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.

[DavidS877]

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,

Nah, they're literal crap. Either FTDI clones where the FDTI drivers can recognize and block them or some random chipset with USB VID/PID that can only be recognized by some driver package written entirely in Chinese.

True FTDI are usually the best. And Linux doesn't much care and works with all of them more or less, except for the ones with odd USB IDs that don't get recognized.

I do have one in my portable kit, but not an RS232 version, just a TTL version that comes in handy when dealing with Raspberry Pis, 3d printer control boards, ESP modules, my TV remote control and a few other things.

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

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

Given the context, I'm guessing he wants a simple character device he can implement in his OS, without the nightmare of implementing USB.

 

[Eternal Gopnik]

He wants to stuff it up his bumhole.

 

[Rusty Metal Skull Gun]

He wants to stuff it up his bumhole.

They do say serials are good for digestion. I think that's what they said, anyway.

 

[Kees H]

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

It depends. If you're a networking engineer and you have to configure networking equipment, serial on a RJ45 connector is still the standard way to do the basic setup of a device (give it an IP address, enable SSH access, etc). The ports on networking equipment are really tolerant of weird non-compliant RS-232 signals though, most of the simple USB converters work on them fine.

 

[Panzerfrau]

Yeah, yeah, but can we talk about the fact that he spent a few weeks leading to his wedding slouched over his computer, working (I presume) many hours a day on this useless OS?

Did this retard leave his woman/man/theybie to handle everything alone? I know some stuff is planned at least a few months in advance, but it's not like there's nothing to do right before the wedding, quite the opposite.
It feels like the OS was just an escapism to avoid acting like an adult with responsibilities more than anything.

 

[AltisticRight]

View attachment 5996696
(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

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.

I can feel his pain on this one. It's a lot more complicated than just a generic USB>RS232 adapter.
1. The pins of RS232 might be different, older manufacturers never properly specified this. The plug itself is identical to a DB9.

See the mess in the middle? These pins aren't one-to-one (ie pin 1 connects to 1, pin 2 to 2 etc), however, there are certain legacy devices that use a generic DB9 and call it an RS232. I've encountered a few and had to whine about it not working until I find some ancient pdf scan of plug assignment, just to rage even more.
Using the wrong cable may or may not end up badly.
2. Most of them would require a driver, compatibility is bad. Even if you have one of those laptops with a real RS232 plug, the controller chip on the device might be way too old. I've had this happen more than a few times and it's beyond frustrating.

As to why someone would want one right now, there's many reasons.
Without powerlevelling too much, most intuitions have rules in place that doesn't permit the replacement of instruments unless they are unusable. We have one of these, a current one would be half a million. It still works, it works very well and isn't at all inferior to what's offered currently. It gets the job done. It's also controlled by a shitty Windows XP desktop via several RS232.
To invoke Louis Rossmann, we also own it. There's diagrams and troubleshooting booklets teaching the user how to fix it. It's not locked behind gay software subscriptions.

It could be rules, or just hobbyists tinkering with factory retired items.

 

[DavidS877]

See the mess in the middle? These pins aren't one-to-one (ie pin 1 connects to 1, pin 2 to 2 etc), however, there are certain legacy devices that use a generic DB9 and call it an RS232. I've encountered a few and had to whine about it not working until I find some ancient pdf scan of plug assignment, just to rage even more.

That's not even a proper null modem, that's one you use when one end doesn't bother with proper control signals. Often the= cheap knock-off USB adapter. Somewhere I still have a few DB9 to RJ45 with removable pins for when I had to hook shit like that up. At least most TTL stuff is just rxd/txd/gnd.

 

[AltisticRight]

That's not even a proper null modem, that's one you use when one end doesn't bother with proper control signals. Often the= cheap knock-off USB adapter. Somewhere I still have a few DB9 to RJ45 with removable pins for when I had to hook shit like that up. At least most TTL stuff is just rxd/txd/gnd.

Over the years, I've maybe encountered 3-4 different arrangements, it's honestly a headache.
There was one nasty plug that had a fucking zener diode in it for whatever God damned reason and it wouldn't work properly without it. I have no idea why.

 

[Creative Username]

I'm comfortable with the stupidest computing bullshit and electronics fucking scares me. Here's why:

There was one nasty plug that had a fucking zener diode in it for whatever God damned reason and it wouldn't work properly without it. I have no idea why.

 

[AnOminous]

That's not even a proper null modem, that's one you use when one end doesn't bother with proper control signals. Often the= cheap knock-off USB adapter. Somewhere I still have a few DB9 to RJ45 with removable pins for when I had to hook shit like that up. At least most TTL stuff is just rxd/txd/gnd.

Back when I occasionally had to do some weird connection from one bizarre device to another, both nominally serial of some sort, I'd just Afro-engineer a breakout box as an adapter for that one single thing. A number of times there was literally no documentation on anything so it was just mess around with it until it worked.

 

[Raven Rainbow]

DB9

DB9

Akshully it's a DE-9

 

[AltisticRight]

Akshully it's a DE-9

It depends. On many older industrial and scientific crap it's the larger B-type shell that's commonly used.

And yeah, this causes issues as well. Nobody wants to deal with two plugs of the similar type and having to mess with 2 annoying cables. A lot of the time we just modify the smaller E-Type shells into the larger ones.

This gets worse when you realise some idiots use non-standard hex pillars, or imperial/metric differences. I'd love to write a manifesto ranting about all these plugs variations I've encountered but that's encroaching on opsec retardation territory.

 

[Coolio55]

Already over for Drew btw.
The language he ripped off has its own OS:

V won.

 

[306h4Ge5eJUJ]

Already over for Drew btw.
The language he ripped off has its own OS:

V won.

I hate Drew as much as the next guy, but comparing Hare to V is just rude.

 

[Bloom Worm Cross Field]

Emersion has been sacked from Sourcehut for reasons unknown.

---

Status update May 2024

Sadly, I need to start this status update with bad news: SourceHut has decided to terminate my contract. At this time, I’m still in the process of figuring out what I’ll do next. I’ve marked some SourceHut-specific projects as unmaintained, such as sr.ht-container-compose (feel free to fork of course). I’ve handed over hut maintenance to xenrox, and I’ve started migrating a few projects to other forges (more to follow). I will continue to maintain projects that I still use such as soju to the extent that my free time allows.

---

Some background info:

Sourcehut: The git repository/mailing list/etc management platform founded by Drew. It was developed as deployable free software, with the official instance being sr.ht, which is a paid hosted service. Think "Gitlab for people who use a terminal mail client". Drew created a company out of this which is how he's funded some other ventures. A few years ago he decided the service was making enough money to hire a few people full time, the first of which was Emersion. Sourcehut the company has also advertised itself as a tiny free-software development house for hire.

Emersion, aka Simon Ser - French software developer. Has always seemed extremely proficient but isn't as famous as Drew because he seems to enjoy spending all of his time developing software instead of spending 50% starting flame wars like Drew. He became the second-in-command for developing Sway and wlroots very early on and has since taken leadership of both. Seems like a standup guy. No flame wars, no constant troon politics, just makes software and has given monthly updates about what he's been making for years. Was hired (I think was the first one) by Sourcehut as the money became available.

---

Drew and Emersion have always worked on the same sphere of software - sway, wlroots, sourcehut and a load of others. The wording of the status update is clear that his termination is unwanted and possibly unexpected by him. I haven't seen any other commentary about this on the internet but this all says to me that either Drew had a histrionic falling out with Simon and fired him, or that sourcehut is in the red and can no longer afford to be anything but a one-man band (Drew) again. While Simon is the kind of guy that I can see taking the high road and keeping drama like that off the record, Drew is exactly the opposite, so I'm leaning towards the latter.

However... I was going to say that if there had been a fallout over Emersion saying something "problematic" in Drew's eyes, Drew would already have already rallied the troops to cancel him like he did with the hyprland developer. But the way he did that was to demand a boycott of all of Vaxry's software. However most of Emersion's professional output has been on projects that Drew owns, particularly Sourcehut. So perhaps Drew, either out of embarrassment for being so closely associated with Emersion, or not wanting to cancel the software that makes him money, just quietly sacked Emersion.

 

[Harvey Danger]

Bunnix is done (3 days ago), for 27 days total work.


He did get a bunch of followers showing it running on their own hardware, Doom port included. So, overall a success.



The blog post write-up is here, and it mostly answers the "why?" questions. He lists things he learns, namely that signals suck, and the difference between developing microkernels like Helios and monolithic kernels:

Finally, I’m quite sure that putting together Bunnix in just 30 days is a feat which would not have been possible with a microkernel design. At the end of the day, monolithic kernels are just much simpler to implement. The advantages of a microkernel design are compelling, however – perhaps a better answer lies in a hybrid kernel.

I'm not sure what a hybrid kernel would look like, but maybe that's a future project. Bunnix itself was "an art project" for fun, which is now done and he's going back to Helios.

Bunnix was (note the past tense) a project that I wrote for the purpose of recreational programming, so it’s purpose is to be fun to work on. And I’ve had my fun! At this point I don’t feel the need to invest more time and energy into it, though it would definitely benefit from some. In the future I may spend a few days on it here and there, and I would be happy to integrate improvements from the community – send patches to my public inbox. But for the most part it is an art project which is now more-or-less complete.

My next steps in OS development will be a return to Helios with a lot of lessons learned and some major redesigns in the pipeline. But I still think that Bunnix is a fun and interesting OS in its own right, in no small part due to its demonstration of Hare as a great language for kernel hacking.

But he couldn't write all that without at least one snippy diss. In his list of userspace utils, he has a footnote for sbase:

 

[AirdropShitposts]

The most famous hybrid kernal is probably Windows. So he wrote a nix to come to the conclusion Microsoft was right with NT?

 

[Flatline]

However most of Emersion's professional output has been on projects that Drew owns, particularly Sourcehut.

Shit situation. Depending on whether there was a falling out, it wouldn't be surprising if Drew goes back and erases Emersion and his contributions from SH's history.

 

[Hall of Cost Payer]

Our favorite GitHub alternative has a new blog post out:
GhostArchive
Direct Link
My favorite part:

Following the failure of our primary datacenter, we arranged to have our equipment shipped overseas to our research datacenter, so that we could install this equipment and restore our infrastructure to its full production capacity on SourceHut-owned hardware. At our now-deprecated site we had ten servers totalling an investment of about $50,000 USD. Some of this equipment was at the end of its operational life and was disposed of accordingly, but we arranged to have five servers shipped to Amsterdam. However, all five servers were lost in the mail. These parcels were insured with the shipping provider, but we have been unable to reach the provider for any information regarding the status of the parcels or any resources for filing an insurance claim. After several months of attempts, we have ultimately had to write these servers off.

Wtf? You shipped the servers? Had the servers insured, they lost them and you write it off? Drew proves once again what a manlet he is.

He fired this one team member and doesn't plan to hire a replacement. They're doing this as a two man team now.

Don't worry customers, between half of the team writing lolcow operating systems and on a lolcow proglang and letting a shipping company off with their capital, your money is in good hands