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Bringing SerenityOS to real hardware, one driver at a time

(sdomi.pl)
309 points LorenDB | 3 comments | 08 Jan 25 16:54 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Santosh83 ◴[08 Jan 25 18:46 UTC] No.42637177[source]▶
Read somewhere that it is relatively easy to adapt NetBSD's drivers into a custom kernel... maybe Serenity folks can go that way? Device drivers are huge obstacle for any fledgling OS.
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1. bboygravity ◴[09 Jan 25 06:33 UTC] No.42642231[source]▶
The solution is to pick 1 good set of hardware (that the software authors sell themselves if possible) and build drivers for that and only that.

It's basically what Apple does and has done from the start as far as I can tell. The only breakthrough consumer Unix-like thing out there.

System76 is another example of (almost) that.

Frame.work comes close although they don't focus on the OS as much.

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2. Kwpolska ◴[09 Jan 25 16:57 UTC] No.42647529[source]▶
Apple used to sell Macs with Intel (integrated), AMD, and Nvidia GPUs. In other departments, they also had multiple vendors and chips. The Apple Silicon transition streamlined the product lines, but before, there were tons of drivers, and macOS had to support all of them for 5+ years after the product release.
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3. memsom ◴[13 Jan 25 12:26 UTC] No.42682717[source]▶
They were still in complete control of the platform though. You couldn't just take a OS build and put it on another generic computer without a lot of hacking and/or picking hardware as close to the actual hardware that the OS could handle the differences. I know people did it - heck I had a hackintosh netbook back in the day, but it was not a trivial process and someone had to have done the work already for the "Average" consumer.