"just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu" which is a quote from Linus's Linux announcement on Usenet in 1991.[1] He didn't know it was going to be big at the time, making it an ironic statement after the fact, and that could also be the case for any new OS from scratch such as this one.
I don't think it was a perfect storm going on , but rather since today Linux is popular & strong , you are retracing it to it having a perfect storm and nothing can come close to it .
That being said , I still think that this wouldn't reach mass adoption "just for being an alternative to linux" and that this has to have a specific purpose
For example serenity os has a really cool old - ui and some people think its a fun os in general , out of which came the ladybird project.
Redox os is trying to write it in rust , something which can have some practical meaning in my opinion
Not really. I don't see how Linux being popular & strong today had any bearing on people's willingness to contribute 33 years ago.
Writing an operating system is challenging. Not as challenging as a compiler, but certainly more work (so much hardware, so many specifications ugh).
In 91-92, people were clamoring for a free, unencumbered 386 Unix. Enter Linux.
Every successful (non-commercial) OS undertaking needs and has a hook.
Redox? Rust (enough said).
Serenity? Live coding and mental health (no knock there).
And on the flip side, look at ReactOS. Languishing. Painfully slow 15+ years in development, and people would still rather pay Microsoft or roll the dice running applications under Wine. It's hook just isn't strong enough.
Again, not to knock this guy, because just the fact that he wrote his own AML interpreter is super impressive to me (I've floundered around in those same ACPI specs for far, far (far, far) too many sleepless nights), and never put out 1 line of AML code. So mad props.
But there's just no hook. C++? Passe. No microkernel / hypervisor / <insert_feature_here>? No capability model?
It'll be tough. But I know that OS'ing is a labor of love, even if not a single other person cares. Cheers.
