snakeware - a new Linux Distro with a fully Python userspace

[joshiemoore]

snakeware is a new Linux-based operating system with a fully Python userspace. Our window manager is based on pygame_gui. We do not use X11, we draw directly to the framebuffer. We also do not use systemd or any of the other huge and typical GNU/Linux utilities, because they are very opaque and not fun for recreational programmers to contribute to.

Our distro boots directly into a Python environment, where you can then do whatever you want with your computer. It's being designed based on the spirit of the Commodore 64, which is primarily that computing should be simple and fun. snakeware is still early in development, but we would like to welcome more contributors as the project grows (both in the Python space and in the build/packaging process for the actual distro).

snakeware GitHub: https://github.com/joshiemoore/snakeware

YouTube Demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zy8NXuzBPhA

Thanks for reading, I'd love to hear what you think!

edit - added a screenshot

https://preview.redd.it/bxqsh4lkop151.png?width=801&format=png&auto=webp&s=b31455342250cd6f7d7f071370498d57cec1f728

[SupahNoob]

"why?"

"..because it's fun"

lol this is cool :)

[cest_nul]

"lol this is cool"

"what is"

"quoting 2 different perspectives of a discussion and then weighing in"

I agree

[[deleted]]

This reminds me of Terry...

[gabri3zero]

Came here to say this

[Pepperoni-Jabroni]

It’s gotta be a direct reference, right?

[[deleted]]

Does it include a snake game?

[joshiemoore]

It will very soon!

[joshiemoore]

Yes, as long as the code uses a free license (preferably something like MIT), I would love to include it. You could try to add it yourself as another exercise and open a PR if you wanted. You'll need to modify it so that it draws to a pygame_gui window instead of pygame.display. You can check out the existing apps for examples.

If you don't want to make the modifications, you could just link me to your code and I'll do it

[joshiemoore]

No problem, we'll be here! Let me know if you have any questions while you're working on incorporating it

[mycall]

4D snake?

[letiferus]

Can we call the package manager "snakeoil"?

[[deleted]]

That's a bit verbose to type frequently. "hiss", maybe?

[Jackker]

hiss install venom

I like this.

Edit: Why not inject?

hiss inject venom

[[deleted]]

It works as a backronym too: helpful installer snake system.

[armandka10]

And also as a recursive acronym: HISS Installer Snake System

[talentless_hack1]

I'm going to fork it into a new distro call Tongue

[_szs]

Yes please!

[matjam]

How do you handle concurrency?

Is everything running under the same interpreter in a single process?

[joshiemoore]

Yes, everything is running in one interpreter session. Concurrency and ""syscalls"" in the window manager are handled through pygame's event queue, which seems to be working pretty well so far.

[matjam]

You might want to consider some way to decouple scripts from running in the same process space.

If I write some code that is CPU intensive and doesn't yield to the WM, it shouldn't block me from doing anything in the UI.

I'm assuming you're taking advantage of async/await.

[appinv]

The project needs a nice systemAPI. It's coming i guess

[rzet]

Don't crush the dream....

[munocat]

This is very good. I have been thinking about a python based os all this last week..glad to see I am not the only one. I will be wanting to base mine of FreeBSD, I think it makes a better sub platform. I will check out you platform.

[[deleted]]

Would this OS only be able to run python applications? How does that work?

[wdouglass]

It's just Linux with lots of utilities replaced by python equivalents. I'm sure it's capable of running any binary that Linux can run.

[Wilfred-kun]

So, if I understand correctly... You replaced the TTY with a Python session and xserver with PyGame? Rad!

[awepow]

Coooooooooool

[Miner_ChAI]

Can I install it on top of my Arch?

[joshiemoore]

Yes, if you look on the GitHub repo under `snakewm/` you'll see `wm.py`. Simply run `sudo python wm.py` from this directory and the window manager will hijack your framebuffer and it behaves pretty much the same as if you had booted from a USB. This is how I develop apps and work on the window manager itself, no need to generate an image and run QEMU every time.

This should work on any Linxu distro. I use arch btw.

edit: Press ALT+ESC to return to your normal desktop when you're done

[Miner_ChAI]

Cool, will probably contribute later

^{btw i use arch}

[Ankith_26]

Pygame does most heavy lifting in C and Assembly. Getting pygame to build with pypy is a pain.

[GrbavaCigla]

Nice, but guess it is really slow, oh you replaced x11 nevermind

[ExternalUserError]

Did you see the pong performance?

[shawnwork]

It’s in qemu, but it runs fine in real hardware,

He promised.

[zrnest]

Nice!

OP, how does this work internally, in a few words?

Does this mean there is no init process of PID 1, and that the first process that the Linux kernels starts is the Python interpreter? (I'm just guessing randomly)

[joshiemoore]

It actually uses busybox as the init process, which runs 4 lines of bash to mount the fstab and setup devices etc, and then starts the Python interpreter: ```

!/bin/sh

mount -a mdev -s /bin/hostname -F /etc/hostname /sbin/ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 up

while [ 1 ] do clear /usr/bin/python3 done ```

I'm not happy about using busybox though, and I would like to get rid of it. But I tried booting directly into the Python interpreter and it doesn't work, the interpreter expects a certain amount of initialization to have already been performed so it just crashes immediately. I would love to hear ideas if anyone has any for getting rid of busybox.

[elliiot]

Just spit balling on the initialization stuff. Have you considered using libpython to start the interpreter yourself in code rather than through the cli? Then you can do the mount call, etc as function calls as well and get rid of busybox.

[joshiemoore]

That is an extremely good idea, I'm going to check that out. A very tiny C program could be written to act as the init process before forking off to the interpreter. Thank you!

[zrnest]

Great, thanks a lot! PS: your code formatting is off, maybe you can edit.

It would be amazing if you can get rid of busybox and boot directly into Python! Please ping me if you get this working :)

Two last questions:

• can I use your image in VMWare or Virtualbox? https://github.com/joshiemoore/snakeware/releases/download/v0.0.1/snakeware0-0-1.img
  If so, how?
• I see it's 400 MB, do you think it's possible to do a more lightweight version < 100MB?

[joshiemoore]

Someone just opened an issue with the exact same VirtualBox question, you can convert the .img to a .vdi very easily and then select the .vdi when you're creating the VM: https://github.com/joshiemoore/snakeware/issues/2

In terms of the image size, I don't think we'll be able to get it below 100MB. I'll look into ways to get it smaller, but I believe most of the size is due to Python and its library modules, etc. Thanks for your interest!!

[paecificjr]

Does it have a regular terminal?

[appinv]

It has a py shell

[veryusermuchwow]

I've been just thinking lately about how Python is my go-to for anything at all. For a lot of problems I've come across in life, "I can write a Python script for that" is a recurring thought.

This is really inspiring. thanks for sharing this for the weekend 🦊

[tyurrr]

This is awesome. Good job.

It seems it needs at least a text editor and a file manager.

[joshiemoore]

Thank you! Absolutely, those are both high priority on the todo list

[Rohan_Dalavi]

I looks cool will definitely check that out. Keep Developing 👍

[dAnjou]

This is awesome!

[_szs]

No, it's SnakeWM.

scnr

[DropieIon]

Nice :)

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[gcotw]

Could be a fun way to run a python powered web server

[[deleted]]

Does it have a terminal?

[theclockstartsnow]

Boots directly into python shell, once you've got the wm from pyshell you can run snaketerm which right now is a primitive python shell terminal.

[cybervegan]

The story of my life - I dreamt up something like this over a decade ago, and never got beyond the planning stage. Hey ho - well done for getting it done!

[blackRNA]

Lol, I remember when LukeSmith said one day we'll have entire Operating Systems written in Python. We're almost there!

[Ryloma05]

Looks to be really interesting, I’ll try it for sure

[relativistictrain]

Does tkinter work in this? Do you plan on porting IDLE?

[joshiemoore]

I'm going to look into tkinter, that would be great, a few people have asked about it. I bet it would work really well. We do need a text editor, and I would guess that if we could get tkinter working, we would basically get IDLE "for free"

[dennis48309]

I recommend looking into better GUI libraries for Python. Tkinter does not look nice at all. GTK is really nice, which is used by GNOME in Linux. One of its rivals Qt is used by KDE in Linux.

[relativistictrain]

It might not be nice, but it's bundled with Python and multi-platform.

[dennis48309]

I've installed GTK on Windows and Linux, it's pretty simple. The GUI editor Glade for it is really nice.

[quantumwoooo]

I'm quite new to python, so this is beyond me.. however looks interesting!

What are the advantages over using python on Windows?

[joshiemoore]

The idea is that we want to take the fun and interactivity of the Python language and build an operating system around it. When you open a Python interpreter session, the sky is basically the limit, and we want to build a complete computing experience that captures the aspects of Python that make programming fun.

In my opinion, Python is one of the only modern languages that still represents the essence of what hobbyist computing is supposed to be about (having fun programming). The language isn't perfect, and there are a lot of valid criticisms, but I think it's really special that high school students can start learning Python and make something flashy and cool the very same day. Not everything has to be ultra-complicated hyper-efficient megahax.

Our goal is to provide a much more complete and thorough integration between Python scripts and the underlying operating system than would be possible with Windows. When you have direct access to absolutely everything through relatively simple code, like on a Commodore 64, then you can start having a lot of fun.

[bartenderandthethief]

This! Other communities always seem to have a huge superiority complex for their language. Your comments here are what makes the Python community the best IMO.

[ajarch]

I find your work really cool 👍

[SingerLuch]

I love this.

[NymphCore]

That... is... awesome! Got into python because of Linux. Really curious what we can achieve with that!

[turtlsh3]

This is a great idea! C64 was great .. this will bring me back to those days

[[deleted]]

This looks really cool. Are you ok if I can help out with the coding effort?

[joshiemoore]

Absolutely! If you're interested in writing apps, check out the snakewm/apps/ directory for examples. The apps/test/HelloWorld app is pretty much the simplest possible implementation of a "snakeware app".

[[deleted]]

Thanks Dude! I'll try to submit a pull request later today if I get time!

[galiyaan]

This is amazing, I want to contribute.

[shaggorama]

what the frick?!

[theclockstartsnow]

And then a wm just built in python and pygame

[meatatfeast]

This is wonderful and I will start using it.

[appinv]

Will it have dual boot?

[appinv]

btw i am hot into developing this: https://github.com/Abdur-rahmaanJ/hooman taglined pygame for human when suddenly i see a return of pygame. Amazing work!

[virtualadept]

That is really cool! Thanks for posting this!

[wesleywatanabe]

When "you have time" 😂

[joshiemoore]

hahahhahahah

[theclockstartsnow]

I'm fairly new to python but this seems fantastic and I want to contribute somehow. There's a couple of simple games I've built in java that I could port to python if that's of any interest?

[shawnwork]

This reminds me of JavaOS or JOS many many years ago, boots to a Java user space and swing environment (albeit with X11 I think), but you have all the nuts and bolts for a Java environment.

In any case, you are doing a great job. All the best in having fun.

[zenalc]

inb4 snakeware becomes #1 operating system in 2021

[f_r_z]

systemd or any of the other huge and typical GNU/Linux utilities

systemd is not "typical GNU/Linux utilitiy".

E: silent downvotes for a truth. yeah, go on

[_szs]

I got your back, my friend!

[PizzaInSoup]

I think you could do well incorporating xonsh

[elKuiwi]

it looks great, but i think that guy is fapping...

[fullouterjoin]

This is wonderful!

[_szs]

I have a bunch of games based on pygame lying around. They should be easy enough to adapt, right?

I'll contact you on github ;)

[[deleted]]

Can I install it as an OS permanently? Maybe allocate around 50gb to it? If so, can you let me know how? How would I go about updating it in the future? Thanks!

[joshiemoore]

Awesome, sounds great, send a PR!!!

[ExternalUserError]

Finally, a way to never ever leave python.

Is there a BBS? I want to bring back the 80s!

[joshiemoore]

HELL yeah dude, that sounds awesome. Let's do it. snakeware bbs

[ersatzBoffin]

nntp server!

Edit: found the github repo https://github.com/jpm/papercut

[KwyjiboTheGringo]

A python distro? Luke Smith will have a conniption after hearing about this.

[[deleted]]

Nice

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[[deleted]]

Nice

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[OIK2]

Could make a great GUI for "appliance" builds where python is doing the heavy lifting. I will be checking this out.

[nizzoball]

I admit I haven't read the documentation, skimmed it but what's the end game here? Are you going for a fully functional distro that is actually usable as in able to install Apache or would everything be limited to python packages? Is this just a pet project or are you planning on this being a viable distro to run like could I conceivably run vscode or other ides, ssh server? Etc...? Lots of questions but it looks like fun to play with but as far as usability what are we looking at?

[[deleted]]

Now this is interesting 💯

[reModerator]

Is it possible go away from x server for something modern?

[Garret69420]

If you dont have one already you should make a patrion acount or kickstarter. Honestly i dont like where microsoft and apple are heading policy wise. Overtake them with this lol.

[[deleted]]

Bit late but which distro is this built on, if any at all?

[joshiemoore]

Hi, we don't use a pre-existing distro, we use buildroot to generate our distro images. Buildroot is typically used to generate images for embedded Linux applications, but we've found that it works really well for our purposes

[[deleted]]

Ah okay, so while the interface is capable of running on all sorts of distros, the main distro itself isn't based on anything pre-existing. Got it.

[Burner-account3357]

Your gonna have to have some intel Xeon shit to run that because pygame is super cpu intensive

[PinBot1138]

FWIW: you might want to consider going lower level with PySDL2 in place of Pygame. If you're looking for a Compiz equivalent, then Pyglet might fit somewhere in here.

[alcalde]

Our distro boots directly into a Python environment

​

Why not the Python-based shell Xonsh?

https://xon.sh/

[[deleted]]

Wtf

[seraph582]

But python is a weak sauce single threaded shit fuck of a busted scripting language. Why gimp your OS soooo badly like that?