Simon Peter, the creator of the self-contained AppImage package format, has announced the release of helloSystem 0.5, built on FreeBSD and positioned as a system for everyday users who may want to transition from macOS due to Apple's policies. The system is free from the complexities typical of modern Linux distributions, is fully user-controlled, and aims to provide a comfortable experience for former macOS users. A bootable image of 1.2 GB has been created for familiarization with the distribution.
The interface resembles macOS and includes two panels—an upper panel with a global menu and a lower panel with an applications dock. The global menu and status bar are created using the panda-statusbar package, developed by the CyberOS distribution (formerly PandaOS). The applications dock is based on the cyber-dock project, also from the CyberOS developers. For file management and desktop shortcuts, the Filer file manager is being developed, based on pcmanfm-qt from the LXQt project. By default, Falkon browser is offered, but Chromium is also available optionally.
The primary file system used is ZFS, and it supports mounting exFAT, NTFS, EXT4, HFS+, XFS, and MTP. Applications are provided in self-contained packages. An application launcher utility is used to find programs and analyze errors during execution. The system for building live images is based on the tools from the FuryBSD project.
The project is developing a series of its own applications, such as a configurator, installer, mountarchive utility for mounting archives in the file system tree, a data recovery utility for ZFS, a disk partitioning interface, a network setup indicator, a screenshot utility, a Zeroconf server browser, a volume setup indicator, and a utility for setting up the boot environment. Development is performed using Python and the Qt library. Among the supported components for application development, listed in descending order of preference, are PyQt, QML, Qt, KDE Frameworks, and GTK.
Key innovations in helloSystem 0.5:
- The base environment is synchronized with FreeBSD 12.2.
- The size of the ISO image has been significantly reduced (from 1.7 to 1.27 GB).
- Automatic updates of the system menu are implemented when adding, moving, or deleting subdirectories and applications.
- The configurator now allows the selection of various keyboard layout options. Support for saving keyboard settings between reboots is provided.
- The set /Applications/Developer includes the pre-installed application QHexEdit.
- Support for AMD Radeon HD 6630M/6650M/6750M/7670M/7690M GPUs, used in Mac models from 2011, has been added.
- The Filer file manager has implemented initial support for a spatial mode, where each folder opens in a separate window. Additionally, a new 'Go to...' menu has been added, along with an option to open files/folders with root privileges, a context menu for unmounting a drive, a keyboard shortcut Command+Up to go to the parent directory, and Command+I to display file properties.
- A utility for accessing files on mobile phones using the MTP protocol has been added.
- Support for hiding the area with the window title by double-clicking on the title has been implemented.
- The global menu now allows volume control of running applications (by right-clicking).
Source: opennet.ru
