Today we celebrate the third birthday of SerenityOS, counting from the first commit in the
+ git repository, on October 10, 2018.
+
+
What follows is a list of interesting events from the past year, mixed with random development
+ screenshots and also reflections from other developers in the SerenityOS community.
+
+
+ Introduction to SerenityOS
+
+ SerenityOS is a from-scratch desktop operating system that combines a Unix-like core
+ with the look&feel of 1990s productivity software. It's written in modern C++ and
+ goes all the way from kernel to web browser. The project aims to build everything in-house
+ instead of relying on third-party libraries.
+
+
I started building this system after
+ finishing a 3-month rehabilitation program for drug addiction
+ in 2018. I found myself with a lot of time and nothing to spend it on. So I began
+ building something I'd always wanted to build: my very own dream OS.
+
+
Parts of my development work is presented in screencast format on
+ my YouTube channel.
+ I also post monthly update videos showcasing new features there.
+
+
+
+ 2020-12-06: Working on Reddit support in LibWeb
+
+ Building a browser takes time, and there's a lot of unglamorous
+ work like figuring out why things don't align right. Fortunately it's
+ also really fun!
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2020-12-20: Interview on CppCast
+
+ I went on the CppCast podcast with Jason Turner
+ and Rob Irving to talk about SerenityOS.
+
+
It was my first time doing an interview and I was really nervous about it,
+ but it turned out very okay!
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2020-12-20: The 2020 HXP CTF
+
+ SerenityOS was once again featured in the HXP CTF.
+ After being in their 2019 CTF, we spent a whole bunch of time beefing up system security,
+ and it definitely helped: This time, only 1 team was able to find an exploit,
+ compared to 6 teams in the previous CTF!
+
+ Write-ups & exploits from the event:
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-01-06: Reading "Hackles" on SerenityOS
+
+ I was very happy to get the classic Unix geek webcomic
+ Hackles working in Browser.
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-01-10: LiveOverflow videos about SerenityOS
+ At the start of 2021, hacking YouTuber LiveOverflow published
+ a series of videos about SerenityOS, looking into exploits against
+ the system.
+
+
+ All SerenityOS related videos from LiveOverflow:
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-02-11: vakzz's full chain exploit
+ William Bowling (vakzz) released
+ the first ever full chain exploit for SerenityOS, combining a browser bug and
+ a kernel bug to get remote root access via opening a web page!
+
+
Check out vakzz's excellent write-up
+ for a step-by-step walthrough.
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-02-13: SerenityOS developer interview: Linus Groh
+
+ I wanted to introduce my YouTube audience to more of the SerenityOS
+ developer community, and Linus became the first guest in my developer
+ interview series!
+
+
It was really nice to shine a light on someone else doing great work on the project.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Developer reflections: Linus Groh
+ 
+
+
+ One of my favorite aspects of the past year of SerenityOS development
+ is the overall progress on the browser! There's still a ton of work to
+ do, but we're starting to get more and more websites into a recognizable
+ shape - compared to a year ago, the number of blank pages and crashes
+ on load is reduced considerably.
+
+
It's also one of the most collaborative subsystems: everything from
+ improving spec compliance in our JavaScript engine and adding some
+ basic optimizations to implementing countless Web APIs, and continuous
+ work on CSS and DOM has been a team effort. It's great to see everyone
+ get comfortable, explore, and eventually become experts in their
+ favorite topics of browser and JS engine development!
+
+
It's been so much fun building all these things together, and I'm
+ excited to see how far we can get in another year :^)
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-03-06: Classic game "port": Diablo
+
+ DevilutionX is a reverse engineered "port" of the classic game Diablo.
+ I ported it to SerenityOS and captured the process in a video.
+ To date, this is my most viewed video and thousands of people discovered
+ the project through this video.
+
+
+ I also finally beat the game!
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-04-01: A new direction for the project
+
+ On April 1st, I posted a video announcing a new visual and spiritual direction
+ for the SerenityOS project. Most people got the joke :^)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-04-10: Opening a SerenityOS Discord server
+ 
+
+
+ We decided to try out Discord after seeing how it was used to great effect
+ in the Zig language community.
+
+
It's been a huge success! While our IRC channel peaked at about 170 users,
+ we've got well over 4000 members on Discord, and it's helped us reach new
+ levels of collaboration that were simply not possible with IRC.
+
+
It has also spawned an extremely nerdy culture of yak-related memes.
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-04-18: Interviewed on "Systems with JT"
+
+ Programming language wizard JT invited me for an live interview
+ about SerenityOS and everything around it. It was my first live interview, and I was kinda nervous
+ but I think it went well!
+
+
JT also did a heartwarming video review of SerenityOS back around Christmas.
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-04-26: More project maintainers
+
+ In the interview with JT, one of the things that came up was my own
+ scalability as a project maintainer. Up until this point I had been doing
+ all the PR review and merging myself.
+
+
After talking about it with JT, I realized that I needed to ask for
+ some help from a handful of trusted contributors. It was scary to give up
+ a bit of control, but in retrospect it's one of the best decisions I've made. :^)
+
+
At the time of writing, we now have five maintainers in addition to myself (in alphabetical order):
+
+
+ They each bring their own expertise and passion to the project, and they've been doing a great job
+ at keeping the project moving forward while growing.
+
+
+
+ 2021-05-16: Some GUI face-lifts
+
+ Sometimes I like to pick out a part of the GUI that is particularly weak
+ and spend some time on improving it. Here I was working on the PixelPaint
+ application, and also the system shutdown dialog.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-05-27: Linus gets on GitHub Sponsors
+
+ Linus becomes the second person to accept sponsorships
+ for his SerenityOS work. More people getting sponsored to work on SerenityOS is super cool!
+
+
+
+ 2021-05-28: I quit my job to work on SerenityOS full time!
+ As of May of 2021, I'm receiving enough in donations to be able to support
+ myself while working full-time on SerenityOS!
+
+ I wrote a blog post about it here and people were very
+ supportive
+ around
+ the
+ web.
+
+
I'm extremely grateful for all the support, and it's super exciting to be
+ able to focus on this full time! Massive thanks to everyone who has supported
+ me over the years! If you would like to help me out as well, check out
+ the links at the bottom of this page.
+
+
+
+ 2021-06-12: Interview on Zig SHOWTIME!
+
+ I was a guest on the Zig SHOWTIME variety show
+ from the Zig language community. The theme was
+ "tech, taste and soul" and the interview lasted almost 3 hours. Exhausting but fun!
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-06-30: 64-bit mode activated!
+
+ Up until this point, SerenityOS was a 32-bit x86-only system. Then came x86_64,
+ much thanks to the hard work of Gunnar Beutner
+ who decided that the port was going to happen, and then didn't stop until it was up and running!
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ The past year of Serenity development has been super exciting! One of my favorite things
+ to happen was the bring up of the x86_64 Kernel. Andreas started making baby steps in Feb 2021,
+ followed by others contributing additional fixes, until around Jun 2021 when
+ Gunnar Beutner started contributing tons
+ of patches and with the help of many others got the system booting and running on x86_64.
+ In my mind this was a significant symbolic step for the project and the community, onboarding
+ another architecture makes the system a bit more real in my mind.
+
+
From the community perspective I found it very inspiring how Gunnar just took the lead and
+ started fixing issues left and right. The community saw the momentum and started working
+ on fixes as well, and everyone together got the system running.
+
+
I wish Andreas, the SerenityOS project and community, continued success and here's hoping
+ for another fruitful year of fun and progress. With the
+ nascent aarch64 port under way by
+ Nico Weber, and the countless other exciting things
+ folks are working on, I'm excited to see what the next year has in store! :^)
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-07-08: SerenityOS Office Hours
+
+ After an interesting back & forth "discussion" with my YouTube audience
+ that started with the question "Am I losing touch with the audience?",
+ I decided to put some serious effort into connecting with the audience.
+
+
After some experimentation, I finally arrived at the SerenityOS Office Hours
+ format. This is a weekly Q&A livestream that I do every Friday at 4pm Swedish Time.
+ People are invited to ask any technical or non-technical question about SerenityOS
+ and we dig into whatever topics come up. It has been well-received and I've really
+ enjoyed being able to answer questions interactively!
+
+
Check out my stream archive
+ on YouTube. (And come say hi when I'm live some time!)
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-07-08: A world map of SerenityOS hackers
+
+ Linus created a collaborative map
+ of SerenityOS developers & users around the world.
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-07-20: TrueType renderer improvements
+
+ While I'm a big fan of bitmap fonts personally, I did spend some time working
+ on our TrueType renderer, fixing up things like vertical alignment and glyph sizes.
+
+
I also did some work to support the Microsoft Tahoma
+ and JetBrains Mono typefaces,
+ seen in this screenshot!
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-07-26: Building a "Settings" app
+
+ Until this point, all the various settings dialogs were scattered
+ around the system menu. I decided it was time to collect them in a
+ simple Settings application instead. I think it turned out quite nice!
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-07-26: SerenityOS developer interview: Ali Mohammadpur
+
+ I did another developer interview video! This time with Ali,
+ who is behind many of the subsystems in Serenity (including TLS,
+ line editing, the spreadsheet, and more!)
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-08-10: Working on multi-core stability
+
+ Multi-core support is still immature in SerenityOS, but we have been making some
+ strides forward in this area. In this screenshot, I'm successfully running Quake II
+ using 2 CPU's simultaneously.
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-08-18: ArsTechnica reviews SerenityOS
+ In mid-August, ArsTechnica ran a feature article on SerenityOS.
+ This came out of nowhere and was a lot of fun!
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-08-29: Showing SerenityOS to my nephew
+
+ My nephew called me on Skype while I was hacking on something, and I asked
+ if he wanted a tour of the operating system. He said yes, and I got this sweet
+ screenshot of him excitedly seeing me beat our Breakout game!
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-09-12: 500 contributors on GitHub!
+
+ It's wild how many people have contributed
+ to the project at this point!
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-09-18: Linus Groh interviewed on CppCast
+
+ It's been so cool to see Linus's journey with SerenityOS,
+ from not knowing C++ at all 18 months ago, to being interviewed on a major C++ podcast.
+
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-09-19: Reading the HTML spec
+
+ It's a pretty cool milestone when your browser engine is strong enough
+ to download and display the HTML spec itself.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ Developer reflections: Idan Horowitz
+ 
+
+
+ One of the main subprojects in LibJS that was being worked on in 2021 was support for
+ the stage 3 Temporal proposal,
+ which aims to replace the old and awkward Date API
+ with a more modern, unified and fully-featured interface.
+
+
As a result of the efforts of many contributors (with some of the most notable ones
+ being Linus Groh
+ and Luke Wilde) Serenity's
+ LibJS contains the most fleshed out Temporal implementation out of all the popular Javascript engines.
+
+
+
+
+ 2021-10-02: Browser performance work
+
+ Lately I've been doing a ton of work on browser performance, trying to
+ bring it to a point where it can display complex pages in a somewhat reasonable
+ time.
+
+
Here I am using Profiler to examine what appears to be memory allocation
+ performance in our regular expression engine.
+
+
The profiling system has matured quite a bit during the last year. It now
+ has the ability to capture full-system profiles, and we've got more visualizations
+ to aid in performance analysis. :^)
+
+
+
+
+
+ Monthly update videos
+
+ The tradition of the monthly SerenityOS update video is alive and well,
+ ever since my first-ever update video in March 2019.
+
+
Something new this year is that for the last couple of videos, I've been
+ joined by Linus in the videos. The sheer amount of things happening month-to-month
+ was getting hard to cover by myself, and it's great to share the stage with
+ someone else who cares deeply about the project as well.
+
+
+
+ Check out the playlist on YouTube
+ for the full archive!
+
+
+
+ 
+ 
+
+