Just refactor SerenityOS, take its DE and make it a Wayland compositor, stop reinventing the wheel. Ladybird realized this, why can't SerenityOS do the same?
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I find that very difficult to believe, how exactly is it more usable? Serenity would benefit a lot sitting on top of a Linux kernel in my opinion.
I hate to say it but if they're not thinking in practical terms, they're dead in the long run.
These projects misdirect talented individuals from impactful work.
What's the point, if they ultimately collapse due to the unsustainable nature of solely pleasure-driven endeavors?
This wasted effort is particularly frustrating considering that vital open-source projects, crucial for real-world applications, are struggling to survive due to critical lack of contributors.
It's infuriating to witness this neglect.
Even as a pure hobby project, it has educational value. Being somewhat of a toy with simplifications and limits makes it understandable, but it's comprehensive and engaging enough to justify ongoing effort.
SerenityOS has a clear goal as a hobbyist from-scratch OS with a monolithic code-base where the entire source code is contained within a single Mono repo where the entire Software is built with the same programming language and tool chain and the entire OS and core Apps can be changed from a single repo without needing to rely on 3rd Party upstream packages. This is a great environment to rapidly prototype new UI features, like it was the first time I saw an OS able to open UI folders and Applications from `ls` output in a terminal.
It's great that an OS with a cohesive code-base like this exists, but it's only targeted for the hobbyist developers building the OS to use and has no plans on becoming an OS for mainstream adoption.
You have no evidence of that. You cannot force people to do what you consider to be impactful work. The definition of "impactful" is highly subjective.
> What's the point, if they ultimately collapse due to the unsustainable nature of solely pleasure-driven endeavors?
You presume it's solely about pleasure. Some people find gaining knowledge and learning to work with their own two hands pleasurable. Are their endeavors transitively unsustainable because of this?
> that vital open-source projects, crucial for real-world applications, are struggling to survive due to critical lack of contributors
The work to produce vital and crucial things should be paid. It's particularly frustrating to see people expect to not only demand they control the work of others but that they also do so without having to pay a single cent.
> It's infuriating to witness this neglect.
I finally find myself in agreement with you.
My most impactful project was the one that I coded quickly in three hours for fun. It has later turned into the greatest Turkish social platform in the world, is still being used by millions of people every day 26 years after I coded it.
I'm glad that you weren't there as the self-proclaimed arbiter of real impact™ when I started writing it. :)
No, it would be a Wayland compositor, which could be made to run on Linux or the BSDs.
> This is a great environment to rapidly prototype new UI features, like it was the first time I saw an OS able to open UI folders and Applications from `ls` output in a terminal.
There's nothing special about this, Enlightenment did it on Linux many years before Serenity even existed.
https://www.enlightenment.org/about-terminology.md
> but it's only targeted for the hobbyist developers building the OS to use and has no plans on becoming an OS for mainstream adoption.
It's such a shame because it could be a great Wayland compositor, and the features you mention could be made to work as a desktop environment.
Why spend years reinventing the wheel when others already did the hard work that they won't be able to replicate in the first place?
It's their time, sure. And they can do wherever they want but it's still wasted effort, whether people admit it or not.
Not even the BSDs are able to compete with Linux on driver's support, what makes people think SerenityOS could?
I also hardly doubt the SerenityOS people don't have any expectations to get at least some adoption, they're wasting their time with their current strategy.
So? I achieved things of my own as well, some of which I'm very proud of, but I don't go online belittling others acting as "holier than thou" to bring my point across, which you apparently do, I doubt you are as important as you claim to be.
If they are so vital, they should be paid. Those projects are struggling because big tech monopolists and the foundations they control want them to struggle.
The Linux foundation is cutting the budget that they spent on Linux every year both in relative and absolute numbers, currently being at just 2%. Mozilla refuses to allow people to donate money towards browser development and continues to waste money on side-projects.
Let me get back to the topic and give you another example that you might relate more: "just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu". If Linus Torvalds had taken his own thoughts on the impact of his work seriously and decided to pursue other "more impactful" whatever he saw at the time as you suggested instead of this pleasure-driven endeavor, Linux would have never happened.
I have shortly considered trying to port the Serenity GUI to Wayland, though, because I really like the visual style. I don't have the C++ knowledge to effectively navigate the project, though, so I let go of that idea pretty quickly.
SerenityOS has no business running on Linux, but a fork could be pretty neat for 90s GUI lovers. IMO the Serenity UI easily beats those heavily reskinned KDE installs every time.
Take a look at labwc, the look and feel is similar to Openbox and can be made to look retro-like.
Xfce will also come with Wayland support in the next version or so I hear.
I don't get the Sway comment about being barebones, it's a tiling compositor, it does what it should do.
You clearly haven't spend any time learning about the SerenityOS project and don't seem to have any clue about why Andreas started SerenityOS in the first place since your suggestions completely contradict why it was created.
Why are you suggesting using 3rd Party software when the entire purpose of SerenityOS is to not use any external software and build everything from scratch? The goal isn't to save time by reusing existing software, of course they know that using existing software would save time recreating it, but that was never the point. They're creating an entirely new OS from the ground up.
Andreas has created 100s of hours of YouTube content showing building different parts of SerenityOS, which IMO is one of the best resources for showing how to build different parts of an OS from scratch [1].
> I also hardly doubt the SerenityOS people don't have any expectations to get at least some adoption, they're wasting their time with their current strategy.
Since you don't seem to know anything about SerenityOS your doubts and thoughts of its developers are meaningless, the goals and purpose of SerenityOS have been well documented. It was never meant to be an OS for mainstream adoption, just an OS by hackers for hackers. They've built great software and a great community where everyone gets to work on whatever parts they're interested in and have fun being apart of and contributing to a shared creation of work together - that's not wasting time.
Am I not allowed to say anything anymore? I know what SerenityOS is and what it's trying to do, I just think it's unreasonable and a waste of effort.
Andreas himself changed his mind about reusing third party libraries in Ladybird, SerenityOS should do the same.
I know you don't care to read about things you comment on and like to throw uninformative recommendations about what people working on a project should do, that directly contradicts the goal of the project and why developers started hacking on it in the first place. Seriously, how do you expect your low effort backseat comments to be taken? You don't think the very capable OS developers already know that reusing existing Software takes less time than creating it? Or maybe you're missing some context on the project your commenting on, like its entire purpose for being?
Andreas did not change his mind about SerenityOS which is still a hobby OS project for Hackers as it has always been. He just moved on to work on Ladybird full-time to compete as a mainstream browser alternative to Blink/WebKit which has completely different goals to SerenityOS which is no longer a supported target since it incorporates 3rd Party libraries.
He did, how much do you want to bet that if he were to do it all over again he would go straight to the browser work and skip the OS project?
That's why he doesn't even talk about it anymore, he even removed it as a target in Ladybird.
It's clear that he got burned by his own decisions.
I don't care what you think about me or not, I don't hate SerenityOS and I wish that project well, but I think they should reconsider their stance on third party libraries.
Do you truly believe that EVERYTHING you do with your time is impactful? If it is not, would you be totally ok to be attacked by somebody that is "infuriated" by your "wasted effort"?
As for SerenityOS and Ladybird, I suspect that just the YouTube series surrounding them alone have had more positive impact on the world than the two of us combined. Suspicion is not an assertion of course.
One of SerenityOS Apps (Ladybird) grew larger than SerenityOS itself which he's devoted the last couple of years to, trying the impossible feat of creating a modern web browser with a skeleton crew but yet still manages to attract idiotic, self-righteous low effort commentary like this. Andreas has already given the world plenty, owes nothing to me or you or anyone else, especially with what he devotes his future time to.
You also say that I'm entitled, ok let's see who's the one crying on X about the Linux Foundation funding other projects than his own:
https://x.com/awesomekling/status/1877438066190622874#m
Look, it's fine if you like him and his projects, I don't because I know it's all about the money, he should have stayed working at Apple.
And again: I'm not going to spend my time nor resources to support someone who already displayed signs of betrayal to his community.
The SerenityOS community was fractured, all because of his selfish ambitions.
Apparently this tweet qualifies as "Crying on X":
> Linux Foundation Announces the Launch of "Supporters of Chromium-Based Browsers" > 1) Huh
Where he's asking why would the Linux Foundation throw their support behind further entrenching a Monopolistic browser? A browser that even the US Govt wants to break-up Google given the monopolistic control they have over it and the Web. The motivations of the initiative are clear in the announcement which says is being funded by Google, Meta, Microsoft, and Opera - i.e. mega tech corps that benefit from Chromium. So the question is really asking why is the Linux Foundation throwing their brand behind further entrenching a monopoly controlled technology at the expense of supporting more diversity in OSS browser engines? You're really cherry picking with this, I'm sure Andreas had done many unfavorable things, but asking why the Linux Foundation is involved in a counter intuitive initiative isn't one of them.
> I know it's all about the money, he should have stayed working at Apple.
Great more false confidence and proclamations of what someone's life is about, apparently in addition to working on projects you want, he should also work for employers you want to as well.
> who already displayed signs of betrayal to his community. > The SerenityOS community was fractured, all because of his selfish ambitions.
Your gross entitlement is apparently someone else's betrayal of their previous OSS efforts, where apparently he should've spent the rest of his life being a slave to his previous OSS projects you want them to, that he's already given so much time to, but you aren't even bothered to learn anything about before passing judgement on. Everyone is entitled to their views, but yours are so misguided that you need some serious self-awareness that "Open Source is Not About You" [1] before spreading more of your toxic entitlement.
> And again: I'm not going to spend my time nor resources to support someone who already displayed signs of betrayal to his community.
No one is asking you to. But why do you think you should be entitled to what other projects, people and their communities should be doing now and in the future?
The SerenityOS project or community wouldn't exist and continues to move forward without him, receiving multiple commits a day with the latest a few minutes ago. Which is a huge accomplishment for any OSS project to continue to improve without their founder, not something anyone should be chastised for.
[1] https://gist.github.com/richhickey/1563cddea1002958f96e7ba95...
Exactly, that's why I support Free Software, not "Open Source".
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.en.html
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.en....
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point....
People do stuff out of passion, they eschew leisure time, time with family, they trade opportunities to make money to do open source.
But then, they increasingly see their work being used to enable products that increasingly limit your freedom and/or outright spy on you, become paid cloud offering without you seeing a dime for that, are used to train AI with the overt goal of replacing your labor class and depress wages in one of the last professions where there was still a modicum of social mobility.
In light of that, either you stop contributing, or you make sure to contribute to projects that have absolutely no chance of being used commercially against you. Either that, or start paying for my work.
I am not going to spend my time making Nadela, Bezos and Altman even more rich than what they are now. Fuck that shit.