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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:12 AM

    When I first learned about CollapseOS four years ago, I thought that it's a very cool concept, but did find the idea "you'll have to implement from scratch everything in your computing stack" very disconnected from the reality. Like, what kind of plausible scenario could there be that one won't be able to get system software for their computer that they could trust to be of safe origin, free from backdoors and malware, and fit for the purpose, I thought.

    Ha-ha.

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  • cthos 🐱cthos@mastodon.cthos.dev
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:15 AM

    @nina_kali_nina I keep thinking that the odds of that global supplychain collapse keep ticking up rapidly, but I didn't have "happily embrace slop" on my bingo card, that's for sure.

    I thought surely, surely software developers of all people would realize that a brutally inefficient stochastic process was fundamently unfit for purpose but, no. Nooooooo.

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:21 AM

    @nina_kali_nina about a year ago I was writing in my head a blog post titled "I want retro computing without the retro", about designing stacks around standards minimal enough one person can make an MVP computing environment themselves.

    I am now still wanting to write this but with increased urgency and slightly more of the stack needing to be single person :(

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:26 AM

    @mcc I hope it's encouraging to know that there are dozens of us (dozens!), people who want/need this

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  • tkchiatkchia@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 10:00 AM

    @mcc @joshg @nina_kali_nina I guess a question is, what things will be "must haves" for an MVP computing environment? Some people are asking about running SteamOS games on alternative OSes, but such matters are best left out of scope IMO.

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 18, 2026, 10:17 AM

    @tkchia @mcc @joshg I think the answer will depend on who's asking. A professional music producer who bet their income on knowing ins and outs of a commercial program will have very different ideas about computing from someone who only ever uses computers to talk to friends and enjoy funny videos

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:13 PM

    @nina_kali_nina @tkchia @joshg in other words this is part of why computing environments of this sort invariably wind up being personal. And this is a problem because I don't know how you serve non coders in such a scenario, unless there are ten or so such systems rolling around serving different groups of people.

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  • njsgnjsg@mementomori.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:37 PM

    @mcc @nina_kali_nina @tkchia @joshg Portability, agreeing on a subset of interfaces, and not developing programs like there is just one target OS.

    Now I'm not saying this is easy, or that it'll be possible to agree on a subset of specs and interfaces. But it does sound like the way to go to me, at least on a first sight.

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  • PulkoMandypulkomandy@mastodon.tetaneutral.net
    Oct 18, 2026, 5:33 PM

    @mcc @nina_kali_nina @tkchia @joshg computers used to boot straight into a BASIC interpreter, and that was ok even for non-developper users. It had a good balance of protecting the machine and data from user errors, while not getting in the way (you can access all memory and execute arbitrary code, but the tystem is in ROM). And it provides an acceptaple learning curve

    What would we use as a modern equivalent to this?

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:32 AM

    @mcc it's still on the bingo card. And chat control here/and in the EU. And then there's mandatory file scans on Android and iOS with reporting to police, still on the bingo cards.

    And then there are Black Mirror like things that are already a reality. Like the marks printers leave on the paper for IDs. And unauthorised edits of images during printing. And camera applications that automatically "enhance" the image with un-disableable AI...

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  • Tachibana Kanadeh0m54r@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:40 AM

    @nina_kali_nina @mcc I’m reminded of John Barnes’ novel _Finity_, in which the protagonists had to fall back to pre-digitisation tools to avoid the way more modern tools would have undesired side-effects. In the novel it was quantum mechanics having this effect, but the analogy of all-pervasive AI having a dangerous level of influence on our perception (or even the possibility) of consensus reality is striking.

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  • ell1e coding thingsell1e@hachyderm.io
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:24 PM

    @mcc @nina_kali_nina i love simple stacks.

    I have a compiler project and I'm trying to avoid dependencies to make it easier to port to obscure custom operating systems at some point 😮

    it's a shame that VESA, BIOS disk access, and other standards to make it easier to hand-roll your own kernel with minimal drivers seem to have gone out of fashion 😞

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:32 PM

    @ell1e @nina_kali_nina the thing that terrifies me is the heaviweightness, splinteredness, and slop-centricness of any kind of video acceleration right now

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  • ell1e coding thingsell1e@hachyderm.io
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:37 PM

    @mcc @nina_kali_nina true, but i personally think 3d acceleration is overrated too.

    I have WebGL disabled in my browser and I love software renderers! A ton of indie games could run just fine with a pure software renderer if they tried

    (I realize others will consider 3d acceleration much more essential and that's fair, I suppose I have a privileged niche opinion)

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:52 PM

    @ell1e @nina_kali_nina i feel like since last night i've been having a lot of baffling conversations with this comment from linux folks. i cannot stress how much you need 3d acceleration because you need 2d acceleration. do you ever *scroll a window*? then you need 2d acceleration

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:54 PM

    @ell1e @nina_kali_nina ignore games. literally, don't worry about games for the moment, gamedevs will target whatever platform you put in front of them. software renderers stopped being good enough when screen sizes started being 1920x1080 and above

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  • ell1e coding thingsell1e@hachyderm.io
    Oct 18, 2026, 3:55 PM

    @mcc @nina_kali_nina I mean it depends. My machines are fast enough that pure software is enough, in my experience even something like a Raspberry Pi 5 is typically fast enough to do snappy software rendered UIs for a Full HD screen. (I don't use 4K because it just draws way more power with little improvement.)

    Source: I've tried it, I remove all acceleration from a ton of apps entirely. And I scroll around in windows! I know that some of them didn't have 2D acceleration either because I wrote them.

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 18, 2026, 4:11 PM

    @ell1e @mcc this doesn't mirror my experience; I have a relatively fast 12th gen i5 that can only do soft render on NetBSD, and it is a tad painful to use for scrolling things in browsers at FullHD, and almost completely unusable for watching videos (dropping the resolution helps, but it's not a reliable solution)

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  • ell1e coding thingsell1e@hachyderm.io
    Oct 18, 2026, 4:16 PM

    @nina_kali_nina @mcc That's sad to hear! Perhaps I judged wrongly then.

    But I wonder, when you say videos, do you mean Youtube?

    Youtube is a horrible website that causes a ton of extra draw rather than just the video playback itself. I would personally rather blame that on Youtube than the local software stack.

    Some things that can help are 1. disable Youtube's ambient mode, 2. use an aggressive adblocker, 3. use an external client like freetubeapp.io to actually get decent performance.

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 18, 2026, 4:20 PM

    @ell1e @mcc I think raw maths are against us, though. 1920*1080*32bpp*60fps = 500 megabytes/second or about 4 gigabit per second. This means a big part of the system throughput is spent on moving bytes around

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  • jeremiahjeremiah@tldr.nettime.org
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:22 AM

    @nina_kali_nina I had a similar thought. I remember encountering and being like "maybe it's good for remote regions of the world use cases"

    Now, I think about it on and off regularly.

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  • William D. Jonescr1901@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:23 AM

    @nina_kali_nina I don't WANT to reimplement everything. I just think it's bad to forget how things are done. And we look for permission to do that. As soon as computers get more convenient. It releases those feel-good endorphins that you no longer have to be on edge and actively keeping difficult-to-juggle-knowledge in your immediate working store. And then you get complacent.

    I know I did/have :/.

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  • njsgnjsg@mementomori.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 1:43 PM

    @nina_kali_nina @cr1901 at least studying/{,re}learning is indeed one motivation to tinker around OS design and implementation, but it'd help not being metaphorically held at gunpoint by GIGO as a service^W^W^W^WGenAI...

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  • mccmcc@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:29 AM

    @cr1901 @nina_kali_nina I have a bone deep need to have the *ability* to reimplement everything. I want to know I know how to do it. Nevertheless there are some layers in the stack I didn't actually want to implement.

    2025-me was excited about making her own CPU and GPU and her own programming language to write programs that run on them. But I thought I'd be able to write those programs on some other operating system someone else wrote with a text editor someone else wrote.

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  • Snaketember King Naga Calyodragonarchitect@rubber.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:34 AM

    @nina_kali_nina The idea is still unbelievably disconnected from the reality.

    I say as someone who literally has only 3-5 hours of free time outside of work to do with as I will, with a body and a mind that are both so utterly exhausted at the end of each day that I go blurry-eyed and foggy-brained when I look at a single line of code or an electrical component data sheet or any page of API documentation no matter how well-written it may be.

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  • Snaketember King Naga Calyodragonarchitect@rubber.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:35 AM

    @nina_kali_nina The thought of needing to implementing EVERYTHING instead of just installing a package and being done with it so I can go back to whatever it is I wanted to do that is decidedly Not needing to be elbows deep in the guts of my computer's OS makes me want to just cry.

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:37 AM

    @dragonarchitect it is indeed majorly depressing. But also, I find it heartwarming that my old systems still run fine. And so do old games, old software and such.

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  • Snaketember King Naga Calyodragonarchitect@rubber.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:56 AM

    @nina_kali_nina I've honestly gotten to the point of just.... giving up.

    I simply can't afford to invest any of my limited time or spoons into caring about the provenance of the codebase anymore.

    If it works, it works. That's all I have time and spoons to care about now.

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  • Tiota Sramtiotasram@kolektiva.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 12:46 AM

    @nina_kali_nina at this point I sometimes spend a few thought-cycles fantasizing about which materials other than UV-etched silicon a CPU-like thing could be made of, both for maybe-someday writing sci-fi reasons but also because I don't have a clean room or a silicon mine at home, and every time I get an urge to finally design my own PCB just for the sake of having done that, I'm reminded of how dependent that kind of thing is on so many huge global supply chains.

    I think before I go too far in that direction I'll first try to formalize some algorithms-run-over-human-groups stuff as a thing that can reassure me my skills won't be useless in an apocalypse.

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  • Nina Kalininanina_kali_nina@tech.lgbt
    Oct 18, 2026, 8:08 AM

    @tiotasram I've been thinking about it for a few years, and I think going analogue is an option. It's very fun and tactile

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  • tom jenningstomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
    Oct 18, 2026, 1:12 AM

    @nina_kali_nina

    Yeah, I didn't want to spoil their fun...

    "collapse computing" will likely be adapting to whatever crap used hardware you can get your hands on, and adapting to it. Lol we're close enough to that now to be able to pre-taste it.

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  • sinza :netbsd: :openbsd: :freebsd: :omya_linux:sinza@oldbytes.space
    Oct 18, 2026, 1:33 AM

    @nina_kali_nina

    Dusk OS is a 32-bit Forth and big brother to Collapse OS. Its primary purpose
    is to be maximally useful during the first stage of civilizational collapse,
    that is, when we can't produce modern computers anymore but that there's still
    many modern computers around.

    huh, I wonder what's practically going on right now

    In all seriousness, I used to think it was very disconnected from reality until I saw this post, then looked at Dusk OS, an OS related to CollapseOS.

    Clearly, this is for the long haul.

    gopher://self.duskos.org

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  • CismonXcismonx@mastodon.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 2:54 AM

    @nina_kali_nina

    I was once among those paranoid folks who believe that one day all software and hardware we can legally use will be backdoored by the government. And we'd have to purchase old hardware from black market to run free software.

    Well, it's a different kind of "collapse", but certainly possible :)

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  • LukefromDCLukefromDC@kolektiva.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 6:56 AM

    @cismonx @nina_kali_nina Start stockpiling pre-ban hardware now. Same thing gun collectors do when new limits on magazine capacity or "assault" weapons get proposed.

    Like guns it takes a very long time for every last pre-ban machine to die of electromigration. Should take longer than the remaining term in office of those voting for the bans

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  • happyborghappyborg@fosstodon.org
    Oct 18, 2026, 9:33 AM

    @nina_kali_nina There's always someone who sees what's coming before you do.

    The important thing is to accept this rather than do everything to hide from admitting they were right.

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  • Ozzelot :ai_free:ozzelot@mstdn.social
    Oct 18, 2026, 1:32 PM

    @nina_kali_nina Ah, four years ago... I thought "people I respect have deep pride in their craft and if there happened to be a parasitic slopmachine, they would never stand for it."

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