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Anime + FreeBSD = LainOS
Chris Gilbert writes: "This Thursday, a new *BSD OS project went online which is entitled 'LainOS.' LainOS is for the most part a heavily recoded version of FreeBSD 4.5 made to eventually resemble Lain's Navi from the anime 'Serial Experiments Lain.' It sports an animated splash screen, a more fully integrated X server, and a custom graphical login interface, amoung several other improvments over FreeBSD and Linux. You can check the homepage out at http://www.lainos.org ."
It's just a sawfish theme.
If you like it, that's nice. but it's not an OS.
Or a BSD project? the only thing i could find to download was a sawfish theme...
...
This looks like a webpage-in-a-minute site with nuke and no serious content?!
perhaps i'm blind
Life sucks.
I call it "Lain98". What I did was I heavily recoded significant portions of the background image on my Windows98 machine.
This is probably the most doomed pipe-dream OS I've ever seen.
First of all, their screenshot is a picture of gnome with an ugly color scheme and lots of stolen anime graphics.
Second, their website is uuugggggly. To make anyone care about a "cool" OS (or even window manager theme, if that's what they're actually doing), they're going to need it to look good, and that means having a graphic artist.
Third, anime.
Goooood luck...
The more I think of it, the more this bugs me.
/. is write and say "Hey guess what we're doing?"
If you go to the LainOS ebscite, you see this is nothing but a brand new project with a Sawfish theme as it's sole finished component.
So all they needed to do to make the front page of
How many good pieces of software come out that never get decent coverage on Slashdot? Buttloads. But these lamers put out a FILE and there they are. Frontpage of Slashdot.
Makes ya wonder who you have to blow around here.
Ok... I need to clear a few things up right this moment. This IS a OS. The theme is there because I got the site up just a few days ago, and that was my frist attempt at giving you some content to play with for the time being. I know that that file is a sawfish theme. Hell I made the theme so I should know that. However, LainOS is a Operating System. I have not yet released a distribution of it, thus your inability to download it at the moment. Keep in mind, LainOS 1.1 is already mostly completed, and the distribution will be coming to the public within a few months (considering things go accondingly)
About your Lain98 comment... this peveed me. Ok, how many Linux spinoffs are there? Are you calling them Linux98 to be spitefull? No. This is a OS using FreeBSD as a base. Not BSD with a sawfish theme, there are REAL kernel and X level rewrites in LainOS.
The site will have more content soon, but as I said, it's been up for THREE DAYS. And about your insult for me using PHPNuke... look around sourceforge. How many websites do you see that are single page simple crappy HTML? A perfect example is the GNU page. If my using PHPNuke has offended you so much, then I apologize for making a attempt at giving you some cool functionality to play with.
I hope this cleared things up.
Regards,
Neovanglist (Chris Gilbert)
Query: Why did you submit a story to Slashdot about your amazing breakthough technology when all you had available was a theme?
I never claimed it to be a breakthrough, I was just getting it out into the open for people to see.
Where? I didn't see it on the website.
Well, you do have a valid point, but secuirty, was the only thing on that list that was not yet a major focus, Yes, it is important, but I'm going to get the base done and then work on tightening security. (Keep in mind that doesn't mean I'm going to pull a Microsoft, and release a knowingly unsecure OS then fix it later)
As for compatibility, that is a major concern of LainOS, and much effort is being put into it.
Function is a huge point of LainOS. I've posted this on some other newsgroups, but LainOS is getting full voice control. In other words, out of the box you will be able to not only use a voice password, but control your computer the same way. (Obiviously you will still need to calibrate it the first time you want to use it.) The desktop/panel/menus are all transpearent with a water effect to them. Keep in mind that the screenshot for the Theme was not reflective of the UI for LainOS. That was the sawfish theme on a really really early build of LainOS before the UI enhancements intregration started.
Well, you are right about the vaporware part. It isn't there for you guys yet, so I can understand if you feel that way. But you can be reassured that the project will have distros out in the not so distant future.
Regards,
Neovanglist
The page on my website with this content can be found here
However, all that said, I think the fact that he's going for it shows initiative and the kind of creative drive that keeps this entire community alive and created it in the first place. I think it's a neat idea and I'll fire up a VMWare machine to try the distro out when/if it's available, because some of his ideas seem interesting. It's certainly worth that much just to support folks who are willing to take on that kind of project for the love of it - without folks like this, trying out new ideas and seeing what flies, how can the *BSD/Linux world move ahead? It's all about individuals having the drive and the energy to take on these types of projects. And, frankly, the fact that he can go off and pursue a vision of his, building off of the BSD base, is just another great example of how cool Open Source is! Imagine if someone wanted to do a similar project with Windows - not gonna happen.
When someone actually makes good on the promise of Open Source and attempts to extend something in ways not tried before (or simply in ways unique to his own vision), I'd think the correct response would be "Way to go! Good luck!" - Not "You're full of shit - it'll never fly - the security sucks, etc". Man, what a bunch of wet blankets we have on Slashdot. It's a damn shame.
So, while it's probably a bit under-done for a premiere spot on Slashdot, his project should not be ridiculed in my opinion and I wish him the best of luck.
Please Rate my comment (and help support Fre
Actually I like the idea of an interesting looking animated splash screen. I wonder if this could be an option somehow merged into the main FreeBSD tree? I don't think I'd actually trust any strange distro that forks from the base system...
The first kernel "hacker" to use Gedit
I have a sudden urge to laaaaaaaaaauuuuuuuuuuuugh AAHAHAHA.
- Draw some kewl 'skinz'
- Get a page at sourceforge with all the other "no files available yet!" 0.0.0 release software
- Get story at slashdot
Kids, playing with the Gimp does not make you an OS designer. SKINZ do not make you a coder. Go back to masturbating.I was surprised to find that there were indeed differences between the current LainOS and the current FreeBSD distribution. My surprise was short-lived however, as I found that the reason for the differences were that they had stopped applying patches! Many exploits discovered in 4.4 and 4.3 still haven't been patched!
Apart from this, the only difference is the addition of a few ports of anime graphics, Sawfish as the default window manager, and a bunch of packages REMOVED. There's no apache or ssh, and telnet-ssl is broken. It's IMPOSSIBLE to make a secure Lain system!
If you really want in on this, get FreeBSD 4.5, get their few ports of copyright-violation anime bitmaps, and for god's sakes -- DON'T TOUCH the rest!
I'm afraid of burning my karma by speaking out against what -sounds- like a neat project, so I'm posting this anonymously. :/
Lain's navi sure looks a lot like Gnome!
On the web site you say you are having trouble making a splash screen. And you now say you want voice commands on everything? Good luck to that!
Slipping Away...
He says he is going to add speech recognition for password authentication.
Not only that, look what he has to say on his website:
The final big feature of LainOS is it's full intergrated voice control system.
Cool, but then:
I'm going to finish implementing it as soon as I find some good voice recognition libraries.
Man, that guy is a dumbass.
Your question should have been "How is it that Linux users can put out Slashdot, a mostly ...."
It hasn't been on DaemonNews.
--
My comments and opinions completely reflect those of anyone and anything I am remotely associated with.
Hey troll,
Your numbers are bad.
Getting stats from usenet posts is a joke.
To use your method:
I see ~700 posts in comp.os.linux.
Adding the comp.os.ms-windows/nt/dos/95 groups, I see ~300 posts.
Between open/freebsd, I see ~1000 posts.
VMS has ~3000 posts.
Therefore, using tard(tm) logic like you have,
VMS has 3x more users than BSD, 10x more users than windows, and about 4x as many users as linux.
From visiting your SourceForge project page, it says your license is the GPL. While I have nothing against the GPL, I'm confused on how you plan to relicense all the code from FreeBSD.
Please so explain. =)
Location: Mt. Xinu
This project is a combination of all of the above. Lain OS, believe it or not is an OS. The sawfish theme is the only public aspect of the project (as of now!). I have been one of the luckily few to actually view and use the real Lain OS. It will be all that has been promised. If you don't like the anime look, don't worry. Like all real OS's you will be able to use different themes. The default theme will be, of course, will be the Lain OS, from the anime. Voice recognition and other features are just that features, they can be turned on and off. The whole point of the project is to recreate the OS from the anime and improve the BSD environment and X server etc. I understand why most people are under informed about this topic, that's simply because it (publicly) has been around a month or so. With as much traffic it has obtained, calculated right or not, is still a lot. Lain OS is one of the things that will help the Unix community grow with strength, that's as long as people who are under informed try to kill it and mock it.
Aren't you forgetting? One of the strengths of open source is supposed to be the ability to draw people of many skills out of seemingly nowhere, so he doesn't have to do it all HIMSELF. Bakabaka :P
Personally, I'm pretty interested by this and am awaiting the first release. I'm even going to go install FreeBSD when I can manage an extra partition so I can get up to speed.
Okayokayokay. How many of you went to the site and said, "Oh, this is supposed to be a new OS, but all there is is a Sawfish skin. Therefore, this loser thinks he can recreate an OS by skinning GNOME, this is fuck stupid, QED."
Go read the site again. All the way through. This being Slashdot doesn't excuse you -_^ This is supposed to be basically a rewrite of FreeBSD to integrate X and (eventually) provide some really snazzy features. Sure, it's ambitious. But what new OS project isn't? True, he doesn't have a distribution available yet. But he's admitted that it probably wouldn't run on most people's machine yet either. Even so, this isn't entirely useless info. It's attracting attention of potential developers. These things take time, and the project is only just begun. To the naysayers, I make this challenge. Go home, take your favorite free Unix kernel, and rewrite it. Integrate X. Add voice recognition. Rewrite the desktop layer. Now, do this all by yourself and see how long it takes.
Then again, you could also try remembering that slashdot doesn't exist for your own personal gratification, so there may occasionally pop up headlines that you just don't want to read about. Do us all a favor and skip over them instead of flaming. This may be /., but let's not turn it into alt.* USENET. Try showing a little maturity for once.
Personally, I'm very interested in this, seriously. It's making me figure out how to fit in a FreeBSD partition on my box. I'm not particularly talented in any hackish area, I think it'd be really cool to work on this once I got up to speed ...
That'll be the day, and today is the day where I for the first time saw a banner advertizement for Microsoft Visual Studio
Todays headlines..
Microsoft sponsors SlashDot
SlashDot is marketing Microsoft
an existing OS + a theme + a dream is called a new OS.
..mozilla rocks!
The point of this has always seemed to me not to have just the word be the password, but also the subtleties of the user's voice. ie, if I speak my password then it lets me log on, but if you speak it it recognizes that you're not me and denies access.
The biggest problem with this technology is making it work correctly when, say, user has a cold. How do you let them log on then, but still deny other people? And how do you deal with recordings? I wouldn't be surprised if there was a way though. It would be really in depth, granted, and although I don't actually know the state of voice recognition out there, I have my doubts that it's already implemented in a nice Free package.
Dear Trolls, Oh look, you can criticize something because yer jeleous that this guy actually has the talent to do something you probably can't do. Instead of bashing it maybe we should encourage him to work on it more, if and when it comes out if it can do what he claims then it's going to be pretty awesome. So before we pass judgement, why don't we wait until a real version of the OS is out. Thank you.
Where's the KABOOM! There was supposed to be an earth-shattering KABOOM! *sigh* Delays..delays...
If anyone can create a spin-off version of FreeBSD that is always 100% compatiable with all recent versions of FreeBSD, keeps all ports up to date, and has good X integration right from the beginning with Xfree86 version 4 as the default. Then I will go with it. :P
If they can get full nvidia geforce2 support as an install option by the time the first release ISO comes out then I will do more than just go with it!
If they can make a LOKI patch so that all my Linux Loki games will run on it then I there is no saying how far I will go to make their life pleasurable!!
If they can provide all of this and get Loki back on track or create something better than Loki well.......
Saying your OS is the best because more people use it is like saying MacDonalds make the best food
Yeah, and so far he's drawn 2 web developers, one person todo all the kernel (and php?) hacking, and himself. At that rate its going to take him 20 years to finish all this stuff.
I was thinking of this, too... Well, I was thinking to make a themable animated login system... with the animation being done with some kind of vector drawing libraries.
Hmm. Perhaps I can contribute. At the very least, give pretty pictures to them to code to...
Personally, I would start with the login and work from there. And maybe draw the whole thing on the framebuffer, to reduce flicker from animations.
Guess I should go contribute!
certron
fair.org counterpunch.com truthout.com indymedia.org salon.com
eff.org guerrilla.net debian.org gentoo.org
Anyway, I used to love anime, because I was deprived of it, but after watching a lot of episodes of various serieses (The last one is Mahoromatic) I decided it's simply not satisfying.
The things that bugged me are:
- Plots that start interesting but gets screwed or start to be boring - happens in most of the Gainax serieses: Envagelion, Kare-kano and Mahoromatic.
- Long, boring moments of silence - like in Lain.
- Dumb characters - like Yuki from Fushigi Yuugi.
- Characters that you hate and you wish they'd die already - like that blonde girl from Noir whose name I forgot.
If only they could do something as smart as Simpsons, Futurama, Daria or even Dilbert.. Now when I think of it, I find out what's the problem. There's no good anime for grown-ups!Slashdot community, please notice: I am looking for a girlfriend.
Nave H. Weiss
"In other news, we are now over 41,000 page views! Thanks so much to all the sites that have linked us."
How you like us now?
(as the roaring tide of a slashdotting gathers momentum)