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.
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:
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.
Maybe adding some Xerox PARC, Oberon, NeXTSTEP / NeWS style, Powershell ideas could also be interesting, on how the shell, UI, and dynamically loaded code (or OS IPC), makes the whole OS customizable, , just throwing another set of ideas into your bucket.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ```
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.
Kudos for exploring other avenues outside UNIX.
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.
Maybe adding some Xerox PARC, Oberon, NeXTSTEP / NeWS style, Powershell ideas could also be interesting, on how the shell, UI, and dynamically loaded code (or OS IPC), makes the whole OS customizable, , just throwing another set of ideas into your bucket.
Overall it looks interesting, all the best.
Sounds like really solid ideas. You must have a lot of experience to inspire yourself from so many diverse niche worlds. GL!
How much time did it take you to get the project to this phase?
I had multiple rewrites, but this last iteration is two years old
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?
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!
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.
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.
Very impressive! Do you support GPUs or is the UI completely CPU rendered? It looks really beautiful.
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.
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.
Interesting. Thanks.
damn this is really good. I hope the register folk sees this.
so cool! building from past 6 years (impressive)