThe biggest problem on today's OS is I/O driver. Specifically USB driver.
- anthk 1y agoAnd ACPI/APIC and tons of extra pests.
- snvzz 1y agoI am amazed they got that far without having support for an UART.
- peter_d_sherman 1y agoGitHub mirror: https://github.com/bbarker/Visopsys https://github.com/bbarker/Visopsys (Protected-Mode (PM) switch/handoff code in: https://github.com/bbarker/Visopsys/blob/master/src/osloader/loaderMain.s https://github.com/bbarker/Visopsys/blob/master/src/osloader...)