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#+title: Serenity OS: Testing Out a Unique System
#+date: 2022-09-17
#+description: A quick look at the Serenity operating system.
#+filetags: :dev:
* Overview
[[https://serenityos.org][SerenityOS]] 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:
#+begin_quote
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.
#+end_quote
* 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:
#+begin_src sh
git clone https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity && cd serenity
#+end_src
** Build
Note that I followed the
[[https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/master/Documentation/BuildInstructions.md][Build
Instructions]] 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:
#+begin_src 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
#+end_src
Next, make sure you're inside the =serenity= directory created earlier
during the git cloning process and process to build the toolchain:
#+begin_src sh
Meta/serenity.sh rebuild-toolchain
#+end_src
Once the toolchain is built, you can Build and run the OS!
#+begin_src sh
Meta/serenity.sh run
#+end_src
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:
#+caption: SerenityOS Terminal
[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20220917-serenityos/initial_launch.png]]
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.
#+caption: SerenityOS Fire
[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20220917-serenityos/basic_apps.png]]
I also poked around the system utilities and found most tools you'd
expect to find within a standard desktop.
#+caption: SerenityOS System Monitor
[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20220917-serenityos/system_monitor.png]]
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.
#+caption: SerenityOS Themes
[[https://img.cleberg.net/blog/20220917-serenityos/themes.png]]
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.
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