
Urbit Is for Communities - jlehman
https://urbit.org/blog/urbit-is-for-communities/
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the_mitsuhiko
More than anything Urbit is impossible to comprehend. All I understood from it
is that it's some bizarre distributed something with an alt right attachment.

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ghostpepper
Where did you get anything remotely "alt-right" from that article?

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jitl
Probably referring to Curtis Yarvin (founder, “no longer involved”) wrote a
bunch of alt-right stuff

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jlehman
As an active user (completely unaffiliated with Tlon), I can say that
communities are truly booming on Urbit right now. Their newly released OS1 is
pleasant to use and quite functional. The discourse in the many notebooks and
chats I'm a part of is lively and engaging. If you're curious, boot[1] a
comet[2] and message me at ~wolref-podlex—I'd be happy to set you up with a
planet.

[1] [https://urbit.org/using/install/](https://urbit.org/using/install/)

[2] [https://urbit.org/using/operations/creating-a-
comet/](https://urbit.org/using/operations/creating-a-comet/)

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lxe
Urbit has been popping up here and there for quite a few years now -- can
someone explain what it is in terms simple to understand?

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jlehman
"Urbit is a clean-slate OS and network for the 21st century."

The best way to get an idea is to read this series
[https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/](https://urbit.org/understanding-
urbit/). This is also a great high-level introduction that skips the more
technical aspects: [https://urbit.org/blog/urbit-for-
normies/](https://urbit.org/blog/urbit-for-normies/).

I'd try to explain more here, but I cannot do a better job at than they've
already done.

Edit: Also, it's despised by many on ideological grounds due to its creator's
(who is no longer affiliated with the project in any way) political views from
a decade ago. I'm not going to comment on this any further, because it's a
tired case (discussed in literally every other thread on HN about Urbit) and I
find it quite petty.

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lnanek2
I realize it's the tagline, but it's kind of misleading to call Urbit an OS
when it's a program that needs to run on Mac or Linux. WeChat is more fully
featured, but we don't call WeChat an OS...

~~~
jlehman
The term "operating system" is far more precise than "fully featured"; in
other words, the accretion of a certain number of features does not constitute
"operating system" at some point.

From Wikipedia: "An operating system (OS) is system software that manages
computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for
computer programs."

It does that, which you can read about here:
[https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/arvo/arvo/](https://urbit.org/docs/tutorials/arvo/arvo/)

Whether it's hosted on top of Unix at the moment is beside the point.

