TinkerOS: A Fork of TempleOS | Hacker News Reader

TinkerOS: A Fork of TempleOS

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21 pointsRendello12 comments

I have a big appreciation for TempleOS, it's how I learned C after only knowing high-level programming for years. This is a project by a friend that I think is a great direction for TempleOS forks: it stays close to the source material, it offers bug-fixes and new hardware support, and it does it all in a way that neither mocks Terry Davis, the late- and mentally ill- TempleOS creator, nor puts him on a pedestal.

It's respectful, and it's fun.

If you try it out be sure to play the new Oregon Trail port!

It makes me so happy how the software community has treated Terry despite the very terrible demons he struggled with. It's not often that happens.

It reminds a lot of artists who were societal outcasts. Suffering their whole life and shunned only for their work to be deeply appreciated after they die.

Hope people can continue taking this point of view to heart, especially in the age of one unpopular tweet destroying someones reputation and careers.

But more on topic, that's so cool to hear you learned C from TempleOS, I don't know many actual users that dive in that far.

I'm going to try running this after work today and try out the game if I can :)

I used to watch the TempleOS creators channel just because he was so wild. Constantly ranting about how god told him to build the OS and randomly exclaiming the n-word or some racist statement. Living on some form of welfare I believe? What a story. Interesting to see someone continuing the code portion of his work.

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=TerryADavis

That was an absolutely wild ride. I must be missing some context though, I don't understand all of the "talking space alien" stuff (well, I don't understand any of it. But, the alien stuff seems pretty left-field, comparitively).

>I made the third temple. I proved God scientifically once and for all. I am more famous than Jesus in the history of man.

>I have a talking space alien.

>I jhave authority to impose a temple tax on the world.

>I have authority over INtel and Microsoft.

> I must be missing some context though

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Davis

> In 1996, he began experiencing regular manic episodes, one of which led him to hospitalization. Initially diagnosed with bipolar disorder, he was later declared to have schizophrenia.

He died in 2018.

Fascinating and sad story.

Reading that lead me to a Motherboard profile [1], which explained that pressing F7 on the keyboard served up a piece of 'tongues' text. Repeatedly pressing it generated sentences.

And suddenly, all of the comments that he has on HN starting with "God says..." make sense (in a way).

[1]https://www.vice.com/en/article/wnj43x/gods-lonely-programme...

So, he was shadowbanned?

Yes.

(Shadowbanning is pretty common in HN I find, although the moderators say they will reach out to most users before they ban them.)

I just read through some comments. His OS doesn't use the GPU because God told him not to because its opaque and everything should be open to the user? Setting aside the speaking with God part, I think that's a pretty interesting opinion. I think I agree with it, but maybe the way it should be accomplished is by having more open GPU drivers?

Part of this is that he tried to keep the TempleOS code simple, so he didn't implement things like USB or GPU code, and he eventually took out BMP support. He had a limit of lines of code he tried to keep things under.

(Context, the late creator of the original TempleOS, Terry Davis, was very schizophrenic.)

This video is the definitive rundown on his life and illness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgoxQCf5Jg

Terry Davis, in life and online, was completely wild. What's interesting though is that when you play in TempleOS for a little while, it's easy to forget that. The OS is religious and super idiosyncratic, but that nasty, manic, hateful, attitude isn't there (with few exceptions). And the code and docs are damn good. I think Terry tried hard to keep the actual OS and documentation "pure", in a way.

I think digging in and working on extremely complex C code was a regulating force that calmed him, in the exact opposite way that being jeered at online (especially by 4Chan and the like) upset him and made his condition worse.

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