helloSystem 0.5 Released For macOS-Inspired FreeBSD Desktop

[phoronix]

Phoronix: helloSystem 0.5 Released For macOS-Inspired FreeBSD Desktop

One of the most promising BSD-based desktop distributions in recent times has been helloSystem that wants to be the macOS of BSDs with a polished desktop experience. helloSystem has been making good progress towards their goals in recent months and this weekend now issued version 0.5...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=helloSystem-0.5

[kpedersen]

I certainly recognise the amount of work that is going into this. I personally find the macOS look really naff but some people seem to like it. It also means that it can never improve upon the latest macOS UI or people will compare the two, see a difference and immediately say that helloSystem has "inferior" usability just for being a little different.

Possibly the largest technical complexity I can see is the underlying foundations of our software never adhering to the Apple guidelines. The menu bar for example is completely generic to helloSystem and doesn't match up with the standard browser (here) (if you translate between languages ).


Obviously in the original image the author hand chose software that hid the menu bar but you can probably imagine that most software is fairly useless without it.

The next slight issue I have is why an entire "distro" rather than a few FreeBSD ports / packages or even a patch kit. This is going to be a lot of work for the author to keep up with upstream FreeBSD which has a *lot* of developers.

But I wish it luck. Gnome sucks and we have relatively few usable desktop environments so any new contenders can only be a good thing.

[uid313]

This looks like anything but polished!
It looks terrible, it looks worse than a two decade old Mac.

[ServerGarbage]

This looks like anything but polished!
It looks terrible, it looks worse than a two decade old Mac.

I don't think it's very different from freebsd. Also, it's a very early version, just give it time or help if you really want to see the project going faster.

[Awesomeness]

I don't think it's very different from freebsd.

That's the main problem with this project.

[curfew]

Repetitive misuse of "for" is getting very tiresome. Learn to write proper news titles. Besides, in this case the correct word to use would be "of".

[tildearrow]

This looks like anything but polished!
It looks terrible, it looks worse than a two decade old Mac.

Instead of trashing the project, what about you realize this was made by a few people in free time and not by a thousand-employee company in work time?

I dare you make a desktop and show me if you can do any better.

[skeevy420]

Repetitive misuse of "for" is getting very tiresome. Learn to write proper news titles. Besides, in this case the correct word to use would be "of".

Is English your second language? "For" is correct. Depending on the writing style used "for" could be correct. Sometimes adjectives (like "the") and 2-3 letter prepositions aren't capitalized in titles. Personally, I like to capitalize all of it. Since Michael capitalizes every word unless its proper form is lower-cased like systemd or helloSystem then "For" is correct.

It's the sentence's tense that dictates whether for or of should be used.

helloSystem 0.5 Released For macOS-Inspired FreeBSD Desktop

helloSystem 0.5 Release Of macOS-Inspired FreeBSD Desktop

It's the difference of Release and Released. Released For is past tense and Release Of is present tense. Technically, both are correct and questions of a philosophical nature have to be debated from there. The release happened before you read the article so it's past tense, however, it can be said that it's present tense because you're learning of the release as you read about it. So it is present or past? See what I mean? Philosophical in nature.

[skeevy420]

This looks like anything but polished!
It looks terrible, it looks worse than a two decade old Mac.

I don't think it's that bad, but I like AppMenu dynamic top bars and 3d icons. About my only dislike of that style is how, when multitasking, you have to go from top bar, to the other program, and back to the top bar if you need to go from program menu to program menu. If you know common keyboard shortcuts then that's not a big deal.

Not a fan of the window controls, but what else is new? I've never cared for the Mac Dots. Since they offer KWin and KWin offers alternative controls the Dots are more of a default annoyance than an actual issue.

Overall, reminds me of macOS or GNOME when unfucked with plugins or my occasional AppMenu Plasma desktop.

[Leinad]

One of the most promising? The guy behind want to have both out of the box experience of MacOs and underlaying system simplicity of BSD. I would say the basic concept is flawed. You can have big documentation how to do things yourself or you can have complex subsystems to handle it for you.