Drew Chadwick DeVault / ddevault / SirCmpwn - Opinionated white-male-guilt-ridden software developer. Cancelled Hyprland and slandered it as "toxic" and transphobic. Hates X11 users and Hacker News. Lolicon.

[306h4Ge5eJUJ]

In particular, he's managed not to get bogged down in EFI or ext4, which is surprising.

I assume he's writing for a VM/toaster and uses a homebrew FS or something like FAT.

 

[DavidS877]

I assume he's writing for a VM/toaster and uses a homebrew FS or something like FAT.

Ahh, Minix, the OS for all the college classes about how to write an OS.

 

[Harvey Danger]

Presumably so, I didn't see mention of them in any post from the last 3 weeks.

Correction: I missed a post. He was porting parts of Helios over, and may have other people working on Bunnix with him.



Also I forgot to link the Bunnix repository.

My money would be on when he tries to implement SMP, and finds all the places he's forgotten to do locks.

From 10 days ago:

 

[Coolio55]

Ahh, Minix, the OS for all the college classes about how to write an OS.

Good enough for intel to put into every single CPU without an option to not have it.

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

I assume he's writing for a VM/toaster and uses a homebrew FS or something like FAT.

I had a look at his repo: he's cheating and bringing in lwext4. So that's why he's not stuck in filesystem hell.

 

[Flatline]

But the obvious question is, why? I understand the desire to make your own stuff, if I was smart enough (with enough free time) I'd like to make my own toy OS too. What I can't figure out is, what does this do differently enough from other tiny distros to be worth doing? What is Drew trying to learn or improve? He seems familiar enough with each piece of the OS that it didn't cause him problems, but he hasn't cited anything he made better.

The answer is simple: He's doing it for attention because he's lonely and depressed.

 

[Creative Username]

oh boy just what we need, yet another Unix clone
like at least they could make an NT clone every blue moon, if only to spice things up a little

or, OR: (this is for the truly brave) when you're making a new OS actually fucking design a new OS instead of making Unix clone #5,000,001

 

[The Noise]

Honestly if it's just a hobby project then I think it's cool. Even if it is just another Unix clone; so what? It doesn't have to serve any functional purpose.

I get Drew is a sperg but if he can make an entire OS out of his own programming language I consider that extremely impressive. I hope he finishes it and releases it so I can give it a whirl.

 

[Creative Username]

so what? It doesn't have to serve any functional purpose.

if it doesn't serve any real purpose he could explore unconventional design decisions and maybe find something interesting
but nooooo he has to make the same operating system for the millionth time

you do have a point, though; it's his os and he can make it as bland as he wants

 

[Flatline]

It doesn't have to serve any functional purpose.

Not yet. He'll likely integrate it with sourcehut somehow and start shoving the "OS" down everyone's throat.

 

[Aljam]

Has drew even written his own compiler? Bunnix is probably going to be an unholy abomination.

 

[The Real Slim Shady]

That unix clone he wrote fits Hare perfectly. It's a new language with no distinct or competing features built mostly on existing solutions. I would be really surprised if this all was not looked up from Minix and written in Hare. Except for the bootloader part you can write an OS in whatever that compiles to machine code so writing it in language X is nothing novel.

Correction: I missed a post. He was porting parts of Helios over, and may have other people working on Bunnix with him.

What the hell is a Bunnix boot protocol and why did he not make it multiboot compliant? He sure had to write his very own Hare bootloader, calculator boy just likes writing code for the sake of it.

I'd like to write my own OS some day but avoid making it a Unix clone by accident.. is Xinu Approach book a good read?

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

Drew's getting married today, and prepared for it as only he could: by getting Doom working in his toy OS:

(https://fosstodon.org/@drewdevault/112451420876611078, https://archive.is/MdeSV)

Hopefully this means we'll finally find out the name of the lucky lady gent non-binary person

 

[Harvey Danger]

Even if it is just another Unix clone; so what? It doesn't have to serve any functional purpose.

I get Drew is a sperg but if he can make an entire OS out of his own programming language I consider that extremely impressive

Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely impressed he can do it. I think it's great to do a project that's already been done, just to prove to yourself you can, and learn along the way.

But he's already made an OS before, and doesn't seem to be learning much with this new one. 3+ weeks is a lot of effort to put into a "see if I can" clone project; those are weekend jams for me, personally. I guess it's proving Hare's utility, but I don't think anyone was questioning if it was functional; just why it's different enough to pick up.

If I was on my 2nd OS project, I'd be trying out something radical, somewhere. Or at least making a single aspect of it hyper-optimized for a use case, even if it's silly to do that for a general use OS. And if I was posting updates every day, I'd expect to be excited enough about something to mention it along with the checklist of core utilities.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

I'd like to write my own OS some day but avoid making it a Unix clone by accident.. is Xinu Approach book a good read?

An operating system is a collection of things that don't fit into a language. There shouldn't be one.

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

(https://fosstodon.org/@drewdevault/112456438997840027, https://archive.is/STzmg)

PRIEST: And do you, Drew, take Lillith...
DREW (thinking): I wish I had an RS-232 adaptor for my ThinkPad, that'd be so freaking sweet

She's going to be disappointed when he spends the whole honeymoon wondering why he can't get mouselook working on Quake, or whatever

 

[The Real Slim Shady]

Software soyboys threw away all their old laptops because they were too thick and heavy for their soy muscles, and now are crying because their paper thin thinkpads have no proper RS-232 ports. Very sad.

 

[AnOminous]

Software soyboys threw away all their old laptops because they were too thick and heavy for their soy muscles, and now are crying because their paper thin thinkpads have no proper RS-232 ports. Very sad.

Also he's a retard who can't even do a Google, Amazon or Newegg search because all three have adapters for that shit. It's not even very uncommon.

 

[DavidS877]

Also he's a retard who can't even do a Google, Amazon or Newegg search because all three have adapters for that shit. It's not even very uncommon.

95% of the USB ones are crap. There are some good ones out there but it depends on your purpose. Admittedly these days if you need the strict timing that doesn't use USB you'd probably just use an Arduino instead. I'm sure there's some legacy crap software and devices that wants a real 16550. But probably nothing you'd run on Linux or Windows 10 anyway.

Similarly it used to be real(tm) parallel ports were still sought after for CNC, but everyone has switched to microcontrollers for the low end and expensive dedicated gear on the high end.

 

[AnOminous]

95% of the USB ones are crap.

Maybe if for some insane reason you want to use RS-232 or some weird shit with a DB-9 connector on a regular basis, but if you just want to get some stuff off an old PC, it'll do. Just hook 'em up, set up an old install of Procomm Plus or whatever, or zmodem, or kermit, and transfer over what you want.

I'm just not getting why someone would really want an ancient serial port connection right now.

What is the daily carry for something like this? I just generally want it to work once or on a rare occasion.