The serenity of building your own OS (Interview)

This week we’re talking to Andreas Kling about SerenityOS and Ladybird. Andreas started SerenityOS as a means of therapy. It’s self-described as a love letter to “‘90s user interfaces with a custom Unix-like core.” Andreas previously worked at Nokia and later at Apple on the WebKit team, so he had an itch to do something along the lines of a browser, and that’s where Ladybird came from. We get into the details of compilers, OSs, browsers, web specifications, and the love of making software.

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Featuring:

• Andreas Kling – Twitter, GitHub, Website
• Adam Stacoviak – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, Website
• Jerod Santo – Mastodon, Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn

Show Notes:

• Sponsor Andreas’s work on GitHub Sponsors
• Andreas Kling on YouTube
• serenityOS
• Ladybird
• The Jakt programming language

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Timestamps:

(00:00) - This week on The Changelog
(01:09) - Sponsor: Convex
(04:29) - Start the show!
(16:41) - How do you install it?
(20:32) - Why? Why?
(21:55) - An outlet to learn and explore
(26:32) - Need a bathroom? Build it.
(28:38) - Did you write the compiler?
(32:37) - Major stuff in the works
(36:56) - Sponsor: Tailscale
(40:33) - Why do we need more browser engines?
(46:46) - Do we really need diversity in browser engines?
(57:00) - Gecko vs Quantum
(1:00:30) - Diff'ing implementation vs spec?
(1:03:45) - Long-term personal goals
(1:05:40) - Where is Ladybird on the roadmap?
(1:10:01) - Who's on the team? Who is we?
(1:14:56) - What is a non-capitalistic product?
(1:17:57) - Let's plug some URLs
(1:18:40) - Use GitHub Sponsors to sponsor
(1:20:05) - Wrapping up
(1:20:41) - Outro and a bonus for ++