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Comment by zppln | Hacker News Reader

Great work by everyone involved. SerenityOS is for me by far the most interesting project in tech right now. It's like watching a different branch of reality evolving. The recent browser optimization videos by Andreas himself have been great. A great moment in particular was seeing Andreas' satisfaction when he go smooth hover effects on links[0], a single moment where he is (presumably) struck with how far his project has come.

0: https://youtu.be/KbTrgXePbwo

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Andreas’ excitement is infectious. I find myself sometimes smiling in an empty room watching his reaction to getting something working.

Serenity OS: Interview - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30214371 - Feb 2022 (52 comments)

SerenityOS demo at Handmade Seattle 2021 [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29270776 - Nov 2021 (180 comments)

SerenityOS: Year 3 in Review - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28817599 - Oct 2021 (46 comments)

Not-a-Linux distro review: SerenityOS is a Unix-y love letter to the ‘90s - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28219800 - Aug 2021 (113 comments)

SerenityOS: Graphical Unix-like operating system with classic 90s UI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28206840 - Aug 2021 (129 comments)

I quit my job to focus on SerenityOS full time - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27317655 - May 2021 (249 comments)

SerenityOS: Writing a Full Chain Exploit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26115141 - Feb 2021 (9 comments)

SerenityOS: A love letter to '90s user interfaces with a Unix-like core - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23911180 - July 2020 (1 comment)

SerenityOS Update (April 2020) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23037581 - April 2020 (1 comment)

Introduction to SerenityOS Programming - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22479132 - March 2020 (43 comments)

Pledge() and Unveil() in SerenityOS - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22116914 - Jan 2020 (28 comments)

CTF writeup: First published SerenityOS kernel exploit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21918351 - Dec 2019 (2 comments)

SerenityOS: From Zero to HTML in a Year - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21212294 - Oct 2019 (52 comments)

Serenity OS update (August 2019) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20851356 - Sept 2019 (2 comments)

SerenityOS – a graphical Unix-like OS for x86, with 90s aesthetics - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19986126 - May 2019 (179 comments)

Serenity OS Demo (April 2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19813417 - May 2019 (1 comment)

Serenity: x86 Unix-like operating system for IBM PC-compatibles - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19537807 - March 2019 (83 comments)

Indeed. It's beyond impressive, especially the web browser from scratch and the whole idea of operating systems that are not typical, yet another Linux distro stuff and having an integrated consistent user interface and open source like RedoxOS, Haiku, Fuchsia, etc has.

But let's be a bit realistic, how long can we expect this to be a reliable daily driver on real machines and not stuck on a VM? It has taken more than a decade for one of them to even run reliably on several PCs and everyone is still waiting for another to not be ridden on a VM and actually run directly on real hardware. That is me not even talking about the apps there.

But if I have to choose one that will achieve all of that in the shortest time, then it would be Fuchsia wouldn't it?

SerenityOS is only a couple years old, not 10.

Started 2018 IIRC

I think this misunderstands the motives of this project. Its not trying to win any popularity or usability awards.

I see it more as art honestly, even if it does end up having good utility, it will very much always be an encapsulation of this guys passion and expression.

Don't get too poisoned by the business world! Computers dont need to be just efficiency machines.

The challenge here would be getting all those miscellaneous hardware drivers to be ported to SerenityOS. Some hacker might write Serenity drivers for their particular desktop, but that won't do you any good unless you have the exact same hardware. A Raspberry Pi might be a good target, but Serenity OS is currently x86 only. So realistically, Serenity on random consumer hardware is unlikely to ever happen.

Fuchsia is in a similar situation. Google may start pushing Fuchsia on some limited set of hardware, but I don't see a reason for them to start writing drivers for anything other than hardware from Google or Google partners.

Now, I could see SerenityOS as an option inside of something like Qubes OS. Here, the hardware is abstracted so you could run it on whatever. There may be some limited security through obscurity benefit to running an OS so far off the beaten path.

Like you, I'm dumbfounded by the achievement of Serenity OS. According to the Readme, Serenity OS is "a system by us, for us, based on the things we like." I don't know that making Serinity OS a daily driver for anyone who isn't interested in hacking on it is an actual goal for Andreas.

> I don't know that making SerenityOS a daily driver for anyone who isn't interested in hacking on it is an actual goal for Andreas.

My main goal is to make a system for myself to use. I'm not particularly interested in working on stuff that doesn't affect my own use cases.

However, SerenityOS is not a one-man project. There are hundreds of other developers, all with their own individual goals, each putting their time and effort into making the system into something they would like to see as well.

I have no idea what will come out of this in the long run, but it's the most fun I've ever had, so I'm just gonna keep going and see what happens. :^)

In a world seemingly going down hill, SerenityOS brings back positive thinking for me. Time doesn't matter so much and the projects speed is already most impressive.

I'm planning to port some of my software in the home automation Zigbee/Matter space to SerenityOS when OpenGL progress is far enough.

(Skip to 0:40 for initial performance, and to 56:00 for when it turns snappy.)

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