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38 points by jeffscottward 12 years ago

p4bl0 12 years ago |

This is going nowhere. Apart from the author really liking JavaScript very much, and calling it Node for whatever reason, what is the point of building such an OS? I can see two: for learning, and for the fun, but neither of those requires a webpage that claim the OS exists.

Here is a JavaScript OS (but with actual source code), found it using Google but never heard of it before: https://github.com/charliesome/jsos.

EDIT: HN's URL parser is wrong, '>' can't be part of a URL. Anyway, removed the '<' and '>' around jsos' URL.

jeffscottward 12 years ago | |

I think the value here really is NPM. What you linked to provides the same basics, minus NPM world, which is arguably the driving force of node.

kine 12 years ago |

So is this just a call to action for a community to build this thing? Am I missing something or is this only a landing page and a readme right now?

sho_hn 12 years ago | |

"I have this cool programming project in mind. Where to start? I know, draw a nifty logo!"

Priorities ...

bachback 12 years ago | |

there is the docker. Yeah, it's a bit like: please develop this thing. I understand the reasoning, but.. JDI if you really want it. it might as well take years to get the knowledge required. so posting to HN is a bit like a launch.

anyway node is an interpreted language. so you could perhaps build a layer on coreOS? coreOS + wayland + node?

bcbrown 12 years ago |

>The more I use Node, the more I wish I could use it in new places. Node is not a perfect language by any means

As someone with only a passing familiarity with Javascript, what is Node? I thought it was a Javascript library, is it a separate language?

agibsonccc 12 years ago | |

Node is literally server side javascript.I won't get in to the different programming paradigms or what have you, but basically picture javascript with access to the native OS/filesystem and the ability to run things you'd think of on a server.

akoumjian 12 years ago | |

Node is a server side javascript runtime along with a standard library.

nonchalance 12 years ago | |

What people commonly refer to as "Node" consists of four pieces:

v8: javascript engine that powers chrome

libuv: a cross-platform library that wraps most os-specific logic

node core: a set of C++ and javascript modules that provide the API and interact with V8 / libuv

NPM: large set of user-contributed modules that provide functionality.

Many people erroneously assume that all server-side javascript is node, but there are other platforms that predate node (such as Rhino)

michaelmcmillan 12 years ago | |

Node only provides an environment in Javascript. I would not call it a language by itself.

tantalor 12 years ago |

> PHP, Python, Java, Ruby... Of these other languages, I would never consider making an operating system with any of them. Node is different.

Sure is. For one, Node is not a language.

codenut 12 years ago | |

It should be.. Zend, Django, Spring, Rails

oceanstone 12 years ago | |

He's using the respective language names (and Node) as a shorthand for the language & implementation.

Examples:

Ruby = Ruby language + MRI.

Node = JavaScript language + V8 w/ Node implementation.

seabrookmx 12 years ago |

Grammatical errors, and referring to Node.js as a language?

Empty, 2 month old Github?

Honestly.. why is this on the HN frontpage?

yeukhon 12 years ago | |

True. I am flagging it.

hayksaakian 12 years ago |

Could this be better for serving node than say Ubuntu or whatever heroku abstracts away?

markba 12 years ago |

This has gone too far.

bachback 12 years ago | |

nodeJS creates a global namespace. look at meteorJS, a revolution for webframeworks.

brendonjohn 12 years ago |

"Fork me on GitHub" Okay, where's the code?

The NodeOS GitHub organisation has a handful of repos. https://github.com/NodeOS

https://github.com/NodeOS/Docker-NodeOS https://github.com/NodeOS/nodeos-init

antoni 12 years ago |

Can anyone explain to me how this (a JavaScript OS) is "built on top of the Linux kernel"?

deckiedan 12 years ago | |

The kernel actually talks to the hardware, gives system calls access to what they need, does process management, multi-tasking, etc. etc. But an Operating System is a heck of a lot more than that. Thus the big 'GNU/Linux' thing.

My understanding is that his idea is to re-write as much as possible (certainly all the boot scripts, core utils, etc.) in node/js.

I think this is more likely just an fun excercise than likely to actually go anywhere - but it is the kind of thing I've wondered about doing (but not in javascript!).

You could come up with many unique and interesting things to do with a js based shell... perhaps more background jobs coolness.

$('rsync' '-avR' 'blah/' 'ssh://blah').error(function(){alert('failed')}).success(bell);

I dunno, and then have all spawned tasks open new background tabs in a GUI...

But this kind of thing would be a long way down the line.

Still, why not? Scratch an itch! It's the open source way...

pedalpete 12 years ago | |

My guess is that because Node has access to the file system and can create,update,delete files, along with all of the networking which comes out of the box, it can do much of what an 'operating system' can from the experience of many people. It can create and manage files. The Linux kernel is still doing all the heavy lifting and i/o.

okonomiyaki3000 12 years ago |

Brian Fellow is not an accredited zoologist, nor does he hold an advanced degree in any of the environmental sciences. He is simple and enthusiastic young man with a sixth-grade education and an abiding love for all God's creatures.

bachback 12 years ago |

here are my thoughts. there once was chromeOS, which was the idea to build an OS as a browser. more recently exobrowser is bootstrapping chrome via node. which means you can expose rendering methods. if you compare that with what different OS layers does, you might as well use the exposed rendering methods to expose your local data and services (=KDE/Gnome). so I would study Wayland for this first. there you learn render stuff to the screen speaking to the kernel. it's 100x easier than X11. I don't know KDE/Gnome internals but I would assume with Wayland some of it can be rebuild now (?). so you could then basically script the GUI perhaps in quite new ways. if you compare that to what the exobrowser is doing you get the picture.

so coreOS => Docker => wayland. network servers are booted up from remote, so the network part is becoming more core. virtualization/containers allow for different isolation of processes which speak to the network. then you have a thin layer of display. so for example imagine hookup a oculus and having that as a kind of OS, see this demo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FjuPn7MXMs the future is going to be cool ;)

scriptproof 12 years ago |

A such system could be useful on a Raspberry Pi, but the author speaking of Node as a language raise some doubts.

rurounijones 12 years ago | |

Well ATM it is vapourware ( https://github.com/NodeOS/NodeOS ) so who knows.

jeffscottward 12 years ago | | |

Yea, realized that right after I posted :) But hey, a little branding effort goes a long way (speaking as an Ad dev myself). Thought it was worth the conversation. Node has forever changed my workflow as is.

laurent123456 12 years ago |

The goal of the project is not very clear. How is that different from using node and npm on, say, Ubuntu or any other Linux distribution? Or is the goal of the OS to clone existing Linux tools using Node?

yeukhon 12 years ago |

How is this different from regular server? What if I need to install other things? What do I do? Who is going to maintain security patches?

jschrf 12 years ago |

Well, this was bound to happen. Node.js has finally jumped the shark. Hopefully node people will look at this and realize how silly they are and simply move on with their lives. Node.js is a plague.

vena 12 years ago |

i can't help but read this as "node-e-o's"