> Ladybird now targets Linux and macOS. The SerenityOS target is dropped.<p>Why dropping the SerenityOS target??<p>Does this mean that SerenityOS's Ladybird will need to continually pull patches from the new Ladybird project in order to keep development?<p>Also: is it really a fork if the new project gets to keep the name "Ladybird"? Will SerenityOS's browser need to be renamed, or there will be two diverging Ladybird projects with the same name? (Maybe a qualifier would help, like SerenityOS Ladybird vs Open Ladybird or something?)
Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt. Chase after money and security and your heart will never unclench. Care about people’s approval and you will be their prisoner. Do your work, then step back. The only path to serenity.<p>Tao Te Ching
Andreas is a fantastic coder and also a great shepherd of geeks (community builder).<p>The split makes sense for practical reasons - I also sense he is personally perhaps more passionate about browser hacking than OS hacking (his own contributions were more to Ladybird than to the OS for about a year as he himself writes).
Smart as he is, he may have recognized that he is in a unique position to be able to contribute a cross-platform browser that competes with the big tech companies, where as SerenityOS is essentially more of a toy OS (32 bit, 1990s look and feel, not compatible with important other operating systems, no radically new OS concepts) - without wanting to dimish the contributions of its amazing developers.
IMHO, SerenityOS is more about the process of writing code from scratch than the resulting software itself. Its purpose appears to be 1. to prove it is possible despite the naysayers ("only large tech companies can build a browser", "no-one can build an OS from scratch") and 2. to enjoy the coding itself.<p>As other commenters have already stated, the only issue will be taking as much from Ladybird over to SerenityOS as possible.
Ladybird has garnered a level of mainstream attention that SerenityOS never really managed to.<p>The browser has the potential to impact many more people, and the project is well funded by large investors.<p>It makes sense that Andreas would shift his focus to LadyBird at this point.<p>While Safari is busy being Safari and Firefox is busy eating glue in the corner, I'd love to see LadyBird become a real contender in the browser market.
Make sure you check out the Andreas Kling channel on YouTube also,<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/@awesomekling/videos" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/@awesomekling/videos</a><p>Where he does a monthly update on developing Ladybird. You can learn about the things he's overcome, but also the problems he's having.<p>Most recent updates,<p><i>Ladybird browser update (May 2024)</i> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4YBMjlGWRc" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4YBMjlGWRc</a>)<p><i>Ladybird browser update (Apr 2024)</i> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBl-fa-YJFE" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBl-fa-YJFE</a>)<p><i>Ladybird browser update (Mar 2024)</i> (<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKHopzDtElY" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKHopzDtElY</a>)
Feels like an end of an Era, I used to enjoy Andreas's SerenityOS YouTube videos as he dropped down and implemented different features of the OS during a video coding session, adding code from UI, emulators, game ports, JS & Jakt programming languages, JITs all the way down to the kernel. SerenityOS was unique in that regard with the entire code-base maintained in a single source tree.<p>I expect interest in SerenityOS will now taper off as a result of this, especially now that SerenityOS is no longer a target for Ladybird.
This is one of the kindest "I'm forking xyz" posts I've ever read. The whole thing is some level of heartwarming, and unlike a lot of the other posts in the same range actually makes me consider contributing to either Ladybird or SerenityOS!
Oh, this is interesting. As a GitHub sponsor of Andreas for a while now, what does that mean for sponsors? Are we funding exclusively work on LadyBird? (Had we been, for some time already?) Does the SerenityOS project have a GitHub sponsor?<p>I personally had grown more interested in the browser anyway, so I'll just keep sponsoring Andreas, I suppose, unless this all is a prelude to VC investment or a big company acquisition or something...
This could be a good move, if it frees resources that would then be allocated for the OS itself. To me SerenityOS as a x86 OS is interesting but redundant, while to me would immediately catch attention if ported to ARM or RISC-V and other embedded platforms.
Many companies already use sluggish Android or web based solutions to build instrumentation screens and other vertical applications where one needs to show GUI primitives, and to me a native, fast alternative is <i>badly</i> needed. SerenityOS doesn't bring all the cruft that would be completely unnecessary in those systems, hence my idea that in some cases it could become the right tool for the job.
Sad to hear. Hacking on SerenityOS together with Andreas was some of the most fun I've ever had. Wishing him the best of luck with Ladybird, and hoping he will come back once in a while (become the TYVC? :).
I'm seriously impressed by the amount of progress this project has made (and its apparently helped with finding issues in the various specs that constitute a modern browser) so I wish him all the best in this new direction
What's the plan for Jakt, the programming language? Does it fall under the SerenityOS umbrella? Will LadyBird continue to use C++? The blog post doesn't mention it.<p><a href="https://github.com/SerenityOS/jakt">https://github.com/SerenityOS/jakt</a>
Andreas is probably the most positive person I can think of. I'm happy to read such an article where for once "forking" isn't associated with a negative event.<p>Best of luck on the new Ladybird adventure, and thanks for all your positivity and contributions!
I feel like this should've been done a while ago. Community was quite split by two projects and it felt like SerenityOS was dragging Ladybird development down, both from sponsor and developer point of view.<p>I'm glad Andreas had committed to this, for the best to both projects.
I don't know much from Andreas other than reading a couple of his posts from here, but he's a bit of a superhero to me. Wholesomely humble guy that started what's usually deemed as a massive coding project, from scratch, just to put his head out of some shit - and the guy not only manages to make two great projects, but also identify and adult his way out of one of them for both project's good.<p>Respect, man.
Ladybird looks amazing and is moving quickly. Without the linkage to SerenityOS, I even feel like looking at the source and seeing if I can get a handle on what's going on.<p>Looks like the idea of writing a new browser engine, or of forking Firefox, wasn't an absurdly impossible thing that would require billions of dollars. If this inspires somebody to take up that charge again, or to pick up Servo from the table, that would be wonderful too.
I hope that long term the browser gets first class Windows support (currently it's via linux running under WSL), just because broad reach is best for longevity/sustainable relevance.<p>If you build for a particular shape/character of OS (linux/BSD as it currently stands) then a lot of the abstraction that would be needed for a truly "cross-platform" app doesn't happen.
So, in order to write a new browser you first have to write (as a training exercise) a new OS.<p>Not the fastest way, but it seems to work. Best wishes to Andreas.
It makes sense if he wants to make a useful web browser and leverage third party technologies for it, Serenity is totally from scratch. This should mean more time being spent on better problems in the web browser through reinventing fewer wheels and probably speed up the development of a new browser engine, which seems pretty interesting to me.
Ladybird had a unique position of having been developed from scratch. That had brought a fresh set of eyes to an ancient tech called Web. Leveraging OSS would diminish that aspect, IMHO. What’s your vision Andreas? What are you trying to do with Ladybird as it’s no longer a hobby but a more serious project now?
Damn I was worried for a second there, fearing some sort of falling out with the community. But this is awesome news! Ladybird is a far more important project to focus on imho.
The web is eating everything. Maybe every app could be structured as if it's a web app or worker service to do everything people expect while being minimal?
It's interesting that the OS layer could be even thinner than SerenityOS. With 'Local first' capabilities and the expanding role of web technologies, this is not only possible but could be a good idea. The new Ladybird project will be really interesting; it could be a real alternative browser people want!
Being able to boot a good browser on multiple operating systems, such as a minimal BSD, a minimal Linux from scratch style OS, or even a stripped-down SerenityOS variation, is exciting. This could be more secure and easier to innovate with because it has a better level of abstractions to draw upon.
The bootable web OS projects like Palm webOS, the booting Gecko/Firefox OS projects, and Chrome OS could offer interesting lessons for Ladybird.
Running a browser in a VM, on metal, or on an existing host OS like BSD or Linux is very useful. This approach could be secure and powerful enough to attract users for security, speed, or powerful user-centric reasons (not corporate/adware-centric).
Kling and the community he's assembled is "at risk" of helping solve some serious use-cases for people and industries while having fun! Google's OS development with Android, Chrome OS, and Fuchsia may seem complicated compared to what a Ladybird OS could do.
Android is complicated and advanced, but in practice, it's bloated and error-prone with terrible complexity. For example, Pixel users miss calls due to bugs, and there are problems calling emergency numbers. Think about the array of Android and iOS exploits. The attack surfaces and codebases are too big!
Given its complexity, I can see Google switching to working on Ladybird or a Go/Rust variant. Maybe even Apple will consider this. LLMs are now capable of semi-automatic porting with their large context windows. I think things could change fast, and maybe we'll have secure devices in our pockets one day.
I wonder what Alan Kay and his fellow researches would have to say about this.
Would you finally consider publishing nightly binaries?<p>With SerenjtyOS you always had the "build it yourself" approach which was probably meant to only attract technical users.
Can we interpret this as good news of Ladybird but bad news for Serenity? If Ladybird drops support for SerenityOS, what would be its built-in browser?
I tried Ladybird browser for fun, and it looks more stable than when I ran it for the last time, which is great!<p>It doesn't properly load the given substack (it seems to stop loading it in the middle), but it <i>looks</i> fine. :)<p>Surprisingly, loading Google Maps even work, but I can't seem to do more than move the map around. Github even works!<p>So far it seems better than Servo in throwing random sites at it, but I last tried Servo years ago so it's not fair. I guess I will try Servo now for the heck of it<p>edit: yeah Servo still seems worse, <i>but</i> it loads the whole substack post :)
I take this as very good news because like Andreas I am much more interested in the browser too. (I never liked the OS aesthetic they are targeting when it was current and I don't care for it now).<p>Though I wish they still targeted Serenity OS. I guess the expectation is for someone to fork the more general browser to Serenity at a later date. That's not a bad plan either since the incompleteness of the OS is bound to hold the browser back.<p>This whole thing is one of my most favorite things to happen in open source software. Andreas already succeeded in getting people to look at OS and browser development in a new way. All the best to them.
Thank you Andreas for creating both of these projects and for all your work on both of them and for all of the videos you’ve been making along the way while working on them.
> Ladybird now targets Linux and macOS. The SerenityOS target is dropped.<p>Aww :(<p>I can understand forking the browser from the OS, but I'm a bit sad about this. I hope SerenityOS can have a first-class browser in line with the OS philosophy.
This is really surprising but also not at the same time. Developing a browser engine from scratch is a huge task. I think the writing was on the wall when some big donations were made from various companies (including Shopify) and Andreas hired a full time dev.<p>This will probably mark the beginning of the end for SerenityOS but I guess we'll see. Really enjoy watching the development videos from Andreas' YouTube channel.
> Day-to-day communication moves to a new Ladybird Discord server.<p>Really sad to see so many open source communities choosing closed source, walled off and not publicly visible communication channels.<p>> Ladybird now targets Linux and macOS. The SerenityOS target is dropped.<p>Changing the browser development to a cross-platform-first model is great to see but why drop support for its roots completely?
Wow, I wonder what libraries Ladybird will start depending on? There are some web features that are backed by the same open source library in all three major browsers, and would be huge projects to reimplement in a compatible and cross-platform way. WebRTC and ANGLE come to mind.
Actually Ladybird had its own separate repo before merging with SerenityOS monorepo: <a href="https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird">https://github.com/SerenityOS/ladybird</a>, so now it's like reverting it.
Have you considered doing a rewrite (or a partial one) now that third-party libraries can be used? To take all your learnings and new opportunities and use them to rearchitect things.
I fully respect these reasons, they are logical and well said. But hopefully interest in SerenityOS doesn't taper off due to this. Kling was great at garnering interest with his YouTube videos where he'd go deep into bug fixing and feature development.<p>Certainly, the browser has the most potential and even immediate necessity for the sake of the open Web, but I would still like to daily drive SerenityOS some day. Its aesthetics and holistic architecture are a dream realised.<p>Windows is going down the toilet fast, and Linux lacks the holistic element, so having something that combines the greatest visual design language - mid to late 90s interface guidelines - with the powerful Unix shell would be a huge boon for desktop computing. (Yes OSX has great albeit <i>modern</i> UX with the Unix underpinnings but isn't OSS or affordable to the masses).
I guess SerenityOS is somewhat doomed now? I never saw this kind of move ending well, honestly. Even when not involved, having the original around is always a great boon to the popularity of a project.<p>I for one would love to see the SerenityOS GUI ported to Wayland on Windows. It's precisely what I ask for from an OS honestly.
I never got to try SerenityOS due to the developer's bizarre insistence that users compile the OS instead of just providing a precompiled ISO or IMG file. Shame because I appreciated the workhorse 9x aesthetics it had.
I might sound jaded, but I'd be more excited for a Chromium fork that focuses on hackability instead of a brand new browser that'll take somewhere between years to ∞ to be even remotely useful. I get why that'd be less fun to work on though.