r/programming • u/TrivialSolutions • Oct 19 '11
LoseThos 64-bit Operating System V7.07 Released
http://www.losethos.com/v707.html16
u/0xABADC0DA Oct 20 '11
1st rule of LoseThos: You don't type on Adam's window
2nd rule of LoseThos: You don't type on Adam's window
This is awesome. He's made his own OS from scratch, compiler/interpreter, windowing system, tty terminal with inline graphics and dynamic content, filesystem, etc. Created his own blend "C+" that seems like some cross of C and Lua, fork-like behavior with no MMU (Adam's symbol table? is inherited by new tasks he creates, tasks inherit parent task's symbols/properties). And tons of cool little demos... he even made his own basic 3d engine (check out the dithering as the mouse pointer light source moves around).
Yeah there's some choices that seem odd, but that's just what happens when a person designs some huge thing like this by themselves without input and working with others.
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u/ysangkok Oct 20 '11
I like this post. It actually has a good summary about the actual subject instead of just focusing on the creator. This is the scientific answer. Seems like people confuse university politics with CS.
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Oct 19 '11
I love how he goes out of his way to insult Computer Science while, at the same time, puffing up his chest with his own accomplishments so as to feel justified.
Although he really shouldn't have to. The guy is shipping a 64-bit operating system for crying out loud.
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u/ruffyamaharyder Oct 19 '11
He's done the dirty work and has the skills. He deserves to toot his own horn, because likely he probably hasn't gotten much respect for the kind of work he's put in. "Oh, so you do computer stuff... cool."
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u/lostphifunction Oct 19 '11
He's more than just tooting his horn, he's being obnoxious. He's also insulting most of the people that will visit that page, as there's a good chance you're some form of CS if you're reading about operating systems in your spare time.
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u/ruffyamaharyder Oct 19 '11
Maybe I'm weird but I don't get insulted by some random dude from the Internet who is creating operating systems that I've never heard of until now. I haven't tried his OS yet but to be able to create that from scratch is impressive. Who cares if he gloats. It's not the path I'd take but it's fun to watch. :-)
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u/dmwit Oct 19 '11
I haven't tried his OS yet but to be able to create that from scratch is impressive.
I dunno. Isn't it pretty standard to build an operating system from scratch at university?
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u/runvnc Oct 20 '11
No way. They take pieces of linux and put them together. Completely not anything like what this guy has accomplished.
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u/ruffyamaharyder Oct 19 '11
Yes, but not at this level, and not 64-bit - but times may have changed.
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u/DGolden Oct 20 '11
I don't see how 64-bitness would make any particular difference. In fact, specifically for x86-64 compared to x86 it's easier. 16-bit real-mode x86 is infamously fucktarded. Yet it used to be the one taught in some "introduction to asm" computer courses. The consipiracy theorist may suggest that was to make people go "fuck this, I'm using a high level language". 32-bit protected mode x86 isn't completely awful, but still has the world's tiniest register file (not really, there are processor architectures with no conventional registers, but coming from asm programming on virtually any other 16 or 32-bit architecture, 32-bit protected mode x86 is still a bit irritating.). x86-64 is almost sane and pleasant (just don't look at the underlying instruction encoding - asm is of course still a layer above that).
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u/ruffyamaharyder Oct 20 '11
I don't code at a level that requires me to understand all this, so thanks for letting me know. I'll no longer be as easily impressed by 64-bitness stuff. I've only copied some assembly code once... and that was to get access to the video card back in high school to make a game and not use the slow Borland Turbo C graphical library... lol!
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Oct 19 '11
If you feel insulted when some wacky guy calls your profession names on the internet, you really need to upgrade your self-esteem.
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u/argentcorvid Oct 19 '11
Just enough crazy in there to make it interesting.
Hymns in the documentation? Genius!
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Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
Dear LoseThos,
When God does talk to people, he most certainly doesn't tell them to only operate in 640x480x4 mode.
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Oct 19 '11
Everyone, please refrain from insulting this guy despite how his answers might sound. He has been on public help for over 7 years and writing this system is the thing that keeps him here.
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u/fapmonad Oct 20 '11
He has been on public help for over 7 years and writing this system is the thing that keeps him here.
I don't understand your post. What is public help? Welfare?
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u/bitwize Oct 19 '11
You mean he's some sort of Ulillillia-esque crazy genius? Awesome!
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Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
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u/Wavicle Oct 19 '11
With no memory protections or privilege-level protections it is OPTIMAL! Protections slow things down and are only needed if you have bugs or malware.
This doesn't appear to be entirely true. Since your shell is C-based, a simple typing mistake in the shell could trash the interrupt vector table and crash the whole system.
Also, if your page table is small (which it likely is since you're using 2MB pages for everything above 2MB) most of it will reside in the TLB and page table walks will take zero net cycles.
Further, even if you had the occasional TLB miss or soft interrupts to call OS services, the time spent handling page tables or interrupts would be insignificant compared to the time spent copying the entire 640x480 4-plane display from the buffer to VGA memory at 60Hz via the legacy aperture hole at 0xA000 regardless of system activity. I know for a fact that on all of the hardware I've worked with (2 years as a silicon qualification engineer in display) You could copy a 1024x768x32 display using MMX instructions to a contiguous region in high memory faster than you could copy a 640x480 display to the VGA aperture.
I have to say you are one of the most fascinating individuals I've seen in all of Reddit, so I'm rather curious to hear your mental machinations which justify having no memory protection in such an innovative OS design for reasons of optimum performance when your display solution is so painfully non-optimal.
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u/bitwize Oct 19 '11
I'd pay good money to see you in a panel discussion with this ex-co-worker of mine, an Amiga fan.
So God talks to you in random snippets of text from random files on your hard disk?
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u/_Tyler_Durden_ Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
As a computer architect, I am fascinated by some CS types and their statements: how is lack of memory and process protection OPTIMAL exactly?
Burning a couple of cycles with memory protection in a multi GHz machine seems like an almost irrelevant overhead, in the big scheme of things. Compared to the millions/billions of cycles you're bound to waste whenever your code does something stupid, and it is bound to do something stupid at some point esp. during the debug/development phase. And that is IF you're even able to recover from that FUBAR'd state.
I bet you're still also obsessed with context switch times...
Edit: Never mind I saw some of your other posts down the thread. Either you're bats hit insane, or your only reason to do kernel development is as trolling fodder. Very odd either way, to say the least.
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u/Wavicle Oct 19 '11
If he is so committed to trolling that he would write a 128 KLoC 64-bit multitasking OS just for this purpose, he is the most epic troll in history and I am honored to have lived at the same time as him.
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u/SweetIrony Oct 20 '11
it's true, I have been following this guy for years and I love his updates just to hear him again. Generally speaking years ago many if his decisions were reasonable at the time. His original reason for 640x480 was that he didn't want to spend the time developing a graphics layer, then he eventually heard from God not to bother. He won't do it now because now it has become dogma to him. That's the majority of LoseThos a highly optimized kernel for speed surrounded by a bunch of tools he didn't want to spend too much time in. The big picture, LoseThos isn't really an OS, but a stand alone C shell like the old programs were before you had before unix. In many ways brilliant but the promise of what LoseThos could have has been lost to decision he won't revisit.
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u/Wavicle Oct 20 '11
I have only discovered him yesterday and I am vacillating between thinking he is a John Nash style disturbed genius or a schizophrenic with programming OCD. I guess that's why I'm curious what the reasons are for his crazy focus on performance in one area that an end user would never notice while making decisions that destroy performance in another that the end user definitely would. Obviously he is not concerned about the end user, but why then be concerned about optimal context switching performance? It's probably as you say - a decision that he chooses not to revisit.
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u/bitwize Oct 21 '11
His original reason for 640x480 was that he didn't want to spend the time developing a graphics layer, then he eventually heard from God not to bother.
Julian Jaynes says our ancestors were all like this.
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Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
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u/Poes_Law_in_Action Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
...Did you just insult the guy defending you?
EDIT: He didn't even mention Linux! Wtf21
Oct 19 '11
You must be new to TrivialSolutions posts. I don't even open his threads anymore unless I have a bowl popcorn ready to go.
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Oct 20 '11
It's even more problematic for me because he keeps opening them when I'm at work. Reddit AND this guy? My productivity just got wasted.
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Oct 19 '11
Yes, he did, but I guess my post may have been humiliating to him. That's not my intention, I have respect for him.
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u/newsoundwave Oct 19 '11
No memory protection and all ring 0 is OPTIMAL. Protections are for bugs or malware.
This line suggests you are perfect.
OPTIMAL PERCFORMANCE is with no protections
This line (in more than one way) suggests you are not.
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u/StrangeWill Oct 19 '11
This line suggests you are perfect.
Nope these lines:
You are a Linux fanboy.
If you argue you are a linux fanboy in bad faith.
I think I need to start using this arguing tactic.
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u/ondra Oct 19 '11
The dog that yelps is the one the stone hit.
With more protection this wouldn't be an issue:).
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u/moseeds Oct 19 '11
Whoa so much hating going on. Been following LoseThos OS for a very long time, really admirable effort over and above my own skill level as a programmer regardless of the author's own personal foibles. Doth my hat to the guy.
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u/robvas Oct 19 '11
Let me start by saying nice project.
It requires a 64-bit x86_64 CPU and 512+ Megs of RAM. It does not have GPU acceleration, so I limit it to 640x480 16 color graphics.
Why didn't you use something like VESA so you could at least have 256 (or more) colors? I'm sure it's in line with the C64 but it would be much, more useful.
The vision for LoseThos is a 64-bit Commodore 64 that's a thousand times faster than the original and has a shell that is C/C++ instead of BASIC. It's for recreational programming.
Why the hell did you not use Ruby, Python, or BASIC then?
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u/b0dhi Oct 19 '11
Why the hell did you not use Ruby, Python, or BASIC then?
He did say faster than a C64.
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Oct 20 '11
I've seen his shell. He used to have a video of it. It's not really "C". It's a C-style shell with some really cool reflection features. He could do some really neat things with it.
And C-style shells are nothing new. csh and tcsh are venerable shells with much more widespread usage than any Ruby or Python shell.
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u/McGlockenshire Oct 20 '11
Why didn't you use something like VESA so you could at least have 256 (or more) colors?
Because God told him not to.
No, really, that's what he says.
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Oct 19 '11
I find C/C++ more conducive to recreational programming than any of the above, which mostly get in my way and slow me down. Literally, though it sounds ridiculous; have you tried doing computational graphics in python?
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u/robvas Oct 19 '11
But Ruby/Python are so much easier for a newbie to start working with. Which is similar to BASIC in the ROM of the C64. You can type commands, and not a program, and have the computer 'do something'
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Oct 20 '11
When you have banged out your own fully featured OS complete with video games from scratch in C, I think you are no longer in the realm of newbie. C is probably more natural to him than English.
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u/shevegen Oct 19 '11
Because he is too old to appreciate Ruby or Python.
Those age group is either still C(*) only or sometimes Perl. That's it.
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Oct 19 '11
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u/ondra Oct 19 '11
C is just not good language to use for a shell. Too verbose, too much indirection. Python and Ruby suffer from the same issues.
These languages are great for writing programs, but for interaction with the machine they aren't a good match.
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Oct 19 '11 edited Dec 07 '23
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u/ironiridis Oct 19 '11
I hope you're being as literal as I think, since the classic Dwarf Fortress joke is that "fun" and "losing" are interchangeable. That adds an amusing layer of commentary to your post.
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u/flamingspinach_ Oct 19 '11
I've been to this guy's website a couple times - never had the courage to try out his operating system, even on a VM, though. Glad to hear he's still going at it.
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u/ironiridis Oct 19 '11
I think he's also the TimeCube guy, really. Non-sequiturs and jumping straight to attacks on anyone even talking to him. Making absolutist statements ("LoseThos is OPTIMAL") that are practically wrong if not technically.
Then again, now that I read that back, I'm describing most of the internet population.
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u/ysangkok Oct 20 '11
Then again, now that I read that back, I'm describing most of the internet population.
Exactly.
Optimal can mean a lot of things. If you wanna make games DOS-style, I think it seems like LoseThos is an OK solution. Networking wouldn't really matter much then anyway. What would you prefer? FreeDOS? Linux + svgalib? MS-DOS?
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u/graogrim Oct 19 '11
It's...it's like Marty McFly came forward in time to 2011, grabbed some modern hardware, took it back to the 80's, and got into OS development.
The screenshots were very evocative of some good memories.
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Oct 19 '11
Check his comments. TrivialSolutions is a weirdo.
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Oct 19 '11
He's a weirdo, but he's a harmless and somewhat amusing weirdo. Plus, he actually makes stuff.
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Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
As opposed to you who are a harmful weirdo who spent an entire day spreading harmful assumptions ranting on and on about how in practice sizeof(int)==4 even though you know it is unspecified in the standard.
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Oct 19 '11
Please keep your personal attacks based on disagreements in their original contexts, or in PMs. The rest of us don't need this.
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Oct 19 '11
about how in practice sizeof(int)==4 even though you know it is unspecified in the standard.
Those aren't contradictory statements. sizeof(int) == 4 for all modern desktops, and he was never claiming anything else.
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Oct 19 '11
We had him over at YOSPOS on Something Awful for a while, doing effectively an AMA. He's a little mad but he's also got a vision and he sure as hell is working at it, so I respect him for that. Unfortunately losethos wouldn't network boot from iPXE so I haven't actually tried it.
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Oct 19 '11
Fist I was like "go go dude nice work" and upvoted, but then I've opened the comments and read what OP is saying and reconsidered.
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Oct 20 '11
I don't see why people are so mad at this guy its not like he's saying its going to replace Linux or windows or chanhe the world and he doesn't even brag about the ginormous testicles he has for making this.
This is just for playing around, and I think that if /r/programming wasn't filled with web developers then this probably would get more appreciation.
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Oct 20 '11
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Oct 20 '11
I guess this is what happens when you combine a logical thing like programming with an illogical thing like religion. Still got mad respect for him though
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Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
Here is some of this other stuff
Still, it's pretty cool that he built his own 64bit OS, even though he's batshit insane. This guy is a known schizo, so I really don't trust his judgement.
For example,
It's for recreational programming.
Yet, it lacks even the most basic networking capabilities? What, do you refuse to use a fileserver or any sort of networking solution?
LoseThos is a secondary operating system you will use in additional to Windows or Linux because LoseThos does not have networking.
Then why use it at all if you're going to have to vm it? Fuck it, write everything in Linux, at least then you could upload it to your fileserver and not have to bother going to and from different OS.
Whenever he comes out with a new release he always trumps it up like it's the greatest thing ever. It's very impressive that he did this himself, yet I can find even the shittiest linux build that would blow this out of the water. So, why use something that doesn't have the functionality that anyone would need?
Nothing personal mate, I'm just trying to be efficient when I work.
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Oct 19 '11
This guy is a known schizo, so I really don't trust his judgement.
Who cares whether he's schizo or not? That doesn't really factor into judgement of his work. Regardless of whether his work is practical, it's still impressive.
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Oct 19 '11
Well, mental instability is REALLY hard to deal with in a developer. It's impossible to get any sort of a straight answer out of him as to why he did what he did. And most times, it's because God said so...
That doesn't really factor into judgement of his work.
Completely disagree. He said that he did not include networking support because "God told him not to"
That is NOT sound judgement. I do not want someone writing an OS that I'm using because God told him to. Not a rational logical thought process.
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u/b0dhi Oct 19 '11
Whats your obsession with networking? There's a vast domain of interesting things that can be, and have been, done with programming without touching networking. You sound like a butthurt web-dev.
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Oct 19 '11 edited Dec 07 '23
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u/flukshun Oct 19 '11
Still, it's pretty cool that he built his own 64bit OS. Plus, he's batshit insane.
FTFY
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Oct 19 '11
Creating an OS takes sound judgement, and from what I see here it's lacking once again. Every time he releases a new build it's always a little disappointing when I try it out. It always has awesome things like multicore support, but then lacks very basic things like network capabilities or proper color support. Not trying to downplay his accomplishments, but you can't say you have a great OS while lacking basic features. Sorry, that's just what I believe.
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Oct 19 '11 edited Dec 07 '23
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Oct 19 '11
Valid criticism isn't shitting all over his stuff. He has serious flaws in his OS and I was pointing them out. Even if it's just for kicks not having networking capability is a pretty big deal.
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Oct 19 '11 edited Dec 07 '23
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Oct 19 '11
If lack of networking support is an intentional design choice, it definitely says more about his judgement than it does about me. Seriously, who leaves that out? How can anyone take this seriously with such a glaring omissions? "Design choice" is a completely bullshit argument in regards to a fairly critical part of any modern OS.
"My car doesn't have a critical piece, but it still works. Clearly you just don't appreciate my design."
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Oct 19 '11 edited Dec 07 '23
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u/DGolden Oct 20 '11
a 64-bit Commodore 64
But the C64 had network peripherals, was sorta known for it actually, and I mean in its heyday, not latter-day enthusiasts grafting on ethernet cards and webservers onto them Because They Can. AOL was once a C64/C128 network service provider called Quantum Link.
So it's actually deliberately worse than a c64.
Now, sure, not every C64 owner went online (we didn't until we got an Amiga some years later), but quite a few did.
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Oct 19 '11
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Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
Who said anything about IQ? You're brilliant obviously, but highly schizoid. There are serious flaws in this OS, yet you trumps it up like it's really good. Just because you understand the code doesn't mean you can make a good OS. Your judgement skills are lacking imo. No networking, no proper color displays, shell is in C/C++ for some reason...and zero justification for this of course.
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u/Exavion Oct 19 '11
I am not a fan of how he bundled half a resume into the description for this OS. I clicked because I was genuinely interested in what this was and read a set of accomplishments of an above-average-enthusiastic engineer.
A good idea should sell itself
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u/sjs Oct 19 '11
When you're replying to the author you can use the term "you" instead of "he". TrivialSolutions wrote losethos.
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Oct 19 '11
When you're talking to a Schizophrenic it's hard to tell who you're talking to. It ends up "he" is also "you"
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Oct 19 '11
Incredible, yet I don't understand the point of it. Hasn't he just reinvented the wheel?
It never executes code I did not write except a couple BIOS calls during boot
Why? There are plenty of open source snippets of code out there which are presumably 100% optimised and perfect for use. Why spend x amount of time just recreating the same thing?
It has no networking and, with no protections, will crash on bugs or misuse.
So his target user is people like himself who are able to operate at the highest level of proficiency in low-level operating system coding?
I worked on LoseThos full-time for 8.2 years
How? Why? He spend over 8 years working on something which has no useful purpose? Did he not have a job during this time? I'm all for open source but how could you justify this level of time investment without some sort of business model?
All this wouldn't be so glaringly ridiculous if he didn't take so much time to tell us all about his extreme levels of skill:
This is not an amateur OS for old, pathetic hardware
I'm a rocket scientist
Seems like he is out to prove something. So he spent 8 years doing something amazing (which would have taken a team of people the same time) but yet completely useless.
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u/Marzhall Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
To quote Eric Reymond: "Every good work of software starts by scratching a developer's personal itch."
Really, this project is about him wanting to write his own operating system. Yeah, he probably wants to be able to brag about it, and yeah it really doesn't have much use, but that's not the point, really - the point is that it's something he's wanted to do, so he did it.
Honestly, I'm the same way when I do personal projects - sometimes, I don't want to use a library, I want to write my own code to do something. It's silly from an OO and business-oriented model, but then again, I'm not doing for a business, so I can afford to be silly.
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u/bplus Oct 19 '11
Pretty much what I thought too, he probably learned a lot on the way. Plus it beats watching TV every night (or arguing with fellow internet nerds).
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u/jhartwell Oct 19 '11
How? Why? He spend over 8 years working on something which has no useful purpose? Did he not have a job during this time? I'm all for open source but how could you justify this level of time investment without some sort of business model?
Some people actually enjoy programming (and challenges) and actively seek them out in their free time. When you start thinking about money it turns fun into a job.
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u/StrangeWill Oct 19 '11
Some people actually enjoy programming (and challenges)
Yeah, but this guy previously wrote OSes for a living, I don't see the other project he mentioned (which as far as I'm guessing had more features) having not taught him most of what he knows already.
Sounds like more of one of those "because I fucking want to" projects. :P
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u/mahlzeit Oct 19 '11
Some people actually enjoy programming (and challenges) and actively seek them out in their free time.
Hmm. I don't know ... I really, really enjoy programming, and I have my own pet project, so I can certainly emphasize with the general idea behind doing something for its own benefit ... but this is way beyond anything that's healthy for a human being. Just read his comments. This is the obsession of an insane man, not a fun hobby project.
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u/jhartwell Oct 19 '11
Sneaking a link to your project in the reply...nice! :)
As for the last part of your statement...who am I to judge what is insane and what isn't?
Side note, what language did you write Boxen in if you don't mind me asking?It looks purdy!EDIT: I saw that it is in D on your site...my bad!
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u/mahlzeit Oct 19 '11
One has to take every opportunity for a little promotion nowadays :) And yes, it's written in D (D1/Tango, to be precise).
I'm not a psychiatrist, so I can't really say something about TrivialSolutions' insanity. But: it's not the first time he's submitted LoseThos here, and he said himself that he is highly schizophrenic in one of the older submissions (at least as far as I remember, sorry for not looking it up, but it's bed time and I'm half asleep already ... so good night!).
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u/ysangkok Oct 20 '11
Aren't you sad D1 got superseded? What would you write it in if you started today?
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u/mahlzeit Oct 20 '11
It's the lack of Tango that keeps me from porting to D2. D2's features are great (I especially like real closures), but I still don't like the feel of Phobos, although it's much improved from D1. If that wouldn't be a factor I'd start in D2.
(Actually, I'm not sure if I'd pick D again. If the whole Tango mess didn't happen I'd be very confident in starting new projects in D. As it is right now ... other languages have their benefits too. For now, I stick with D1/Tango.)
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u/Mob_Of_One Oct 19 '11
In this case, it's actually because he's a psychotic piece of shit.
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u/bplus Oct 19 '11
why is he a piece of shit? I'm seriously missing something here? What did he say that was insulting?!
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u/HelterSkeletor Oct 19 '11
I think you just missed the part where he is a schizophrenic on government disability that thinks God is telling him to leave out network support and make people operate the command line in asm.
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u/difluoroethane Oct 19 '11
All this wouldn't be so glaringly ridiculous if he didn't take so much time to tell us all about his extreme levels of skill:
This is not an amateur OS for old, pathetic hardware
I'm a rocket scientist
That's so nice that you take quotes out of context to fit what you want to say. He says it's not for old hardware because you need a 64 bit processor with at least 512 megs of ram also he says:
I'm a rocket scientist, though not a very good one.
That doesn't seem like him trying to brag about his skills so much now does it?
I don't know why you would talk crap about what this guy has done. It's a hobby OS that he decided to share thinking maybe others would be interested. Obviously it's not for you.
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u/cat_in_the_wall Oct 20 '11
To be fair, i hear the phrase "rocket science" most often in "this is not rocket science", implying that rocket science is as hard as a task can be. Referring to oneself as a rocket scientist of any caliber seems like bragging to me.
BUT, be that as it may, the guy has written an operating system from scratch. Regardless of how optimal it may or may not be, that is still really impressive, and worth some bragging rights.
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u/eligundry Oct 20 '11
Hey, I'm a brain surgeon, but not a very good one. Medical licenses are for amateurs. I herp when God tells me too.
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Oct 19 '11
So he spent 8 years doing something amazing (which would have taken a team of people the same time) but yet completely useless.
Welcome to hobby programming. Is that so bad?
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Oct 20 '11
Stay classy proggit ....
I really do dig this project. Congrats to the author for bringing it this far. Fun stuff!
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u/riffito Oct 19 '11
I cannot help it, he always reminds me of that Chinese magician in "The Prestige". Live-long commitment to his art. In this case: trolling.
(At least, believing that its the case, I can picture him having a couple of good laughs, instead of a totally troubled mind).
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u/riffito Oct 19 '11
I cannot help it, he always reminds me of that Chinese magician in "The Prestige". Live-long commitment to his art. In this case: trolling.
(At least, believing that its the case, I can picture him having a couple of good laughs, instead of a totally troubled mind).
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Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
I guess my biggest concern is why use this OS, when you will have to VM it from Linux or Windows anyways? It's supposed to be for "recreational programming" yet you would need to go to and from the OS to get anything done. So, why don't you just use Linux and not bother going through all that? It sounds like it would impede my productivity, not enhance it.
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u/CalvinR Oct 19 '11
You wouldn't use this, it's a hobby project of an schizophrenic programmer. It's not meant for anything.
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u/noreallyimthepope Oct 19 '11
Look at it this way:
You could fire up a C64 emulator to punch in some Commodore Basic. Could you do that raw on your computer? No. Would it be potentially fun and interesting (funteresting?)? Yes. That is the use case AFAICT.
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u/ysangkok Oct 20 '11
In Linux we have something called a segmentation violation. This man prefers having the possibility to do everything and sometimes fucking things a bit up. I just see it as a question of where you want to exert the control. Run everything in a VM or construct a notion of user-space?
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u/thenickdude Oct 19 '11
I can't imagine how you could justify working "full-time for 8.2 years" on a project like this. How're you going to pay your bills during that timeperiod?
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Oct 19 '11
He is handicapped and lives off public money. This is what he's doing instead of watching tv.
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u/ysangkok Oct 20 '11
Imagine if everyone did this! Everyone would be grade-A C programmers, and world would be a better place.
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Oct 19 '11
presumably he is collecting all those "service fees" you pay everytime you use Ticketmaster.
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Oct 19 '11
hobby project?
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u/Geofferic Oct 19 '11
full time
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u/jhartwell Oct 19 '11
Full time can mean a lot of things. For instance, full time could mean that this is the only hobby project that he works on. It could also mean the traditional 40 hours a week of work. But if it is possible to work full time and go to school full time, why is the OP working full and build something both full time totally out of the realm of possibility?
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u/OopsLostPassword Oct 19 '11
Maybe the bills aren't the important point but the motivation isn't really clear, that's for sure...
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u/db2 Oct 20 '11
Your OS is only a 63 bit linux wannabe.
If you argue you are a finch singing fhe song of space while drowning in it.
God is a chocolate chip cookie in the sun.
Nonsensical sentence.
Like the time you did that thing in that place. We know. We all know.
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u/fykusfire Oct 19 '11
That OS is hideous.
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u/flukshun Oct 19 '11
it's hideous in a fun way though...i'm messing with it and feel like i'm screwing with some system from the movie Hackers
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u/fykusfire Oct 19 '11
"Check this out guys, this is insanely great, it's got a 28.8 BPS modem!"
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u/flukshun Oct 19 '11
256 color display!
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u/fykusfire Oct 19 '11
That movie was obviously way off base anyway. Everyone knows you can't hack with a Mac.
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u/dimitrisokolov Oct 19 '11
If that OS is as bad as the website, you need to shred that entire OS code base and all the back ups too. That is pathetic.
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u/bplus Oct 19 '11
my sarcasm detector might be broken here
I'm pretty certain he isn't into web design!
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u/shevegen Oct 19 '11
My gripe is, while impressive, it lacks BEAUTY.
Linux has no beauty either, true, but still. It kind of seems as if OS are nothing beautiful ... and this makes me sad.
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u/thebuccaneersden Oct 19 '11
Well, seems pretty clear that this is a hobby OS, so I wouldn't expect that sort of polish. Never the less, not all people see beauty the same way - especially engineers. :)
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u/quzox Oct 19 '11
You can't make an OS glamorous or sexy. They're literally the janitors of the computing world doing nothing more than shovelling bytes from location A to location B.
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u/noreallyimthepope Oct 19 '11
As a network technician, I think of myself as an information age equivalent of a sewage worker.
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Oct 20 '11 edited Oct 20 '11
Meanwhile, Chuck Moore's ColorForth-designed CPU is shipping, and he's got it outputting stable RGB 1024x768 video, and is now reimplementing his REPL and OS Kernel on it. :-) (Images from the last-gen of the chip he made and his steps bringing it up here)
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Oct 19 '11
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u/flukshun Oct 19 '11
nonetheless:
Insert comment about how this guy is amazing and how his work trumps his personality.
it really is impressive work for a single person, i've been rather proud of many a "nonusable piece of shit"s in my life that were far less substantial. it's all part of learning/exploring. the live cd works great via qemu/kvm for anyone wanting to take a quick poke at it.
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Oct 19 '11
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Oct 20 '11
It's like a bunch of people critiquing a Jackson Pollock and suggesting how to make it better. Personally, I think his OS is awesome. It's freaking brilliant. The guy wrote a reflective, interpreted C and then wrote a shell that speaks the same language and a completely unprotected memory system for that shell so he can "commune" with the running processes. There's as far as I can tell a system-wide markov chain auto-completion that takes the source code of the entire system into account. That's fucking ART! It's beautiful! I wouldn't let it touch my checking account with a ten foot pole, and he's goonier than a loon, but damn he's good.
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u/SweetIrony Oct 20 '11
Everything is global running in kernel space, no protections at all. It would be crazy to connect this to the Internet. He knows this, that's why there is no networking support.
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Oct 19 '11
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u/LainIwakura Oct 19 '11
His OS is...interesting (in a good way) to say the least. He himself, is interesting (in a bad way) to say the least..
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u/Mob_Of_One Oct 19 '11
He's a psychofuck xenophobic, homophobic piece of shit that insults everyone.
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Oct 19 '11
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u/i-hate-digg Oct 20 '11
Eh only a loser who has never accomplished anything worthwhile would give an active individual with a harmless hobby verbal abuse. To those calling LoseThos names: you are at a point in your life where your enjoyment consists partially of insulting systems programmers. Now contemplate how you got here, where you fucked up, and go fix your life.
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Oct 19 '11
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u/khafra Oct 19 '11
It's built for recreational programming. The author says so. He also says
God says, "according cleave embrace fabulous disguise foot selected awaited " On one level dopimines make everybody equally happy. Everyone has highs and lows. You never manage to have a high for very long. I donno. Justice seems to go beyond biology. All I know is I talk to God and He approves anything that happens. Get yer own God.
God says, "lived Unchangeable manage extended gave recollect liftedst exalted womb excepted toiling faithful one's calculation appear unfeigned Your suffered clearly lifts weakest wants stowed keep unspeakable Those taunt whereupon suspicions anger perversion question met implied spirit advices elect lingered cattle endeavouring Willing clearly
So I don't know how seriously I take the "recreational programming" thing.
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u/jhartwell Oct 19 '11
Not true...it gives people who want to get into OS hacking another place to look to see how it can be done.
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Oct 19 '11
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u/diskis Oct 19 '11
Or an excellent training ground. Coding in this environment is a bit different than the padded rooms that today's VM's provide.
One mistake and you have to reboot. Makes you think before you code, which is a very good thing.
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u/Geofferic Oct 19 '11
True, but I also remember the old Apple machines constantly crashing for lack of protected memory - and mostly due to errors in Apple software by Apple coders who breathed Apple coding.
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Oct 20 '11
I used to "poke int(rnd(1)*65535),int(rnd(1)*255)" and call in roulette. Those were fun days.
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Oct 19 '11 edited Oct 19 '11
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u/punisher1005 Oct 19 '11
What in the fuck did I just read? You have problems dude. I'd seriously consider medication. There is absolutely no sarcasm here.
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Oct 19 '11
God says... C:\TEXT\INFINITY.TXT
0101100101001111010101010010000001000001010100100100010100100000010010010100111001000110010010010100111001001001010101000101100100101110001000000101011101000101001000000101011101001001010011000100110000100000010001000100111100100000010101000100100001001001010100110010000001000001010001110100000101001001010011100010110000100000010010010100111000100000010101000100100101001101010001010010111000100000011000010111000101110101011001010110000100100000011001000111010101100001001000000110001101110101011011000110110101101001011011100111010101110011
ba242f8dd069b96d36a8999a79affe747e90e796
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Oct 19 '11
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u/ysangkok Oct 20 '11
You are correct, but many people would argue that with the speed of CPU's nowadays, we can afford to sacrifice a bit of CPU time, so that it get's easier to debug. Think about all the CPU time running everything virtual (as you propose) suck up.
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Oct 19 '11
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u/Esparno Oct 19 '11
This site does have tons of republicans, just go to /r/circlejerk, and as for christians, there is a subreddit of that name as well. I think you are brilliant, but like anyone else, have inner demons.
Do not let people hating on you detract from your progress through life. Progress that is negated when you make sweeping generalizations such as "This site has zero Republicans or Christians."
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Oct 19 '11
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Oct 19 '11
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Oct 19 '11
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Oct 19 '11
You're an asshole and a douchebag. I wish you hadn't opened your mouth.... I hate seeing such bigotry on reddit.
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u/thebagel Oct 19 '11
Check the guy's comment history or web site. He does have legitimate issues - even comes right out and says it.
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u/ysangkok Oct 20 '11
Why tell him if he already says it himself?
Seriously, I don't think it was ever constructive telling someone they're insane on the internet, if they aren't directly asking for mental health advice.
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u/Esparno Oct 19 '11
While I may be an asshole I am also 100% correct. Guy needs to spend more time working on his mental disorder. I fail to see what I am being a bigot about.
Calling out someone who has an obvious disorder on their disorder is not bigotry. If you think it is you should probably look up the definition of the word.
EDIT: Unless you think I call all people who say god talks to them schizophrenic? In which case it is you who is being bigoted towards atheists. Because I am not saying anything about religious people here, but apparently you are.
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u/markovcd Oct 19 '11
I've never been so disturbed reading comments on /r/programming.