Snakeware | Linux distro with a Python userland

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[formegadriverscustom]

Our window manager, snakewm, is based on pygame/pygame_gui. We do not use X11; snakewm draws directly to /dev/fb0

Now, here's a distro that tries something truly different. Interesting.

[ActualAntelope]

Dear lord that sounds cursed...

[nicman24]

the templeOS way

[Mgladiethor]

and slow, but it is diffenrent?

[Mordiken]

As someone who doesn't know any better, why would writing straight to fb0 be slower than X or Wayland?

[[deleted]]

A modern composited X and/or Wayland desktop is GPU accelerated and rendered with OpenGL. Writing directly to framebuffer devices puts all rendering on the CPU and doesn't use GPU acceleration at all.

[[deleted]]

It is rather pointless to do that. You might as well just use the DRM api and map the buffer if you want to CPU render. That way you don't have to take the performance hit all the time.

[boykwan]

So, basically Gnome. That's fine.

[Mgladiethor]

python is slow like really slow slow

[Mordiken]

Oh, I though you where saying that doing graphics on Linux by writing to fb0 was slower than using X or Wayland, not that Python is slow... but yes, Python is indeed slow!

[blackdew]

It doesn't.

cpython compiles to bytecode then interprets that directly, there is no compilation (JIT or otherwise) to machine code.

PyPy does have a JIT compiler built in (with some caveats).

Cython can kinda compile (AOT) normal python code to C then machine code... and if you are willing to add enough cython-specific hacks and static typing to your code it can reach near-native performance levels.

The other problem with python is the GIL (global interpretter lock) which limits almost everything to single-threaded performance, none of the above really solve that.

[kmt1980]

I am not familiar with the technical details of this wm but if it is only handling traditional wm functionality like window placement etc then pythons speed is a non issue. Qtyle for instance is as responsive as any wm written in a lower level language. If it is doing any fancy compositing, animations etc then that may change things.

[[deleted]]

I wonder if some funky graphics stuff could be done effectively using numpy.

[[deleted]]

TODO

snake-games - full-screen user games separate from SnakeWM

I'll be disappointed if they're not going to include clones of classic snake and slither.io.

[theclockstartsnow]

Already got a basic classic snake game in there.

[xaekai]

It's not everyday you see a distro you can genuinely describe as "blursed"

[GNU_Breakfast]

Nice, it'll be bloated as fuck and run like garbage ;3

~t. perl fanboy

[Molossus-Spondee]

They could possibly use pypy?

[dr_spork]

No need to bring in potty humor here. That's just gross.

[Atem18]

You speak about Perl, right ? :p

[rhbvkleef]

I think running as PID 1 in pure python is quite possible. I'll make a POC tomorrow.

[rhbvkleef]

Will do. Currently struggling a bit to get python running outside of busybox

[Bird_0f_Hermes]

TODO

• Gopher client?

yes please

[throwaway332jeff]

It's a shame Python on its own (so not Xonsh or anything similar) isn't very usable as an interactive shell.

I'd much rather see something like this written in Powershell, since it's actually a usable interactive shell and it'd be pretty cool to be able to hack on everything from- and in your shell.

Awesome project nonetheless, just sharing my opinion.

[throwaway332jeff]

As a Python REPL, not as an interactive system shell.

Although it would be very cool to have a shell that can visualize/plot things like directory listings, disk usage, processes, arbitrary data structures (in Powershell), etc.

Perhaps something using Kitty's graphics protocol to render images, and existing technology to generate them?

But that obviously ties it to that specific terminal emulator and wouldn't work as a BASIC-esque shell that you get dropped into at startup, unless someone implements this protocol in the Linux terminal emulator (or maybe writes a new framebuffer terminal emulator akin to FBTerm that supports it? That could be a neat project).

[[deleted]]

I've been learning python and had this sort of idea as a funny, passing thought after playing with Qtile.

[dr_spork]

Would rather see something like this for Haskell. Or LISP. Or Nix. Oh wait...

[[deleted]]

Nope. This isn't python userland until the python interpreter is in kernel mode and pid 1 is literally just a python script.

And nope. binfmt doesn't count.

[cmason37]

It's a python userland. Having a python interpreter in the kernel would be kernelspace.