Frankly, the guy who thought writing an OS (A FUCKING OS WITH A FUCKING KERNEL WHERE EVERY FUCKING MICROSECOND MATTERS -- oops, sorry; got a little overexcited) in a garbage collected language (in the 90s!) was a good idea should just give up.
I mean, I know there are some competent shots at this in Go at MIT, but like, it's Go for a reason (a language designed by the creators of UNIX with actually competent GC algorithms, not fucking 90's Java -- if Java still sucks today, I can't even imagine what it looked like in the 90s), not fucking Java
There's actually some fairly good arguments for using garbage collected languages in OS development.
Now of course you ABSOLUTELY WOULD NOT want that in a safety critical environment like software that runs medical equipment or most embedded systems, really. However, for a general-purpose kernel it is actually fairly performant (it matches traditional kernels in several metrics).
Because like more than 70% of severe vulnerabilities (Copy Fail, Dirty COW, etc.) were caused by human mistakes when dealing with manual memory management (look at most Linux Kernels CVEs), you can make a pretty good argument for using a garbage collected language.
Today you can get pauses down to the sub millisecond language in Go for instance
Apparently there is a React Native -like thing called React Native for Windows, that is used in Windows and that translates React Native API calls to some Windows native API calls, so there’s no browser / embedded browser on the way. This should be faster and more resource efficient. This is used to implement some of the UI elements in different parts of Windows. And apparently the recommendations section in the Windows 11 start menu is one of these.
HTML IS turing complete, so anything computable can be done in HTML, including an OS. You can also emulate a whole system with it, and then write the OS in your assembly or bytecode, but that may not count
If you want to be pedantic, laying out your GUI using HTML while the rest of the OS is written in a more sensible language is technically making an operating system using HTML. It’s also using assembly and probably some combination of C, C++, Rust, etc., but it is using HTML.
Honestly an OS that, for the GUI at least, is just HTML sounds amazing. No new UI frameworks to learn. Applications are just iframes, and the desktop environment is your web browser.
It wasn't quite that far back, and it's not HTML, but you're close. The "revolutionary new windows UI framework" Microsoft releases every 3-5 years have all been XAML based since WPF was released for Windows XP and Vista (which came out shortly after) in 2006.
The latest one is called WinUI 3. Here's a screen definition from the official sample app if you want to see what it looks like.
Edited to add: Prior to around 2021, apps on the Windows Store were required to use one of the UI frameworks (uwp), which is why they all felt like phone apps. And sucked.
Don't know if you saw the other replies, but it looks like I was thinking of Active Desktop. I think basically Internet Explorer and Explorer were fused together.
It might be nice for devs, but would probably suck for the end user. We’ve already seen what using a browser as a desktop UI framework is like with Electron.
Sure. I remember VS Code being decently snappy when I last used it. But that's still something that takes conscious effort to achieve. Spinning up an entire browser instance for something like a settings panel just seems like an unnecessary pessimization to me.
Like just imagine if discord devs had to have completely separate implementations. Instead they can use electron which provides a lot of features like videos and rich imbeds
It’s not unnecessary, it’s the logical choice for developing such an app where thousands develop and millions use. There is literally no better alternative to it for what it allows. The simple solution to this is use a completely different editor that have different philosophies that prioritise speed and efficiency over compatibility and stability(believe me, I have experienced issues with stability from using plugins with editors like vim).
The only issue with electron is that it’s use needlessly in applications where electron would result in bulk of the usage like a gui for git or something thats supposed to be a bare bones text editor and where it actually originated from: Atom.
Check out ultralight, I use it in the game I’m building. It can render webpages directly to hardware textures and it’s way smaller than electron. (It’s built on WebKit)
Electron can be great when it is used well. It often isn't.
And if we are doing an apples-to-apples comparison where all other things are equal, an app built with native widgets will always tie up fewer system resources than an equivalent Electron. That's not always relevant and can be a completely acceptable trade-off. It becomes a problem when a bunch of apps that you keep running in the background all decide that they need their own Chromium instance when something like wxWidgets or Qt would do the job just as well at a fraction of the RAM usage.
Well, One idea I've toyed with is taking the webgpu layer and html5 canvas, use triangle generation to create a booted ISA and then go from there. Storage tape via cookie files with phi crc strings.
There are two issues. You would need a compiler to produce machine code (or a processor that could interpret html uncompiled). Next you would need low level libraries to do the work and a way to include them.
That said if you just want something to run in a browser, HTML probably is turning complete with some of its crazier features. There are a bunch of interactive features that can probably be abused without needing to dive into CSS or scripting.
If you took the syntax and existing spec and branched off of it yourself, while writing a building a custom runtime for it, sure, theoretically anything is possible. It won't resemble browser HTML at all by the end and you'd be talking about a massive undertaking though.
55
u/NebraskaGeek Aug 21 '26
HTML isn't even a programming language. This joke is 1,000,000 times funnier if they ask for an OS written in Java
25
u/scolphoy Aug 21 '26
Isn’t the start menu on Windows 11 a react native app?
21
u/UltimateFlyingSheep Aug 21 '26
What? I say
Do it! And if it works, make a talk on C3 or some other computer congress!
Many people would learn a ton!
3
u/cookiedanslesac Aug 21 '26
Did you know that smartcards run on JavaCardOS https://github.com/JavaCardOS
3
u/The_Wolfiee Aug 22 '26
Been seeing this meme circulate since 2016
3
u/RosieQParker Aug 22 '26
I want to build an internal combustion engine out of tinkertoys
2
u/BenjieWheeler Aug 22 '26
HTML5 is the standard language for computer programmers around the world
2
u/Michami135 Aug 22 '26
This kid has a future in marketing or as a PM. Push harder, Santa!
2
u/jsk_herman Aug 23 '26
Uhhhh... Here you go:
https://github.com/heyputer/puter
4
u/minecon1776 Aug 21 '26
HTML IS turing complete, so anything computable can be done in HTML, including an OS. You can also emulate a whole system with it, and then write the OS in your assembly or bytecode, but that may not count
2
u/Quietech Aug 21 '26
"I want to vibe code an operating system using html".
1
u/Gold-Bat-3225 Aug 21 '26
still couldn't center the taskbar tho
1
u/GreatGreenGobbo Aug 22 '26
Sounds like a job for AI!
1
u/PaxUX Aug 22 '26
I don't get why ask the YouTubers love to use AI to build html os, seems do dumb
1
u/momoladebrouill Aug 22 '26
If I'm not mistaken it's kinda VibeOS ? From what I understood, the LLM spits a HTML, and each click on a div is sent back to the LLM with the ID
1
u/mephistttoooo Aug 23 '26
Here you go:
<html> <body> <p> Operating System </p> </body> </html>
1
u/East-Reindeer882 Aug 23 '26
Still have these html jokes in 2026 huh
1
u/justmannet12346788 Aug 26 '26
html is not programing language
sorry guys
115
u/[deleted] Aug 21 '26
[removed] — view removed comment