Impressive, but.. start with how it should look, don't make that an afterthought.
Hobby operating systems have one thing in common, they all have a great logo but look like a late 90s linux desktop. Windows decoration and fonts look like they were hacked together last night.
Instead start with a visual design and work backwards. You'll get instant appreciation from your audience. Unless the aim is to basically get SSH working and compile a bunch of gnu tools for a basic shell, in which case knock yourself out but don't be surprised when everyone ignores your work.
This come across as snark but it's frustration at the wasted effort and that good work will go unnoticed.
Sorry, this comment blows my mind and it's important to me that you understand why.
Someone appears to have written an operating system from scratch. I've just spent 30 mins going through the commit history of it. This is an incredibly unique project undertaken by an incredibly skilled individual who's committed a huge amount of time to doing something 99.999% of even HN readers couldn't dream of doing.
I'm not saying it's perfect, there are things I don't like, and if I had the capability to do this, I would want it done differently (e.g. not windows only build). But I also recognise that this is the sort of project that requires a special kind of person and approach to make even start planning, let alone execute through to a functioning UI.
But you just rocked up, and essentially said "you should start from the UI first, it looks crap."
This is 100% snark to you: I think it's just plain rude and also just wrong of you to say virtually nothing other than how this is ugly and will go unnoticed as a result, simply because it doesn't do the thing that's important to you (e.g. look nice).
I should give you credit because you said "Impressive" at the start. That's all.
FWIW, I think it already looks better than a fair few Linux desktops I've seen, just my opinion as someone who doesn't know anything about design.
Lol, the devs agreed with me. They don't want it to get lost in the sea of toy operating systems either.
Right. A novel operating system would be a great opportunity to start without all the baggage of 70+ years of OS design, and create something for the modern world. But most projects seem to be stuck with the same metaphors we have had for ages.
There’s really an opportunity for innovation here.
The closest would be the modern Oberon environments, but I found them weird and unusable. If Win95/FVWM with virtual desktops work perfectly well, why the change?
FVWM had great working setups on their screenshoot page. This predates smartphones I'd guess:
https://www.fvwm.org/Archive/Screenshots/2011-04-15_Christin...
Well, for one thing, all desktop environments from the 90ies started from a metaphor for the things on a physical desk, sheets of paper shuffled around, and so on; that was perfectly sensible for a target group of previously computer-illiterates that needed concepts to grasp onto.
We’re in a different world now, but user interfaces are still stuck in the past, the same way railways are designed to accommodate for Roman carriages.
By starting to design without those guardrails in mind, we could arrive at something that isn’t the local maximum of 30 years ago. At least that is my hope; who knows until we try!
>Roman carriages
That's an urban legend.
>Stuck in the past
So are pencils, erasers, and pens. And they just work.
Win 95 was propietary, yes, but the design had top UI/UX.
Add virtual desktops on top of that among an 'always on top' toggle button and you'll have everything.
Team XENEVA agrees with you!
What we're currently working on is a totally revamped UI/UX with a modern design. We'd say that in a way, we're inspired by the design of the VisionOS. Then again, we're building something completely different from them but you can get an idea of the type of product that we're trying to build. Stay tuned for more and no, we would not let all the effort and work go into waste! We're working on this project and are committed to this full time!
Thank You, Team XENEVA.
Excellent, I think you took my comment in the spirit it was intended, nobody else did :) - aesthetics is a form of marketing but nobody outside your project is invested in your marketing in the same way you are. Good luck with the future!
I suspect you're underestimating how difficult good UI really is. There's a reason UX is a separate career than development - it's a completely different skill set. And I speak as someone who has to do both (industrial HMI design) and I am well aware that I do the latter poorly.
Desktop GUIs were already solved in the 90s. Just stick with what works. Modern GUIs make the mistake of trying to force one GUI onto all platforms, giving us antifeatures like hamburger menus and vanishing scrollbars. As a desktop user, I'd rather the designers stayed as far away from my software as possible.
Any new operating system will be frustrating for non-technical users. An older-looking UI serves the valuable purpose of filtering people who aren't the intended audience.
Ah yes, that's why Apple just had to rewrite iOS from scratch to change the theming in their latest release.
