I think there is more behind SerenityOS that elevates it above being just another OS project. They've attracted hundreds of contributors and have instilled a unique sense of culture within their community (as an example, going as far to devote an entire GitHub repository to documenting a list of "yak-shaving" yak emojis[1]).<p>I think that kind of social endeavor isn't something a lot of maintainers can accomplish, not even those with the skills to work on such a project all by themselves.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/SerenityOS/yaksplained" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/SerenityOS/yaksplained</a>
Andreas and his project SerenityOS was a huge inspiration for me to start my side project daedalOS (<a href="https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/DustinBrett/daedalOS</a>) which I've almost been doing for 2 years now. I really enjoy watching his monthly updates on his channel.
I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point, some commercial project adopts a part of Serenity and turns it into a huge hit, even outside of tech.<p>Such things have definitely happened in the past.. Not many (average) people have heard of KDE or its web engine, KHTML, but almost everybody these days uses Chrome, which, through Apple's WebKit, is descended from KHTML itself.<p>Serenity uses its own libraries everywhere, to the point of replacing C++'s std with their own library, AK, which might make stripping it for parts more difficult, but it's certainly not unimaginable.<p>If Serenity's web engine gets good enough, I can even imagine some EU government sponsoring an independent competitor to the Google / Apple browser duopoly.
I follow Andreas on twitter and he is a big inspiration for me when I go look at more challenging problems now.<p>I have an addictive personality, so far cigarettes are the only thing that got me and only for 4 years, but I largely stay away anything else now because I see how it effected members of my family and how easily someone like myself could go the same way.<p>Because of that I very much appreciate channeling yourself into something as ambitious as an operating system instead. It's actually the same way I've built any of my best work and how I've gotten even this far in my career. The line I say is: programming keeps me sane.
This project embodies Donald Knuth's principle of being the author of software, rather than just consumers of other's APIs.<p>Yes, it takes patience and chutzpah, but I can also imagine how satisfying it is to build something from scratch and see all the pieces coming together into a working OS. And if you put your heart (and time) to it, you can build anything from scratch. A lesson the newer generation of developers still haven't fully grasped.<p>Congrats, good luck, and carry on!
This is just so cool and inspiring to me. I check out pretty much everything Andreas puts out.<p>I wonder if we're watching something comparable to the birth of Linux. I'm not insinuating that Linux would go away or die or anything -- that's absurd -- but I just mean perhaps over time SerenityOS will become more and more used as a "real" OS. For what purpose(s)? No idea. But the whole project really seems to have staying power.<p>That said, I'm fully with Andreas that having fun and simply building something because you want it to exist are valid goals in and of themselves. Couldn't be happier for him and everyone who contributes to the project.
> The original Jakt prototype was written in Rust by myself and JT over a couple of weeks before we made it public. I wrote a post introducing Jakt and the motivations behind it. And JT made a video about the creation of Jakt as well. The Rust-based compiler is now long-gone, and Jakt is fully self-hosted with the Jakt compiler being written in Jakt itself.<p>It's always humbling for me to read updates from SerenityOS :)
I found out about SerenityOS because of the post about Ladybird here on HN a few weeks back.<p>I have since watched hours of his stream and found it super inspiring. To the extend that I now want to learn some C++ and make some contributions to the project.<p>It's really refreshing to see people code for fun and build whatever they feel like.<p>I think a lot of profesional devs lose that when they go all in on their work (which is understandable) so it's awesome to see something like this!<p>Congrats on the 4 years! Looking forward to what's next!
Fantastic progress.<p>My only concern is looking at it... I can't help but worry slightly about feature creep. We went from an OS, to an OS + Web Browser, to an OS + Web Browser + Programming Language. Next year it might add an Office Suite at this rate.<p>Edit: I don't mean this as a bad thing, just that it would be a shame to get so large that everything becomes half-baked and overwhelming to finish.
Happy Birthday SerenityOS! And thank you very much to Andreas and the them behind it. You guys restored my faith in programming and for that I'll be forever grateful.
Some of the comments demonstrate that there are a lot of people here who have never encountered programming in an artistic context before.<p>That is a sad (though understandable) state of affairs.