SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

by yankcrime • 7 years ago

469 179 7 years ago

34 year old here.. about every year I set up a whole OS 9 emulation deal because of my obsession with Mac OS 9, I dont know if I am sad and dwelling on the past, but I just loved that OS so much and keep trying to get back to it and I know I am not alone. I love to see projects like these

asark2• 7 years ago

Screenshots of 90s operating systems are so relaxing. I miss interfaces that looked like interfaces, and distinct from content.

seanvk• 7 years ago

BeOS is another one that comes to mind.

insulanus• 7 years ago

A lot of good stuff happened on OS 9. There wasn't a lot of extra cruft, because programmers had to use the whole machine to implement their vision.

city41• 7 years ago

I loved the interface dearly. I miss MacOS classic and feel OSX is a step backwards in many ways, UX wise. But I don’t miss how primitive the OS itself was. Tracking down extension conflicts? Manually allocating memory? Cooperative multitasking? I’ll pass on those.

tbe• 7 years ago

That's why Rhapsody was absolute peak for me. Haiku might beat it, though I'm probably stuck on Linux anyway.

rvense• 7 years ago

I'm more of a System 7 guy, but I still have two G4 towers, a G3 Powerbook, as well as some beige 68ks.

They're still useful for making music and get used for that occasionally, but I honestly love just booting them up and using the Finder. I wish I could still use them for communication somehow.

anthk_• 7 years ago

I wish I could still use them for communication somehow.

Bitlbee + IRC client.

eismcc• 7 years ago

Previous discussion on HN:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19537807

bradenb• 7 years ago

This looks amazing. I love the aesthetic. I wish I could bring myself to commit to such a large hobby project.

Sendotsh• 7 years ago

I love the idea of a modern OS with the 90s function-over-form aesthetic. There’s immense beauty for me in function, and the 90s was without a doubt the peak of OS design.

davidw• 7 years ago

and the 90s was without a doubt the peak of OS design. reply

Also, and surely not at all correlated with my youth, it was the peak of good music.

ianai• 7 years ago

90s kid, you’re both wrong. OSX was a forreal big deal. Would google or Apple have built smartphones on FOSS OSes without an OSX? Music has definitely blown up and gone full post modern though. You can probably get an endless stream of whatever sound floats your boat for 10$/ month. Or free.

jessaustin• 7 years ago

Also, no year since 1999 has surpassed it for quality and variety of movies.

0815test• 7 years ago

Looks a lot like Linux with a fvwm95 interface on top. I mean, it's always great and so exciting to see something totally new being created from scratch! But you don't actually need to switch to some entirely homegrown, untested kernel for that 1990s UI fix! ;-)

coldacid2• 7 years ago

One could always also throw together a virtual machine for running Windows 3.1 like I keep doing.

Jaruzel2• 7 years ago

For most non-technical people, a Windows 3.1 type GUI is all they need.

pjmlp2• 7 years ago

I would rather use the original fvwm actually. :)

sys_647382• 7 years ago

Looks like Windows 95.

mixmastamyk3• 7 years ago

Which looks like nextstep.

oblio• 7 years ago

Does it, though?

Windows 95: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_95#/media/File:Windows...

vs Nextstep: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeXTSTEP#/media/File:NeXTSTEP_...

Yeah they're both light grey, but other than that, they don't really look similar to me...

aasasd• 7 years ago

Pretty sure Motif was the originator of the 90s era concrete slabs look. “Initially released in July 1989.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_(software)

akling26• 7 years ago

Hello friends, author here! Fun to see my project on HN again.

If you would like to see the system in action, I did a demo video in March[1] and one in April[2].

I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about the system. I’m not an expert on operating systems, but I can be pretty productive :)

[1] https://youtu.be/hE52D-zbX3g

[2] https://youtu.be/RBr5If8GrM4

tbrock• 7 years ago

I honestly cannot believe the massive scope of this project, it’s astonishing. What an accomplishment!

You singlehandedly created something that took many programmers many decades to build.

newsbinator2• 7 years ago

10% of this is knowing in advance what UI/UX paradigms you're matching/mimicking.

The original developers had to come up with the concept of, say, a taskbar from scratch.

They understood it has to run separately from other parts of the OS in case of crashes, it should support icons that are references to the same icons that windows have, etc.

But they were also limited by the resources of their day, and had to get clever about resource allocation. That's extremely time-consuming.

But that said, 90% of this project is simply a very good creator, being incredibly productive.

The mythical 100x programmer isn't always a myth.

I'm in awe.

Aeolun• 7 years ago

Whenever I see these kinds of videos, I’m struck by how much time and work it must have taken to be able to announce a new slider component.

From the state a month ago, it’s very reasonable. From scratch however...

How do you even start building an OS?

akling26• 7 years ago

You can actually see how much work the slider took, because I recorded the process :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMRJClRrGps

I don't know if any two operating systems started out the same.. Serenity came into this world because I found myself with a lot of free time and in need of a programming project.

The first three components I wrote were an ELF parser, an Ext2 filesystem dumper, and a GUI library (on top of SDL.) They all ran independently on my Linux box. Once they worked well enough, I glued it all together with a simple x86 kernel and just kept going.

tyingq• 7 years ago

"How do you even start building an OS?"

Probably not the answer you wanted, but I assume from a poc/toy bootloader. I wasn't disciplined enough to go further, but I did play around getting a toy OS working, and stopped a little bit past that part.

This effort, from a one man show, is amazing.

pizlonator• 7 years ago

This is seriously awesome work. Productive is an understatement, damn.

akling26• 7 years ago

Thanks Phil, that warms my heart.

hestefisk• 7 years ago

Second that statement. I don’t know how you have time or money to develop something mine this. Shock and awe!

bArray• 7 years ago

What's the future goal for this project? Will it ever reach a point where you say "it's done"? I quite like the idea of loading this onto an old laptop I have laying around for the purpose of using it as a distraction free portable editor (if it won't crash and lose everything).

Now that you have networking and a compiler, you could build a "simple" package manager. It could be just a list of supported Git repositories that are downloaded (downloader) and built (gcc), that would at least allow people to write stand-alone applications (no libraries) for your system that others could use.

akling26• 7 years ago

The goal is basically open. I would like to make this system good enough that I can spend most of my time on it. Without losing track of the original ideas.

A package manager is definitely coming sooner or later. There's actually an SDL port in the works (done by a stellar contributor, not myself.) I suspect that we're gonna need some sort of ports system in the Serenity tree to be able to maintain it. :)

iforgotpassword2• 7 years ago

Does it run on real hardware?

Any plans for 64 bit?

Any plans for SMP?

The old readme mentions a gcc patch. Is it still needed? What does it do? Just the final executable's format?

Is there an FAQ somewhere that I missed? :)

akling26• 7 years ago

I haven't tried running it on real hardware yet, I'm too comfortable with my VM-based workflow at the moment. It'll eventually get there though, but I'm not in a hurry. :)

The answer is basically the same for 64-bit and SMP support. Some day I'll wake up with the burning desire to implement those things, and then I'll start on it. Or someone will show up with patches. We'll see! Nothing really depends on those features, although they would certainly be huge improvements to the architecture.

Yeah we still need patches for binutils and GCC. Any custom operating system does, you can see the patches here: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/master/Toolchain...

It's all about setting up the executable formats, providing the system names, and telling the compiler how we like things linked, etc.

There's no FAQ but maybe I should compile one..

innst• 7 years ago

This is some awesome work! From the looks of it, your window server architecture is similar to wayland's, so would it be possible to port the GUI library to Linux/Wayland? Then someone could write a wayland compositor using wlroots that mimics the W95 aesthetics and there you have it: the ultimate 90's UI on a system that's actually usable for day to day tasks.

akling26• 7 years ago

Sure, the GUI library could definitely be ported to anywhere POSIX-y. The IPC messaging is already based on AF_LOCAL sockets so that should "just work"

The bitmap sharing between WindowServer and clients is using a custom Serenity API ("create_shared_buffer") which is specifically tailored for this system. It can probably be replaced with some equivalent X11/Wayland mechanism in a few hours, if someone felt inclined to do that. :)

dbancajas• 7 years ago

what's the secret to being a 10x programmer?

akling26• 7 years ago

Aiming for 100x.

saiya-jin• 7 years ago

I’m not an expert on operating systems

understatement of the century

neogodless• 7 years ago

Did you mean to be insulting, or did you misspeak?

marktangotango• 7 years ago

Just curious if you were familiar with Wirths work on the Oberon system and what he and another contributor were able accomplish, when starting this project? What were some of your inspirations?

akling26• 7 years ago

I was not aware of the Oberon system. It looks interesting, I will read more about it, thank you :)

The inspiration for this system comes from using Visual Basic as a kid and just having fun trying to mimic the Microsoft Office look&feel of those days. It also comes from using Slackware Linux and realizing that everything can be done with text commands, and configured with text files.

Koshkin• 7 years ago

Also, a good example of a clean modern C++ code.

humanrebar3• 7 years ago

Mostly. A good portion of the AK subdirectory should be replaced with standard and/or boost functionality, though:

https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/tree/9153666e72effdf5...

olliej3• 7 years ago

Presumably the intent is not to depend on boost, but rather only standardized parts of the language.

Also using something like boost ties you to a specific version of boost due to the wonders of c++ abi - your OS libraries can’t expose anything that explicitly or implicitly includes things that aren’t ABI stable.

(I’m sure kling is already requiring 100% stable abi :) )

jasoneckert• 7 years ago

I'm somewhat disappointed that they didn't call it SerenityNOW...

awifstrand• 7 years ago

An Operating System for The Rest of Us.

reaperducer• 7 years ago

I think this is an impressive achievement, and certainly something I could never do. But I'm a little disappointed in the state of desktop operating systems these days. I don't see any innovation. Every OS is just splashing chrome on the same WIMP paradigm that's been available to consumers for 35 years.

Maybe I'm looking for the equivalent of a flying car, but I wish someone would come up with an OS, or even just an OS feature that makes people say "wow!"

Is there a college lab or a research department or some other place where people are trying really different things?

brodsky• 7 years ago

I know what you mean. but I'm also not sure what innovation can be expected from something as utilitarian as an OS. Do you have any ideas of what you'd want to see?

nitrogen2• 7 years ago

Boot up an old Linux distro from around 2001 and compare WindowMaker, AfterStep, Fluxbox, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, and half a dozen others. Compare those to fictional UIs seen in movies, Hypercard, visual development systems like the ancient Klik n Play or modern Scratch or MaxMSP, etc. Learn about OLE (object linking and embedding) and document-centric vs. app-centric computing. Think about all the different ways data can flow between components of a system and how those flows can be grouped differently. Look at alt and historic OSes like Be, TempleOS, SunOS, IRIX, DOS, VMS, OS/2, old UIs like Dosshell, Commander. Look at tablets vs phones vs desktops vs. game consoles vs appliances. Remember that bytes and bits and addresses and instructions and files and programs don't necessarily have to be the fundamental units of an OS.

Then, after all that, come back and tell us that a modern desktop is the utilitarian endgame of OS innovation :).

nineteen9994• 7 years ago

At the risk of sounding inflammatory (which is not my intention), what I'd like to see is the FP and RIIR crowds getting their hands dirty and write a hobby OS like this up to this level in their language of choice. If that means they need to assemble a stable ABI/API that other programmers can build against, then that's the challenge.

C/C++ programmers have been building their own hobby OS's non-stop since Linux came out. There's lots of example code out there for initializing the bare metal, writing bootloaders, task switching, controlling the MMU there for those languages. I even got a certain distance myself nearly 20 years ago, and I'm a complete hack. I only gave up because I never figured out how to initialize VESA graphics from protected mode, and I sure as hell didn't want do it with 16-bit code from the bootloader.

We all know what a disaster area C/C++ are, the number of CVE's we see in the Linux kernel and userland because of this, etc etc, we hear about it every day on HN. So I personally like to see some of those people put their money where their mouth is. I think that would be an innovation.

aidenn02• 7 years ago

https://github.com/froggey/Mezzano

fouc• 7 years ago

RIIR = Rewriting It In Rust for those that don't know

iamnothere2• 7 years ago

The Redox OS project is doing this, in Rust. https://www.redox-os.org/

jordache• 7 years ago

you're gonna be constraint by keyboard and a pointer device. For those two combinations, you ain't going to have much to work with.

la_barba• 7 years ago

Under the hood, there is already a very very long list covering those 35 years.. virtual memory, pre-emptive multitasking, micro kernels, mandatory and discretionary access control, advancements in file systems, system administration, etc, etc

As far as the UI is concerned, are you talking about increased productivity or just looking for the wow factor? I'm not convinced a change in UI paradigms is necessary for what people use computers for. Touch UIs are OK for consumption, but I feel severely handicapped without a keyboard/mouse when doing any moderately involved task. Email - slow, chat - slow, browsing - slow, file/photo/document management - slooow, content creation - slow, gaming - okay, programming - heh.

sprash2• 7 years ago

I don't see any innovation.

To me to Windows95 UI (not the OS) is peak productivity usability. All UI innovations that came later were just distractions except maybe tiling window managers and the "Exposé" function in Mac Os X which later was completely botched in Snow Leopard. At some point no further innovation is required.

I'd rather see innovation on another level: Do away with C and introduce a new programming language which gets rid of the need for a MMU or preemptive Multitasking at compile time.

repolfx2• 7 years ago

You don't need a new programming language for that - any type safe, memory safe language with capabilities can do it. Java or C# are good candidates. Especially with the work on Project Loom in the JVM, you could get cooperative multi-tasking controlled by the compiler rather than using processor interrupts (in theory). See Singularity for an example of what kind of interesting OS architectures are enabled by it.

The elephant in the room is Spectre. It's no longer clear you can actually keep any secrets inside an address space on speculating CPUs. So if all your code runs in a single address space, even if it works in theory, it may not work in practice. But this opens up the interesting research problem of Spectre mitigations :)

One idea I've wondered about is whether you can use the very new Intel features to rapidly change access permissions on page table entries, such that you could have a totally unified but segmented heap, but entering or leaving lower privileged code modules triggers a fast address space transition.

nickpsecurity2• 7 years ago

" All UI innovations that came later were just distractions"

Don't forget search. Especially if it can correctly guess what the user is probably trying to get to. Search in Vista let me ditch SlickRun for quickly getting to stuff.

"Do away with C and introduce a new programming language which gets rid of the need for a MMU or preemptive Multitasking at compile time."

You'll still need it for hardware or compiler failures. Cosmic rays being a big source of them. On compilers, they'll sometimes optimize away security checks. Then there's side channels which require low-level view of hardware and software interactions. Probably better to keep the MMU's or some hardware protections for defense in depth.

c256• 7 years ago

Have you seen Plan 9? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_9_from_Bell_Labs

jxdxbx3• 7 years ago

My favorite somewhat-rethought OS is GoboLinux, which is not as different as Plan9 since it's basically just Linux, but it totally throws out the traditional Unix folder hierarchy of /bin, /etc, /var and so on. I also like the simplicity of classic Mac OS where you install a system extension by just copying it to a special folder and you uninstall an app by just deleting it (which sort of works with current macOS but apps still strew preferences all over the place).

AnIdiotOnTheNet7• 7 years ago

I feel the same way about desktop OSs, and OSs in general really, these days. I mean, no disrespect to the author of this one because it's an impressive amount of work, but it's yet another unix. Unix is freaking ancient and even its developers went on to do it better in Plan9, but everyone keeps copying unix and its archaic paradigms. Well, except the l4 people, who seem content to keep their work completely academic.

I have a different conception of what a desktop OS should be than you seem to, though. I want one that embraces simplicity. It should elicit a resounding "meh" because it doesn't do anything particularly impressive and is just a really good execution of already existing ideas.

babyloneleven• 7 years ago

Rust has Redox (desktop focused) and TockOS (embedded).

I happen to (wishfullly) think the next major OS will have capability-based permissions at the core level, a model a bit like Mobile permissions but composable. Good thing that Google's Fuschia is based on capabilities. It's in C++ though.

jxdxbx3• 7 years ago

I think there is plenty of room for innovation in desktop operating systems but the standard paradigm doesn't really need to be rethought. But where I differ from a lot of my fellow nerds is that I think desktop operating systems with arbitrary window placement and so on are best for desktop computers with huge screens, not laptops. I think the iOS/Android/Windows 8 approach of full-screen apps (with some tiling/split screen) and a different root layer than the "Desktop" makes more sense on smaller devices.

golergka• 7 years ago

This is one of the most interesting OS projects I've seen in recent years: https://github.com/dzavalishin/phantomuserland

cr0sh3• 7 years ago

Is there a college lab or a research department or some other place where people are trying really different things?

From a UI perspective, I've found this to be very innovative and interesting - but I'm not sure how practical it is:

https://dynamicland.org/

...and in a more open fashion and inspired by it:

https://paperprograms.org/

Both of these appear to be something known as "tangible user interfaces" - or are a subset of such; if you google around, you'll find a ton of research on such systems. A similar kind of interface is the "augmented reality sandbox":

https://arsandbox.ucdavis.edu/

And indeed AR is a part of all of this; but rather than wearing a headset (or using a phone) to overlay virtual objects or such on the real world, instead projectors are used, which in effect makes it easier to use and more natural, while also allowing for easier collaboration.

I have a theory that LISP or a LISP-inspired language (perhaps LOGO) might also be something that could be incorporated into a new system (I honestly believe that both of these languages haven't been as fully explored as they deserve - LOGO moreso than LISP).

Lastly - the idea of a DSL (Domain Specific Language) might also have relevance to a new paradigm; I've mentioned this particular offering in the past:

https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/

https://github.com/JetBrains/MPS

I'm only as familiar with it as what I've read about it, both on JetBrains site and elsewhere, but it looks both interesting and promising.

nonbirithm• 7 years ago

I love the aesthetic of 90's/00's desktop interfaces and use bb4win and openbox to recreate the look. It's too bad everything is so much flatter and antialiased in most recent operating systems. I purposely got myself a lower resolution monitor (in 4:3) so the bitmapped fonts I use are easier to see. I wonder if there's a WM that can mimic the look of old versions of GNOME/KDE more closely.

educomments• 7 years ago

openbox + fbpanel can approximate early gnome pretty closely with a tiny bit of work.

gjs278• 7 years ago

I prefer fluxbox but that work too

rox filer for the file manager and shortcuts and it’s pretty nice

Crinus5• 7 years ago

I purposely got myself a lower resolution monitor (in 4:3) so the bitmapped fonts I use are easier to see.

Unless you use a CRT, i'd recommend to get a 1366x768 monitor with a VA panel. The low DPI makes pixels look crisp, if you game you'll get great performance even with low end hardware while you'll be able to play a lot of older games in a natively supported resolution (1024x768, centered) without UI issues and (the reason for VA) you get deep blacks (not as deep as OLED but certainly better than the washed out garbage you get with IPS panels) which are great on both movies and games. The main negative of VA is low refresh, but unless you are playing competitive games you should be fine.

If you use a CRT, then carry on. Although note that those guns wont live forever and they do wear out. I use mine only on the occasion i want to play some old 2D game that simply doesn't work with anything other than its "native" resolution.

RandomGuyDTB2• 7 years ago

CRT rot... the grim reaper lurking behind the few remaining good monitors. I wish someone would make high-quality CRTs again, every time I use my C1701 I feel like I'm slowly desecrating an artifact- that I shouldn't be so shamelessly using such a limited resource. I suppose there's a chance I'll be able to keep up using CRTs until I die but I really am not ready to switch my old setup to an LCD.

meddlepal• 7 years ago

This is awesome. Love the 90s aesthetic!

userbinator• 7 years ago

Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of late-1990s productivity software and the power-user accessibility of late-2000s nix.*

In other words, a Windows GUI with a Unix-like CLI? That's something I can certainly agree with --- Windows has traditionally been very lacking with its CLI, while the Unix-ish systems (including Linux) seem to be quite fragmented and awkward at GUIs.

I also thought the terminal font looked familiar, then realised it's either the same as or a very close version of the "misc-fixed" fonts[1] that I use in my terminals and for editing plaintext (including source code) --- it even has the slashed zero that I added to mine, and which the original fonts lacked. The general UI font looks like a proportional version of it, which I've honestly never seen before but think it's quite pleasing too.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_(typeface)

akling26• 7 years ago

Totally agree about Windows GUI's and Unix CLI's. Sprinkle some MacOS on there and you have my vision for Serenity.

All the fonts are hand-bitmapped by me, using the included FontEditor application. I was trying to construct the imaginary love-child of Tahoma and Fixed, so you are definitely on the right track there.

sbuk• 7 years ago

Surely OpenSTEP does this?

valec• 7 years ago

did you post about this on /g/? I could’ve sworn i’ve seen something like this posted in a dpt or something in the past few months

pjmlp2• 7 years ago

I would put Amiga, BeOS and NeXTSTEP on that context.

Although AmigaDOS isn't UNIX compatible, it had lots of cool features.

And in what concerns having a GUI with REPL-like CLI, workstation OSes from Xerox, ETHZ and the last iteraction of Plan9, Inferno.

joshenders• 7 years ago

Get Actual Pixel Artists To Design The UI

akling26• 7 years ago

I don't have the money to spend on that sort of thing. I do have a dreamer Patreon for the project, but it's all very modest :)

I'll continue iterating on the look though. Here's a more recent demo that shows a bunch of pixel-related improvements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pS56tlXFmEk

spronkey2• 7 years ago

May I suggest using the Windows 2000 warm grey instead of the Windows 95 grey?

It does a lot to make the UI feel less dark

fenwick67• 7 years ago

To make art is to be an artist.

ben165• 7 years ago

Interesting project. How far are you away from including a native compiler/assembler?

akling26• 7 years ago

GNU's binutils and GCC have both been ported to Serenity and work right now. So not very far away at all! I got it working properly ~1 month ago, here's a video I posted that day: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lO4XBggjZGk

(A lot of performance work followed after that recording. There's still a lot to do, but the 30 second compile time is now down to ~2.5 seconds. 80% of the speedup was from implementing DMA disk transfers, and the other 20% from a faster malloc().)

sscarduzio• 7 years ago

I love the retro look and feel, would be cool to have something like this as a theme or window manager for (modern) linux.

sfUsr• 7 years ago

Serenity now!

logicprog2• 7 years ago

I would so love to contribute to this! I love the layout, aesthetic, and the approach to the internals that you've taken; I would use this in a heartbeat to be honest.

Unfortunately although I know C++ I don't really know much about OSdev. If there's any way I can help, I have a few months of free time (summer break) that I'm looking to fill!

akling26• 7 years ago

There’s so much more to operating systems than what people usually think of as “OS dev”.

Wanna write a Tetris game for an obscure new OS? Here’s your chance! How about a bitmap editor (like MS Paint)? Maybe some cool graphical effect demos? Perhaps you’d like to write a telnet client? An FTP client? Or a disk usage visualization tool! Just look at all the stuff that comes with an OS like Win2K or your average Linux distro. :)

logicprog2• 7 years ago

That's very true! Just starting out working on your project with the File Manager showed me that there's a lot I can contribute.

My short term goal is to make a settings manager.

initself• 7 years ago

Why "unix-like" and not just Linux underneath, with the (really) cool 90s productivity software on top?

andrekandre• 7 years ago

probably because that’s just not as fun, i would imagine a huge part of it is implementing everything from the low level to the high, and seeing how it all works together ^_^

akling26• 7 years ago

Correct! It's fun to control the whole stack. And while I've been programming on POSIX systems for over 10 years, I've learned more about POSIX programming in the last year than in all the preceding years. There's no better way to understand something than to implement it.

And staying within a Unix-y paradigm means that if some part(s) become too good, they can be semi-easily ripped out and turned into portable libraries/programs instead.

TBF-RnD2• 7 years ago

Kinda broke right now but consider his patreon the world needs more of this!!

akling26• 7 years ago

Thank you for shouting out my Patreon![1]

I'm never going to ask anyone for money, but I'm extremely grateful that some people have chosen to support this project financially.

The only "goal" I have set up on Patreon is hitting 1000 supporters. If things ever get that crazy, I'll stop whatever I'm doing and focus only on Serenity. For now that's just a fun daydream though :)

[1] https://www.patreon.com/serenityos

repolfx2• 7 years ago

If you don't mind me asking, how do you support yourself and why did you choose to dedicate your time to this project?

agumonkey• 7 years ago

Can't say that the screenshot made me feel at peace. It seems like a sweet spot for non newb usages.

8lall0• 7 years ago

Joining the best of both worlds, i love it. Kudos :)

Waterluvian• 7 years ago

I've been conditioned to think crashy windows 95 when I see that aesthetic. Which is unfair. Because it's really quite clean and straightforward.

xvilka• 7 years ago

CDE project also should move from SourceForge to GitHub or GitLab to gain better visibility, and more contributors.

PunksATawnyFill• 7 years ago

Sure the aesthetic is old-school, but look how much more informative a proper GUI is. You can tell immediately which item in the task bar is active.

"Flat" UI is both lazy and an overreaction to the ridiculous skeuomorphism that plagued us years ago.

Kuraj• 7 years ago

"Flat" UI is both lazy and an overreaction to the ridiculous skeuomorphism that plagued us years ago.

I like to think that by trial and error we will eventually get back there. Microsoft is already moving away from the flat aesthetic to a more "materialish" design.

_bspline• 7 years ago

A graphical OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics
90s
aesthetics

wat?

AnIdiotOnTheNet7• 7 years ago

Yes. Simplicity and function over form. 90s buttons looked like buttons, for instance. And theming was a simple matter of changing your fonts and colors. Windows 95 didn't need a special 'dark mode' supported by the OS, because you just changed your colors in the GUI tool for changing colors and fonts and you were done.

Modern GUIs are ridiculous and stupid and overcomplicated. Much like most of modern computing.

TurkTurkleton• 7 years ago

Windows 95 didn't need a special 'dark mode' supported by the OS, because you just changed your colors in the GUI tool for changing colors and fonts and you were done.

You're over-romanticizing the past. There were plenty of apps even in the Windows 95 era that drew their own widgets and only half-respected the colors you set in the control panel, and that consequently looked like pureed ass if you changed the colors from the default.

apotatopot• 7 years ago

couldn't you just contribute to lxde or xfce or something?

hardbop200• 7 years ago

Awesome work!

Just curious: Why did you choose to take on the entire OS instead of building on top of an existing distro as a base?

akling26• 7 years ago

Thanks hardbop200! Partly it's because I'm the kind of person who just loves hacking on tall stacks. Before this, I was doing browsers for many years, which has many traits in common with operating systems.

Speaking more emotionally, I feel like *nix used to be a lot of fun and full of hacker's spirit, and it's just not like that anymore. Things aren't simple anymore, and they can't easily be taken apart and understood in an evening, like they used to. So I figured I can just make my own then, just the way I like it :)

nickpsecurity2• 7 years ago

If you like understandable tools, you might enjoy some of the projects the bootstrapping crowd posted to the page below. It's not very organized since it was just a dump site for work that a small crowd of people were taking inspiration from.

https://bootstrapping.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page

pcdoodle• 7 years ago

Dude, the "VB6 like" window builder is amazing. The whole process of put button on form, double click button to put code inside button is what got me started in programming. Will you have something like this?

akling26• 7 years ago

Hi pcdoodle. I am also very fond of that style of programming, and it's something I'd like to explore down the line.

In the immediate future though, the visual builder tool is limited to generating C++ that you then glue together with the rest of your program. But one day :)

SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics

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