[HN Gopher] Hello system, a FreeBSD-based OS designed to resembl...
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Hello system, a FreeBSD-based OS designed to resemble Mac
Author : gautamcgoel
Score : 208 points
Date : 2021-02-10 17:22 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hellosystem.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (hellosystem.github.io)
| CGamesPlay wrote:
| Sounds cool, although it still seems very early. Will keyboard
| shortcuts be primarily using Control or Super? As strange as it
| sounds, Control-driven keyboard shortcuts are one of the main
| things I think about every time I consider switching (and this is
| almost entirely because of the conflict of Control-C in the
| terminal).
| [deleted]
| 1996 wrote:
| > Will keyboard shortcuts be primarily using Control or Super?
|
| On linux, Super as the shortcut for window operation is gaining
| ground, leaving Control and Alt for the other shortcuts.
|
| Control is idea for the text shortcuts (emacs: Ctrl-A for
| beginning, E for end etc), and Alt for the menus (ex: Alt-F for
| files) even if there are a lot of crossovers (ex: Ctrl-F for
| find)
|
| > this is almost entirely because of the conflict of Control-C
| in the terminal
|
| I would suggest you remap intr to ^X : stty intr ^X : the X and
| C keys are very close, so it becomes natural very quickly
|
| I've seen quite a few people doing it, it inspired me to do the
| same: it very quickly becomes natural, far more that Shift-
| Ctrl-C
|
| https://askubuntu.com/questions/1207183/how-to-map-keys-on-l...
| coliveira wrote:
| In the Mac, terminal apps use Control-C without any problems.
| Only native Mac apps use the Command (Apple) key, so I see no
| conflict between these two key combinations.
| spockz wrote:
| Command-C is copy basically everywhere in macOS. Even in
| electron apps and qt apps. I haven't come across an app in
| about 10 years which used Ctrl-c for copy.
| sneak wrote:
| https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/issues/7332
| Toutouxc wrote:
| This feels like one of the "we have X at home" memes. The UI is
| all over the place.
| whalesalad wrote:
| The closest I've ever seen is Elementary OS but even that isn't
| quite right.
| baliex wrote:
| Couldn't agree more! It's trying so hard to look like macOS but
| it somehow hasn't escaped a Linux look and feel. One example is
| the padding between the `Alt+Space` text and its surrounding
| pseudo-Spotlight search box. Either the box is too small or the
| text is too big but it just doesn't look polished.
| xtracto wrote:
| The problem with all these Linux/BSD attempts at mimicking the
| Mac is that due to the nature of the open source components,
| they are mostly able to mimic the "look" but never the feel.
|
| The one thing that makes OSX different even from Windows is the
| way it "feels" when you are using it. And the simple things you
| can achieve in a very simple and intuitive matter.
|
| I just stumbled upon an example some days ago, when I needed to
| add a screenshot image to a PDF. It was surprisingly easy in
| the Mac: Double click the PDF to open it in preview, double
| click the image to open it in preview and then drag the file
| icon of the image into the pages view of the PDF. And the image
| is inserted as a page in the PDF without any issues.
|
| To do that on Windows or Linux (I use Mint in my PC) I think
| I'll have to print the Image as a PDF and then use some other
| software to "stitch" the two files together.
|
| And like that there are a lot of other UX small things that
| make for a more pleasant experience in the Mac, particularly
| for end users.
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| You can mimic the macOS feel in Linux by injecting a 30 ms
| delay in every action and changing the cursor to a beach
| ball.
| toast0 wrote:
| > double click the image to open it in preview and then drag
| the file icon of the image into the pages view of the PDF
|
| What I never understood as someone with a mac only to blend
| in at work, is why in the world is it called Preview when
| it's actually an editor?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| > And like that there are a lot of other UX small things that
| make for a more pleasant experience in the Mac, particularly
| for end users.
|
| Completely disagree. Yesterday I had to figure out how to
| display hidden files in finder. I had to google it //
| apparently there is some hidden key sequence of command
| option control alt hell that toggles it. It is not exposed in
| menus anywhere and there shortcut it not all obvious. So next
| week I'll be googling it again.
|
| Contrast that with most linux UIs and even Windows. Context-
| menus display all possible options (generally)... nothing is
| hidden from the user.
|
| Most of my gripes about MacOS have to do with the finder and
| context menus. They suck.
|
| This is one example of many.
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| As another comment just made points out, this is not
| something the vast majority of Mac users will, or should,
| be doing. For the rest of us, we're likely to be doing it
| often enough to remember the shortcut -- it's second nature
| to me now.
|
| The big problem is discoverability, as you imply.
|
| > all possible options ... nothing is hidden from the user
|
| This is the key bit. Showing all possible options would go
| utterly against the mac ethos.
| Klonoar wrote:
| You can enable it system-wide with a defaults setting. Most
| devs I know do.
|
| Most end-users don't know what a hidden file with a `.` is,
| would never create one, and don't particularly care for
| that level of clutter in a directory.
| zepto wrote:
| "I had to figure out how to display hidden files in
| finder."
|
| Displaying hidden files is not generally _an end user
| feature_.
| fnord123 wrote:
| As a user I would like to be able to attach my .vimrc,
| .bashrc, etc to emails to colleagues so they can see what
| I have in my settings.
| Someone wrote:
| In general, end users don't even _have_ a .vimrc,
| .bashrc, etc. If you even know these things exist, you're
| an exception.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| My sense is that theming like this is generally not aimed at
| people who would use a Mac in the first place, but rather BSD
| users who want something that looks more pleasant than their
| default window manager.
|
| Creating a coherent visual language from scratch is a huge
| undertaking, and requires a certain skill set. Mimicking an
| existing design system is much more straightforward, even if
| the results are uneven.
| cmroanirgo wrote:
| From the page itself, it clearly aims at people migrating
| from a mac:
|
| > _It is intended as a system for "mere mortals", welcoming
| to switchers from the Mac._
| mhh__ wrote:
| Well Windows doesn't attempt to edit PDFs, so what do you
| expect? If for some reason I was using word it's 2 clicks, so
| I find that extremely pointless as a test.
| zepto wrote:
| > what do you expect?
|
| I think a lot of users expect to be able to do minor
| manipulations on PDFs.
| aduitsis wrote:
| My favourite small detail on the Mac, is how the clipboard
| interacts with the filesystem. You can select some text, drag
| it into the Desktop and it will become a .Clipping. Now, if
| you drag and drop that clipping into a text field (e.g.
| textedit), it will be as if it was pasted.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| KDE's Plasma Desktop allows you to do this. You can drag
| text from any app to the desktop, and it will turn it into
| a Note.
|
| You can right-click and paste, or Ctrl+V, on the desktop or
| the file manager, too, and it will save your clipboard
| contents as a file for you.
|
| Same thing works for images, videos etc.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| This is also why Mac apps built using frameworks other than
| Cocoa (or Carbon) never feel quite right!
|
| Sure, you may have recreated the copy and paste menu so it
| looks and feels identical. But did you remember to handle
| .clipping files? What about File > New From Clipboard? What
| about the system-wide custom keyboard shortcuts? Oh, and
| don't forget to make it all behave properly with Voiceover!
| kridsdale1 wrote:
| This is why it sucks so much that many important "apps"
| are electron shells.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Windows had a very similar idea to that, called "shell
| scraps" [1]. The feature was removed because basically
| nobody ever used it (and it was a vector for viruses) [2].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_Scrap_Object_File
|
| [2] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-
| versions/technet-m...
| anthk wrote:
| KDE used to work like that too.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| It still does.
| hamburglar wrote:
| This is certainly true for data types that the system knows
| how to serialize and deserialize, but (at least back when
| clippings were introduced) for others, the app that owns
| the clipboard data must provide the hook for the
| serialization and deserialization. Back in my first
| programming job, we were about to ship a shrink-wrapped
| software product that I will not name but you've almost
| certainly used, and we discovered that we "needed" to
| support clippings or else (I can't remember if this was
| some Apple compatibility rule or some marketing person's
| rule). We didn't have much time, and we also didn't have
| serialization code for this very complicated data structure
| that was on the clipboard, and my manager told me to just
| implement it by sticking THE POINTER in the clipping. I
| objected and was overruled. I did it, it shipped that way,
| and I will always be ashamed. You could only use a clipping
| in the same process that created it. I had to add code on
| the deserialize that checked to see if the pointer was
| valid. It still makes me sick to think about.
| marmaduke wrote:
| That's the practical approach .. and you are lucky to
| have a manager who is technical enough to make
| suggestions like that
| hamburglar wrote:
| There is nothing practical about writing a pointer value
| to a file. This was a quick hack that made the feature
| _appear_ to work rather than actually work. It 's really
| bad engineering.
| toomanyducks wrote:
| Sort of reminds me of Plan 9, with the ability to treat
| text as executable, where execution can include opening a
| file in a designated application. I haven't used either OS
| for more than a cumulative 10 minutes, but this was
| definitely my favorite part of Plan 9.
| ithkuil wrote:
| You can play with a user space port called plan9port
| (https://9fans.github.io/plan9port/) where you can run
| the "plumber" executable, edit your rule file and then
| just invoke the plumb command with some text and context
| and have it do things. It also comes with the acme editor
| and other tools.
|
| This way you can have some of the fun of plan9 but keep
| your modern amenities such as wifi, a browser and
| whatnot.
| MisterTea wrote:
| Text isn't executable in plan 9 but it plays a major role
| in the design of how you interact with the system.
|
| The functionality you describe sounds like a mixture of
| Acme(1) text editor and the plumber(4) file server.
|
| Acme editor allows you to exec highlighted text so long
| as the highlighted portion is a valid command string. For
| example: if you wanted the date printed in the Acme
| window from date(1) all you do is type <date, highlight
| it, middle click it, and date's stdout is redirected into
| the editor and the highlighted text is replaced with the
| output of date. Without the '<', the output would
| redirect to a new window. You can also put commands into
| the tag bar and right click them to execute. So when I'm
| writing plan 9 programs, I put mk into the tag bar of the
| programs directory and just click mk. Of course Acme
| works hand in hand with the plumber and you can send
| plumb messages from Acme too. Right clicking text in Acme
| plumbs it.
|
| The plumber is a really neat program. All it does is
| listen for messages that are plain old text, tries to
| match the message to a rule, and that rule has an
| associated action. You load the rules by simply copying
| the rule file to the plumber rule file. So for example,
| you send a url to plumber, it's rule looks for http://,
| matches it to a rule that says open mothra or netsurf and
| use the url as an argument and the website open in the
| browser. If you're inside acme and right click a header
| file in acme, plumber then just tells acme to open that
| file (assuming acme is in your rules file for text)
| mst wrote:
| Do you know of a good video of this in action? I've
| managed to get a much better handle on smalltalk and
| slime by watching videos of people using them, but I
| dunno where to find one for acme (I looked, the ones I
| found didn't quite help me get my brain around it).
| com2kid wrote:
| > I just stumbled upon an example some days ago, when I
| needed to add a screenshot image to a PDF. It was
| surprisingly easy in the Mac: Double click the PDF to open it
| in preview, double click the image to open it in preview and
| then drag the file icon of the image into the pages view of
| the PDF. And the image is inserted as a page in the PDF
| without any issues.
|
| That is a great use case!
|
| And screenshots on mac are, IMHO, hard to use.
|
| The screenshot UI is frustrating, where to save to is under
| options, you cannot preview your screenshot, you cannot
| annotate the screenshot (something I do all the time on
| Windows), and having to choose between saving to file or
| clipboard is annoying.
|
| I wanted to record video, which the Screenshot app can do! I
| know that because I googled for it, saw it could do it, and
| then spent a good 4-5 minutes trying to figure out HOW to do
| it before I realized the tiny grey scale circle overlaid on a
| couple of the toolbar icons meant "record".
|
| (Red circles mean record, grey circles don't have much
| meaning, but hey, need to keep that UI minimal, can't let
| usability or actual meaning get in the way!)
|
| The Windows Snipping Tool (RIP) is IMHO the best paradigm for
| doing screenshots.
| notafraudster wrote:
| You are a few versions out of date here -- Mac screenshots
| now show a preview by default and clicking on the preview
| opens it for annotation. This is true as of 2018 (Mojave).
| com2kid wrote:
| > Mac screenshots now show a preview by default
|
| Ah, I have to select "preview". Thanks! That is nice to
| know.
|
| Now, pardon me, as the highlight tool isn't working,
| everything is a rectangular selection no matter what I
| do.
|
| Right click, "text and icons". Thank goodness for
| that[1], because apparently I have to first click what I
| thought was a stylized 'A' (or a wishbone), then a
| separate toolbar appears, that, ironically, doesn't have
| a way to highlight things. Go figure.
|
| It does appear to be far more powerful than the snipping
| tool.
|
| I'll still complain about the greyscale record button.
|
| [1] With just icons I probably would have, quite
| literally, never clicked the markup button and just
| assumed the preview tool couldn't do any annotations.
| Holy cow that is a bad icon.
|
| Edit: OIC, the markup button only does something when
| viewing PDFs, but the button pretends it does something
| (is clickable, changes state) when viewing image files.
| That is... distinctly not good UX.
| spijdar wrote:
| For what it's worth, the much maligned touch bar has good
| integration with the screenshot functionality, and you can
| adjust options through that interface while in "screenshot
| mode". Video recording is also easy there.
|
| I'm also pretty sure recent versions of MacOS have
| annotation capabilities unless you directly copy to
| clipboard. Not sure though, don't have a mac anymore.
| woodruffw wrote:
| > The screenshot UI is frustrating, where to save to is
| under options, you cannot preview your screenshot, you
| cannot annotate the screenshot (something I do all the time
| on Windows), and having to choose between saving to file or
| clipboard is annoying.
|
| I agree with all of this, but for what it's worth: Command-
| shift-{3,4,5} (and maybe others?) all bring up a rapid
| screenshot cursor. That action integrates with the little
| "smart" preview window that recent macOS releases have, so
| you can just click the little floating window that appears
| on the bottom right of your screen to see the capture
| you've just taken.
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Command-shift-{3,4,5} (and maybe others?)_
|
| Command-Shift-6 takes a screenshot of your touchbar.
|
| Surprisingly useful if you have your touchbar customized
| to output some kind of diagnostic data or other thing
| that you're monitoring.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| And don't forget ctrl-cmd-shift-3/4/5 to get it straight
| to your buffer
| machello13 wrote:
| > (Red circles mean record, grey circles don't have much
| meaning, but hey, need to keep that UI minimal, can't let
| usability or actual meaning get in the way!)
|
| Each button in the screenshot toolbar shows a tooltip when
| you hover over -- not even after a couple seconds, but
| immediately. The one you're talking about is labeled
| "Record Entire Screen."
| com2kid wrote:
| > Each button in the screenshot toolbar shows a tooltip
| when you hover over -- not even after a couple seconds,
| but immediately. The one you're talking about is labeled
| "Record Entire Screen."
|
| You are right, that is how I figured it out.
|
| By giving up on using visual queues, and hovering over
| each button individually to see if there were any
| surprises.
|
| If the circle had literally just been red I would've
| guessed it immediately.
|
| To be fair Apple's page for this does show the button
| with the circle over it, I somehow managed to miss the
| circle despite reading the page twice.
|
| I do have a bias against icons in general, I prefer text
| labels on all my icons but apparently that is way too
| 90s. :/
|
| (The dock is largely useless to me, I use Contexts to
| make MacOS usable, let's me switch apps by typing in the
| app's name, I have an equivalent program on Windows)
| agloeregrets wrote:
| It reminds me aggressively of OSX, no I don't mean macOS, I
| mean OSX 10.2.
| [deleted]
| macksd wrote:
| This is exciting - I hope it gets momentum. I used to use BSD on
| my laptop and although it was a bit less convenient than Linux in
| terms of hardware support, etc. I really loved the philosophy.
| Some of the desktop-oriented distributions died out and have been
| replaced by others, so it's not an ecosystem I feel comfortable
| really investing my time in.
|
| But my wife loves the look and feel of Mac OS, and has just grown
| frustrated with a few things lately that are obviously just
| restricting users to squeeze them to more expensive products or
| locking them in to Apple's ecosystem. She's rarely cared much
| about my FOSS hobby before but something like this would actually
| appeal to her, I think.
| gosukiwi wrote:
| What I love about FreeBSD is the documentation. I was able to
| skim through it and get a good understanding of how everything
| fits together, and how I can change it.
|
| I'd love it if this project gains some momentum, it would be
| great to have an alternative to Ubuntu/Elementary OS.
|
| In particular it would be nice to have an alternative for macOS
| users. Jumping to Linux from other OSes can be tough at first.
|
| > restricting users to squeeze them to more expensive products
| or locking them in to Apple's ecosystem.
|
| Yeah also this. I can't use my old MacBook 2005 anymore because
| the software I need to use won't run on older versions of
| MacOS, and I just can't install newer versions of MacOS without
| some kind of hack, which leaves the computer half-usable :(
| ksec wrote:
| >But my wife loves the look and feel of Mac OS, and has just
| grown frustrated with a few things lately that are obviously
| just restricting users to squeeze them to more expensive
| products or locking them in to Apple's ecosystem.
|
| So glad this is catching on. Although I was surprised this
| coming from Mac and not iPhone. What is it with Mac that caused
| the frustration?
|
| On iPhone, it is clear everything is about pushing for services
| revenue.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Wife loves her iPhone and hates the Mac. Sounds familiar...
| macksd wrote:
| I haven't looked into it too deeply, but she has one of the
| less expensive netbook-type models and it appears to raise
| errors quite frequently because she should buy more iCloud
| space even though she has space on the local disk.
|
| She's also found it increasingly hard to find config settings
| the last few years.
| reachtarunhere wrote:
| If you are open to Linux you might find this interesting
| https://elementary.io/
| KeyBoardG wrote:
| This. I wonder how much work it would take to get the
| Pantheon desktop running on FreeBSD if they wanted that as
| the base.
| neilalexander wrote:
| If there was a way to have the Pantheon desktop experience of
| elementaryOS on BSD or Illumos without having to build it
| myself, I'd be there in a heartbeat.
| whynotminot wrote:
| Just curious, what do you feel is squeezing you to a more
| expensive product lately?
|
| I still use a 2012 Mac mini from time to time. It recently
| stopped getting the latest OS upgrades, but getting 8ish years
| out of a product before being gently pushed to upgrade doesn't
| strike me as all that unreasonable or money-grabbing.
| spockz wrote:
| Also imho the latest M1 air is excellent value for money.
| Cheap, great screen. And macOS.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| Cheap is definitely arguable.
| whynotminot wrote:
| I might agree that "cheap" is the wrong word, but "value"
| is definitely the right one. There's nothing at its price
| point that provides a similar value prop.
| spockz wrote:
| Okay it isn't cheap to buy, however TCO for a machine th
| at will probably you serve well for 8 years for around
| EUR1000 sounds good to me. It is also their cheapest
| laptop which is why I used the word cheap.
| rangoon626 wrote:
| I really appreciate seeing someone creating their own interface
| instead of re-skinning the popular shells. If the devs out there
| working on this see this thread, great work!
| mikeiz404 wrote:
| Video walkthrough: https://youtu.be/PlPTVbhrKYM
| michaelpb wrote:
| Sincere question: Why FreeBSD?
|
| I'm not against the choice, and I can imagine some valid reasons
| to choose it, but in the helloSystem docs I read so far I only
| found some common criticisms of desktop Linux UI (bloated,
| unfriendly, disorganized etc). Whether true or not, I really
| don't see how the kernel choice impacts the graphical experience
| they are imitating. This seems more of a criticism of distros,
| poorly followed or non-existent HIG for DEs, or even just the
| general ad-hoc nature of FOSS projects. That's why I don't see
| how basing a new free software project on FreeBSD would solve any
| of that -- it seems completely orthogonal.
|
| I mean, either way it seems they are basing it on KDE, which they
| could have also built on top of a Linux kernel:
| https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/developer/architecture.ht...
|
| Also, I get a lot of their criticisms of existing DEs, but it
| seems they are tossing a lot of work out without a viable
| replacement with buy-in, e.g. "XDG specifications are considered
| overly complex but insufficient and should be avoided, but may be
| acceptable as legacy technology for compatibility reasons".
| There's plenty of valid criticism of XDG, but until there is any
| support behind helloSystem, it reminds me a bit of this classic
| xkcd: https://xkcd.com/927/
|
| All in all I'm actually excited about the project, since
| regardless of the kernel, I'm sure the DE they are developing
| will get ports elsewhere (e.g. to mature desktop Linuxes and
| BSDs), and any effort that helps macOS users jump to FOSS-world
| is also super appreciated!
| masukomi wrote:
| because macOS is BSD based not Linux Based seems a damn good
| reason to make one that's going to feel similar to macOS,
| especially to the type of geeks who would switch to a *nix
| clone.
|
| You'll have the same command line libraries built in instead of
| the GNU ones. Now, I'm not saying i _want_ the BSD tools
| instead of the GNU ones, but it makes a LOT of sense if you're
| trying to keep the same behavior.
| michaelpb wrote:
| See, preferring BSD userland would be a rationale I would at
| least understand, but I didn't find that motivation in the
| documentation -- at least what I read of it. Instead I just
| saw a lot of criticisms of user experience and development
| experience of completely unrelated graphical userland
| software that are commonly used on both desktop BSD and
| desktop Linux.
| dialamac wrote:
| My guess, probably because they're idiots.
|
| " A lightweight, standard publish/subscribe mechanism should be
| identified; possibly something like MQTT (which would have the
| added benefit of allowing for network-wide communication). In
| the meantime, the use of D-Bus as a legacy technology may be
| acceptable (even though it is considered obscure, convoluted,
| and closely linked with various other Red Hat technologies."
|
| This sort of sums it up right there. I mean I think dbus is a
| trash fire, but not because it is tied to RedHat, and
| "something something" hand wavy MQTT isn't a real solution.
|
| This seems to be more of a project driven by Linux hate then
| actual design principals. The former is not so much a problem
| as the latter
| Gys wrote:
| If you want this, I recommend to also look at
| https://elementary.io/ (to me that looks more moderm)
| mmastrac wrote:
| Elementary looks like a great attempt at a clean desktop. Lots
| of attention to detail (although odd that they have a gif
| searching applications on the front page with such a mis-
| centered text insertion mark!).
|
| I really wish that Gnome would go all-in on the single menu bar
| approach of OSX. I know it's gone back and forth over the years
| and broken from time-to-time but it really is a much better way
| to do things versus the windows menu-per-window approach. IMO
| obviously, but I've used OSX for a decade and Windows/DOS for
| 20 years before that and top menus have always just been a
| better experience.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| The menu bar is one of the most frustrating parts of macOS
| for me. It kills Fitts' law when navigating browser tabs,
| which is what I'm trying to do up there 90% of the time.
| vermaden wrote:
| No icons on the desktop at elementary.
| bitigchi wrote:
| Elementary only mimics the appearance, it's still Linux (and
| all its bloat and unfriendliness underneath). Hello looks like
| it's trying to make it usable as the Mac too.
| trenchgun wrote:
| That is based on Linux, not FreeBSD.
| 1_player wrote:
| Brought to you by the creator of AppImage.
|
| https://medium.com/@probonopd/hello-lets-make-a-freebsd-for-...
| diggernet wrote:
| And irdb.
|
| http://www.irdb.tk/
| trenchgun wrote:
| Yes.
|
| This project has a much higher probability for success than
| baseline.
| krylon wrote:
| > System Requirements: VGA capable of 1024x768 screen resolution
|
| I do not mean to be snarky, but are there actual displays that
| have a lower resolution these days? I mean, even my phone - which
| is not high-end at all, at least by central European standards -
| has 1280x720. I _do_ have an Asus EeePC netbook with a 1024x600
| display, but that is kind of a special case (also, it is 12 years
| old).
| xu_ituairo wrote:
| I read it as just stating the minimum hardware needed to
| successfully run this.
|
| I don't imagine them making it artificially higher, just
| because, would serve a purpose.
| krylon wrote:
| Good point.
| chungus_khan wrote:
| A lot of these straight up just exist so the creator has a
| sign to tap (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DRYYGcWV4AAF2E4.jpg)
| when people try to file bug reports for unsupported oddball
| configurations.
| xtracto wrote:
| > I do have an Asus EeePC netbook with a 1024x600 display, but
| that is kind of a special case
|
| Hehe, I have one of those which I bought in Germany also like
| 12 years ago. They were all the rage at that time and the darn
| thing is still kicking ass. It is good for the odd Windows
| stuff that I have to do, and also serves as the CPU of my
| arcade build.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| A plenty of 800x450 screens out there for the ilk of Raspberry
| Pi.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| If you're running this is a virtual machine like it appears
| that the OS developer is, chances are that you'll be using a
| smaller resolution than what your screen can handle.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Resemble is the keyword, without any of the frameworks that make
| macOS what it is.
| the-dude wrote:
| For a graphical system, screenshots are hard to find.
| duckerude wrote:
| I found one:
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helloSystem/hello/master/s...
| rvz wrote:
| Took me a second to find _at least_ one screenshot:
| https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/user/getting-started.html
|
| But you're actually right though. I think that the screenshots
| are best presented on the front-page.
| the-dude wrote:
| I am a bit ashamed I missed that one. Thanks for the pointer.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It was the only screenshot I could find, it is a bit
| minimal, and it requires scrolling down the page (which
| seems like a lazy complaint, but c'mon, the graphics are
| the whole point of this project, put it front-and-center!)
|
| Your shame is rejected, they are the ones who messed up.
| gautamcgoel wrote:
| Plenty of screenshots here:
|
| https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/02/hel...
| the-dude wrote:
| Are you involved in the project? Isn't this a massive
| copyright infringement on Apple's design?
| rangoon626 wrote:
| Have a look at Big Sur, then check out Deepin, then have a
| look again at Big Sur.
| Macha wrote:
| Or if you claim that Deepin is too obscure to have
| influenced OS X, Gnome 3.
| machello13 wrote:
| I mean this in the nicest way, but are you seriously
| suggesting Apple is looking to the open-source Linux
| community for UI design ideas? Isn't it much more likely
| the trend is just industry-wide, and Apple is part of it
| as much as Gnome is? Apple's own UI has been moving in
| that direction for years anyway before Big Sur.
| Macha wrote:
| Are you seriously suggesting that the open source
| community has not a single idea that is worth considering
| by Apple?
|
| Anyway, here is gnome 3:
|
| https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
|
| here is big sur:
|
| https://cdn.osxdaily.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/06/macos-bi...
|
| Let's take a look at one of the most shown off redesigned
| apps
|
| Here is Mail.app (sierra to catalina):
|
| https://external-
| content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
|
| Here is Mail.app (Big Sur):
|
| https://i1.wp.com/morrick.me/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/08/defa...
|
| Here is Gnome's mail app (predates big sur by several
| years, even in this incarnation):
|
| https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Geary?action=AttachFile&do=ge
| t&t...
|
| So, Gnome's design and Apple's didn't exist in a vacuum.
| I'm not saying Apple told someone to go rip off Gnome 3,
| or that Gnome 3 is just better than Big Sur in some way.
| But I think it's altogether too harsh to deny it had any
| influence when we look at the changes from Catalina to
| Big Sur.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Graphics are cute, yet when one digs deeper there are no
| proper frameworks that provide the Feel, only the Look.
| fnord123 wrote:
| This is true. Macos's window management is still a
| dumpster fire (Cmd-tab to go to the last window raises
| all windows in that application. And switching to the
| previous application across two monitors will focus on
| the application windows in the monitor of the most
| recently focused window - not the last window).
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| To me, Big Sur's design is very clearly taking its
| aesthetics -- for better or worse (maybe better _and_
| worse) -- from iOS: minimizing "chrome" as much as
| possible to the point of making title bars vanish when
| it's deemed feasible, reducing buttons to flat single-
| color icons, and so on. Your screenshots of GNOME 3 look
| more like Catalina than Big Sur to me, honestly; the
| buttons still look like, well, buttons; the title/toolbar
| goes all the way across (unlike Big Sur but like
| Catalina), the buttons are grouped (unlike Big Sur but
| like Catalina), etc.
|
| I don't think anyone would say design exists in a vacuum,
| nor that the open source community has no ideas that
| Apple or other companies would consider -- I mean, look
| at CUPS and KHTML! But open source has, well, not
| historically been great with its desktop UX design. The
| best free software interfaces that I see tend to take
| pretty direct cues from (hopefully well-designed!)
| commercial counterparts; more often than not deviations
| from those established norms make things worse rather
| than better.
| pwdisswordfish6 wrote:
| General trends? Yes, of course. But at Jobs's very last
| WWDC event, they demoed a lot of new Mac developments for
| Lion that _specifically_ (not generally) mirrored some of
| the features going into Gnome Shell after (very public)
| design iteration. At the time, I came away saying that it
| was basically "Gnome Shell, rotated 90 degrees".
|
| Not sure what "open-source Linux community" means to you,
| besides a phrase that can be used to denigrate and
| diminish the work of people who have skill and vision by
| associating them with unrelated projects that lack
| polish.
|
| You're also doing a pretty annoying thing where, rather
| than engaging with someone on the topic of discussion,
| you instead appeal to the audience's intuition and
| essentially suggest that the conversation need not happen
| because the other side can be dismissed outright due to
| Common Sense things that everyone Knows. (It's a great
| tactic when your goal is to prevent anyone from taking
| something seriously because serious examination would
| necessarily lead to confronting something uncomfortable.)
| Cieplak wrote:
| > _Isn 't this a massive copyright infringement on Apple's
| design?_
|
| I'm not a lawyer but I think Xerox had the same question
| back in '89 [1]. Given Apple's luck in pursuing
| infringement claims against Microsoft [2], I doubt a
| copyright suit would be fruitful in this case.
|
| [1] https://www.nytimes.com/1989/12/15/business/company-
| news-xer...
|
| [2] https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/1988-apple-sues-
| micros...
| indigodaddy wrote:
| The look of the text in the top left in this screenshot
| where they are trying to mimic an "about this mac" sort of
| deal, frankly leaves a lot to be desired. It just looks
| very unattractive to me.
|
| https://149366088.v2.pressablecdn.com/wp-
| content/uploads/202...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| I am using ctl-c ctl-v ctl-x and ctl-z "undo" right now, in
| 2021. These keyboard shortcuts and their menu-driven
| actions were definitely claimed as protected interface by
| Apple long ago. Apple's claims to user-interface control
| are wearing thin after close to four decades, no?
| protomyth wrote:
| Anyone know the license of the code? I would assume BSD, but that
| assumption hasn't been true of some other projects.
| tyingq wrote:
| There's a license file in the ISO repo, which I assume would
| cover most or all of the project. 3-Clause BSD:
| https://github.com/helloSystem/ISO/blob/experimental/LICENSE
| aminozuur wrote:
| That's a very ugly website for something that's "designed to
| resemble Mac"
| 1-6 wrote:
| FreeBSD has to have SOME influence!
| zerof1l wrote:
| It may be appealing enough for a user to try it, but I foresee
| disappointment. Mac OS is not only about the UI but also about
| all the software for it. How easy it is to install and use it out
| of the box. Drivers are never an issue. It is very unlikely that
| the average user will have to run commands in bash or edit some
| config files in a text editor.
|
| It would be cool if some Linux variant could resemble Mac in this
| way.
| machiaweliczny wrote:
| Isn't system76 and PopOS like that?
| pwdisswordfish6 wrote:
| No, have you used it? The Gnome customizations that go into
| Pop_OS! are more noticeably influenced by Windows-isms than
| they resemble Mac-like design (unfortunately -- the Windows
| influence leads to poorer outcomes that only really make
| sense when you realize that it's because it matches something
| in Windows, and not because there's any good from-first-
| principles rationale for those things).
| mst wrote:
| I think they meant "like that" wrt drivers not being an
| issue and not having to drop out of the GUI.
| mekkkkkk wrote:
| > Drivers are never an issue.
|
| If you talk about system drivers it's not really fair. Having
| control of all system components makes driver support a joke
| compared to handling the constant avalanche for PCs. Try
| installing a hackintosh and you have a good chance of
| immediately running into Linuxesque driver issues.
|
| If you talk about peripherals I've had plenty of issues on
| macOS.
| zeckalpha wrote:
| Any plans to partner with prior attempts like
| Darling/GNUStep/Window Maker/Etoile?
| bitigchi wrote:
| As a Mac user, worth noting that this project tries to make it
| not just look like a Mac but feel like a Mac too. Kudos for this
| reason!
| rbanffy wrote:
| If someone wants to mimic the Mac, I'd suggest they start by
| making it easy to port apps from macOS. Worst case scenario, you
| run binaries from macOS directly on your OS.
|
| Then it starts making sense to build your own.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| If the goal is looking and acting like a mac, implementing the
| entire set of application-facing OS interfaces is _far_ more
| expensive than just theming and UX work.
|
| That said, this has been attempted and supposedly works for
| simple apps (mostly excluding GUI apps) -
| https://www.darlinghq.org/
| rbanffy wrote:
| Theming can't go far without the plumbing that underpin Mac
| applications. You can mimic the look perfectly and it'll
| still feel odd. You can't run xterm and expect Mac users to
| think it's how it's supposed to be. You won't get far unless
| you also emulate the behavior with mixed high-dpi and normal
| screens and making apps look the same across screen borders.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is a big undertaking. Microsoft was able to do this for
| UWP and iOS[1], but they're a billion dollar company with the
| man power to accomplish something like that.
|
| [1] https://github.com/microsoft/WinObjC
| shrubble wrote:
| There is also NEXTSPACE, which is focused on a distribution of
| files that implement a full NeXTSTEP environment for Linux.
|
| Installs on top of a minimal install of Centos 7,8, Fedora 31.
|
| I installed it in a VM and it worked pretty well, but does need
| more apps installed by default.
|
| See https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace .
| spijdar wrote:
| It's worth being clear and noting that, somewhat unlike Hello,
| which is largely an attempt at _looking_ like MacOS, with some
| attention given to the UI and things like keyboard shortcuts to
| make it sort of feel like MacOS, NEXTSPACE comes much closer to
| mimicking the functionality of NeXTSTEP and, by extension,
| MacOS (X).
|
| I do wish GNUstep and some of the other projects around it had
| more life and applications written for them. It could be a
| lovely OS with some work. And I do mean OS -- if one built a
| distro fully around GNUstep, it'd provide all the interfaces,
| both programmatic and GUI-wise. And it could be lovely.
|
| Not sure there's enough motivation left to get that ball
| rolling, though...
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| When Steve Jobs created the first mac, he tried to replicate
| the look and feel of the Xerox Alto. He did not pay much
| attention to other aspects such as Smalltalk-80 and object
| oriented programming.
|
| NeXT is an attempt to incorporate those concepts that were
| initially left out from the mac, thus creating an experience
| that is more faithful to the original Xerox Alto. That's the
| origin of Objective-C.
| 1-6 wrote:
| The cursive animation of 'hello' has the o written wrong. You're
| supposed to do a clockwise stop at 12 o'clock when drawing the
| 'o' and do a counter-clockwise back to 12 to meet. Apple would
| never mess that up especially when Steve Jobs was critical about
| typography on the early Macs.
| endperform wrote:
| This reminds me of the first iteration of OS X on my old CRT
| iMac.
| mmphosis wrote:
| "Resemble" is a start like Elementary on Linux and other distros
| that mimic the "look" but never the feel. TH^Hhere is a lot of
| legacy PC keyboard stuff that is annoying.
|
| Here is what is missing:
|
| _Global menu bar: A concept in user interface design where a
| system-wide widget on the screen displays the menu items (also
| known as "actions" in Qt) for all applications_ I 've tried
| "actions" in Qt and is not at all the same feel.
|
| A positional "sane" mapping of keys. I swap left ctrl and left
| alt in Linux. Alt on a PC keyboard is positioned where the
| Command Key would be. I install AutoKey to map all of the Alt
| keys to Ctrl keys in the Terminal: this is so my left Alt+c
| (Ctrl+c) will Copy (Command C) by sending ctrl+shift+c, and my
| left Ctrl+c (Alt+c) will send ctrl+c (break) to the Terminal.
|
| As far as I can tell, textbox navigation keys, like Home and End
| "PC" behaviour, are hard-coded in X11. Command ( + Shift) + arrow
| keys navigation in a textbox does not work as I expect, and
| cannot be configurated, I would need to modify the X11 source
| code and build from scratch.
| peterburkimsher wrote:
| I tried to install Hello, and set up a live USB. The GUI was nice
| enough to satisfy me.
|
| The problems started when I tried to install it. The installer
| assumes that I want to erase the entire drive.
|
| How can an alternative OS expect to be given first-class
| ownership of the internal drive? It's so... prideful. Many Linux
| users dual-boot, as do some macOS users on x86.
|
| After trying FreeBSD and NomadBSD, in the end I got GhostBSD
| working. The trackpad works, but sensitivity is way off.
|
| It was a fun experiment, and I like the attempts at making a
| prettier GUI, but this won't be my daily driver.
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