Sortix 1.0 Operating System Released | Hacker News Reader

Sortix 1.0 Operating System Released

sortix.org

129 pointssortie32 comments

"Poor third party code tend to not compile which draw attention to it and is an opportunity to fix it. (...) The lack of compatibility constraints compared to other operating systems makes it possible to make a cleaner implementation."

I like what I'm reading here.

Quite an achievement.

The author is terrifyingly young: http://maxsi.org/

When you said that, I expected 15, not 25.

I too was expecting a minor child, not a young-ish adult.

I don't feel like checking it now but Linus was pretty young too when he released his kernel.

Yep; Linus Torvalds born 1969 would have been ~22 years old when Linux was first released in 1991. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linus_Torvalds

You could do something like this at 15. I worked some on my own little hobby OS when I was 17 (maybe a little younger though bit hazy on that). I learned what I wanted to out of it though and it never got this far.

Fair enough, but given the quality and maturity of his writing, I was expecting some kind of middle-aged wise man.

This looks amazing. Git, gcc, libcairo, libdsdl, python and nasm ports? ISC license? Very, very cool. But why don't you host your project on Github?

Personally, I'm glad to see them using GitLab[1]. While GitHub vs GitLab may make fairly little operational difference for most projects, I do think that competition is sorely needed in the Git hosting space right now.

https://gitlab.com/sortix/sortix

Why should he?

Maybe he does not want to deal with reviewing shitty PRs and comment noise and feature requests? (As far as I know you still cannot disable PRs).

This is already a large and no doubt time consuming project as it is, and not everybody likes to be a "community manager" more than they like to code.

Thanks! As Zikes say, a little competition is good and gitlab is working out fine for me. I used to be on gitorious and it got bought by gitlab so I moved. I prefer being on a platform I can theoretically port.

Thanks for hosting https://gitlab.com/sortix/sortix on GitLab! Feel free to email me at sytse@gitlab.com if you ever need anything.

Sure, it's just that most projects get hosted on Github these days, so I just assume all midsize open source projects are.

I really like his ongoing work with the old cruft: https://gitlab.com/sortix/sortix/wikis/ports which reminds me a lot on OpenBSD.

This is very cool, I'd love to know how someone remains motivated to keep going with a project like this; It's no small achievement.

I used to start new coding projects weekly to play with one thing or another, not getting anywhere. With Sortix, there's now so many interesting areas to work on that I can work on whatever I fancy, and then still slowly accumulate useful changes. It's fun working on the components, but it's also fun putting a whole system together, and you learn a lot in the process.

incredible. blows my mind how people can build stuff like this. I do Web development and this seems Soooooooo far out of my reach

You eat an elephant one bite at a time. I've found that the majority the of intimidating complexity in projects I've tackled is directly related to handling legacy hardware and edge cases for things that don't matter anymore, it is surprising how simple things like shells can be.

Half my CS education was implementing various parts of operating systems. These things are pretty straightforward if you've got a few books and aren't trying to throw every imaginable feature into the mix.

Just booted this in a vm. Pretty cool!

editor is use-able. python on there, Asteroids is working fine, too. Will be following the progress. Well done!

Awesome work!

Congratulations on your own OS, but could you tell me why should i use your OS instead of other ones? I don't see any comparison anywhere.

Thanks! You shouldn't, but it could be an addition if you want something to tinker with. I've been dogfooding with it, for instance completing my functional programming university course using just it and a scheme port. I discourage comparisons because it sets unrealistic expectations rather appreciating it for what it is. This release is a base for future work and to be something that can benefit me in other ways.

So what you're saying is it's just a hobby and won't be big and professional like Linux? ;)

I appreciate your humble an honest approach - it's refreshing. I'll be sure and try this out in a VM!

Thanks! Be sure to let me know what you think.

A C++ base kernel. Nice!

Now someone just need to use Rust to build yet another kernel? :-)

Surely you've heard of Redox[1]?

[1] https://github.com/redox-os/redox

sort ox

What does this add that other OSs don't have?

It's this guy's hobby kernel project. Everyone's gotta have one. He's been working on it for 5 years or so. You're surely not asking for apples-to-apples comparison with production quality operating systems?

But compared to other hobby/DIY operating systems, this seems to be a fairly complete system with a real userspace and ports of real applications. Which makes it much more finished than 99% of similar projects.

I, of course, was in no way demeaning the work. I can only dream of work of this stature and the creator is a year younger than me. I was just wondering what actually was new and different about his OS. I take it that wasn't clear from the down votes.

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