SerenityOS is a free and open source desktop operating system that has been in continuous development since 2018. Initially the one-man project of

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

programmer Andreas Kling, SerenityOS is now developed by a community of hobbyists. The system supports the x86-64

instruction set In computer science, an instruction set architecture (ISA), also called computer architecture, is an abstract model of a computer. A device that executes instructions described by that ISA, such as a central processing unit (CPU), is called an ' ...

,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3PyN2Ctrpg features a preemptive kernel, and hosts multiple complex applications including its own web browser and integrated development environment (IDE).

History

Kling began developing the project in part to aid his recovery from addiction, and as such the name of the project derives from the

Serenity Prayer The Serenity Prayer is a prayer attributed to the American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) in 1943. However, Winnifred Crane Wygal wrote an early version in the Santa Cruz Sentinel of March 15, 1933, as noted in the above cited research ...

. As of 2021, Kling works full-time on SerenityOS, supported by community donations.

Features

SerenityOS aims to be a modern Unix-like operating system, with a look and feel that emulates 1990s operating systems such as

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and Mac OS. Incorporating third-party code into the system is discouraged. The web browser for instance, does not use a preexisting web engine such as WebKit, instead using its own known as LibWeb. There is a collection of ported software, such as GCC, Git and Doom, with varying levels of functionality. Development does not adhere to a

release cycle A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...

; as such, there are no releases. Additionally, no binary distributions are provided and prospects are expected to build the system from source. The system is written in what the authors call "Serenity C++", a variant of C++ that lacks exceptions and features its own

standard library In computer programming, a standard library is the library made available across implementations of a programming language. These libraries are conventionally described in programming language specifications; however, contents of a language's as ...

. The relative popularity of SerenityOS compared to other hobbyist systems is in part due to the modest success of Kling's YouTube channel, where he uploads videos of him developing parts of the system alongside demos and monthly progress updates.

Reception

Jim Salter of ''

Ars Technica ''Ars Technica'' is a website covering news and opinions in technology, science, politics, and society, created by Ken Fisher and Jon Stokes in 1998. It publishes news, reviews, and guides on issues such as computer hardware and software, sci ...

'' regarded the use of the ext2

file system In computing, file system or filesystem (often abbreviated to fs) is a method and data structure that the operating system uses to control how data is stored and retrieved. Without a file system, data placed in a storage medium would be one larg ...

as his least favorite feature of the operating system. Compared to

TempleOS TempleOS (formerly J Operating System, LoseThos, and SparrowOS) is a biblical-themed lightweight operating system (OS) designed to be the Third Temple prophesied in the Bible. It was created by American programmer Terry A. Davis, who developed ...

(another operating system well known in the hobbyist community), he considered it more accessible. For less technical users that are looking for a mid–to–late 90s reminiscent visual style, the Xfce Chicago95 theme or the Redmond Project has been recommended instead.

References

External links

Project Homepage

Source Repository
Hobbyist operating systems Unix variants Free software programmed in C++ Software using the BSD license 2018 software {{Operating-system-stub