1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
|
+++
date = 2022-09-17
title = "Serenity OS: Testing Out a Unique System"
description = "A quick look at the Serenity operating system."
+++
## Overview
[SerenityOS](https://serenityos.org) is a unique operating system (OS)
that I have seen pop up in my news feed a few times over the last few
years, but I have never had time to test it out until now.
Testing out this system brought back fond memories of yellowed,
modem-screeching, 100-pound computers that brought so many fond memories
to my youth.
Per their website:
> A graphical Unix-like operating system for desktop computers!
>
> SerenityOS is a love letter to '90s user interfaces with a custom
> Unix-like core. It flatters with sincerity by stealing beautiful ideas
> from various other systems.
>
> Roughly speaking, the goal is a marriage between the aesthetic of
> late-1990s productivity software and the power-user accessibility of
> late-2000s *nix.
>
> This is a system by us, for us, based on the things we like.
## Building
Your first question may be "Where's the iso?" and the answer is...
there are none. SerenityOS does not provide pre-built images for
testing. You must build the images yourself. This seems intentionally to
limit participation to only those who are truly interested enough to
learn how to build the OS.
### Clone
In order to get started, you'll need to clone the source repository:
```sh
git clone https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity && cd serenity
```
### Build
Note that I followed the [Build
Instructions](https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/master/Documentation/BuildInstructions.md)
in the SerenityOS repository as of commit
`660d2b53b1206e868d5470eee80b5e62d7e30da7`. Things may have
changed since my installation, and you should double-check the
instructions first.
Regardless, I want to repeat my steps here to illustrate any errors or
differing commands I needed to run in order to build and run SerenityOS.
Since I am running Fedora, I needed to install these packages in order
to build the OS images:
```sh
sudo dnf install texinfo binutils-devel curl cmake mpfr-devel libmpc-devel gmp-devel e2fsprogs ninja-build patch ccache rsync @"C Development Tools and Libraries" @Virtualization
```
Next, make sure you're inside the `serenity` directory
created earlier during the git cloning process and process to build the
toolchain:
```sh
Meta/serenity.sh rebuild-toolchain
```
Once the toolchain is built, you can Build and run the OS!
```sh
Meta/serenity.sh run
```
After this process is completed, the image should run automatically and
launch.
## Issues
I played around in SerenityOS for an hour or two in order to see what I
could do and had a lot of fun with it. The only issue I ran into was a
lack of working internet. I didn't try very hard, but I could tell that
the main network link wasn't connecting to my Fedora host properly.
## Screenshots
The initial launch of the image displays the SerenityOS desktop, with a
simple terminal already launched:
Here you can see the Fire application (literally just shows fire
burning), a browser with the local Serenity Browser page loaded, and a
text editor.
I also poked around the system utilities and found most tools you'd
expect to find within a standard desktop.
Lastly, I noted that the default desktop contains numerous pre-defined
themes to choose from. This is a small piece, but it's actually
wonderful to see desktop developers consider theming directly out of the
box rather than using an addon-based mentality.
I didn't take a screenshot of the other pre-installed games, but I did
spend nearly 30 minutes playing Solitaire before remembering that I was
supposed to be writing a post about the OS.
|
