What an astounding achievement. In 6 years, this person has written not only a very well-designed microkernel, but a build system, UEFI bootloader, graphical shell, UI framework, and a browser engine.
The story of 10x developers among us is not a myth... if anything, it's understated.
monax · 3h ago
Didn’t expect to see my project on the main page today ‘^^
Right now the build is broken, so you can’t test the full OS, but you can run individual apps with:
```bash
./skift.sh run --release <app-name>
```
on Linux or macOS.
To see all available apps:
```bash
ls ./src/apps
```
monax · 3h ago
This works for everything except the browser. For that, use:
```bash
./skift.sh run --release vaev-browser -- <url-or-file>
```
The HTTP stack is super barebones, so it only supports `http://` (no HTTPS). It works with my site, but results may vary elsewhere.
Most of my time so far has gone into the styling and layout engine rather than networking.
pjmlp · 3h ago
Kudos for exploring other avenues outside UNIX.
monax · 3h ago
Thanks! Skift is basically a patchwork of all the OS ideas I like. The UI takes inspiration from SwiftUI/Flutter, the microkernel is influenced by Zircon, and there are some Plan 9 ideas where everything is a URL. A few bits are probably inspired by NT and Darwin too, though I don’t remember exactly which.
keyle · 12m ago
Sounds like really solid ideas. You must have a lot of experience to inspire yourself from so many diverse niche worlds. GL!
DeathArrow · 2h ago
How much time did it take you to get the project to this phase?
monax · 2h ago
I had multiple rewrites, but this last iteration is two years old
rubymamis · 43m ago
The code is really well written - very understandable and modern, kudos on that!
I'm curious, how come the app I just compiled works on macOS?
pkphilip · 4h ago
This looks really cool! congratulations to the person who made this! Is there a video demo of this somewhere?
I am amazed that you also managed to write a browser engine!
Panzerschrek · 3h ago
What else does it have rather than beautiful UI? Network support? Sound? What file systems does it support? What about multiple users? What about applications isolation?
It would be nice to have such information displayed somewhere on the site.
monax · 3h ago
It’s a microkernel-based operating system. Mostly just a learning/fun side project for me. It implements something akin to the NixOS /store. Hardware, networking, sound, and the file system are all very barebones. Most of the work so far has been put into the framework, some example apps, and the browser.
brodo · 42m ago
Very impressive! Do you support GPUs or is the UI completely CPU rendered? It looks really beautiful.
spuz · 1h ago
What ideas do you employ around security? Do apps have full access to memory? To hardware? Is there a permissions system? Sorry I'm not that familiar with how microkernels work.
monax · 1h ago
Apps don’t get full access to memory or hardware. The kernel only maps what they’re allowed to see. Drivers live in user space, and apps talk to them through capabilities (handles you can pass around). There’s no ambient authority, you only get access if you’ve been given the key.
spuz · 18m ago
Interesting. Thanks.
binocry · 2h ago
damn this is really good. I hope the register folk sees this.
The story of 10x developers among us is not a myth... if anything, it's understated.
```bash ./skift.sh run --release <app-name> ```
on Linux or macOS.
To see all available apps:
```bash ls ./src/apps ```
```bash ./skift.sh run --release vaev-browser -- <url-or-file> ```
The HTTP stack is super barebones, so it only supports `http://` (no HTTPS). It works with my site, but results may vary elsewhere.
Most of my time so far has gone into the styling and layout engine rather than networking.
I'm curious, how come the app I just compiled works on macOS?
I am amazed that you also managed to write a browser engine!
It would be nice to have such information displayed somewhere on the site.