Today we are announcing that the vibeOS Development Team is working on a new version of vibeOS that is a complete, top-to-bottom rewrite of the vibeOS Source Code. Some may have noticed this change, as the existing repository was renamed to vibeos-legacy during our transition to the new vibeOS GitHub Orginization. The new repository location will be vibeOS/vibeos-source and will become public when me and Divide feel that it is ready to release, as various core components such as a readme and unified document location, in addition to existing packages not yet being ported to this new vibeOS. When the repository becomes public, we will make an announcement here and in the Discord.

Why rewrite in the first place?

Well, as anyone who tried vibeOS will know, it was very unstable and prone to mamy bugs. In addition, it was written such that it’s performance suffered heavily on macOS and even on Linux. Simple actions could render it unusable and require a reload. We also discovered by about Public Beta 2 that we had kinda hit a brick wall when it came to incorporating large changes, such as a virtual filesystem. As such, it just sat there with minimal effort being put into the project. Just based on what I have seen Divide do with the new vibeOS, we have already passed legacy vibeOS by leaps and bounds.

Will it be easy to make apps for new vibeOS?

Yes! Divide has been working on creating a very simple way to create basic applications & experiences through XML. Creating applications will be as easy as writing them, compiling and opening. Thorough documentation will be available soon with how to get started. Various applications included with new vibeOS will be written in this version of XML, including OSDV, the Operating System Document Viewer.

Q&A

Question Answer
Will applications from legacy vibeOS work on new vibeOS? No. The complete rewrite means any application from legacy vibeOS (Excluding WebViews) will not work.
How will WebViews be handled in the future? Divide has expressed his feelings that applications really should be written in the new XML format instead of using WebViews, as they don’t work as well as native applications. Rest assured, WebViews WILL exist in new vibeOS, just in a more limited capacity.
When & where will documentation be available? Some documentation has already been written, and will be available here on vibeos.github.io when new vibeOS is made public. Getting started will be easy and we can’t wait to see what will be made!

Closing

I am looking forward to presenting new vibeOS in the near future, and seeing how we can improve it and what can be done with it. I want to thank Divide for pouring his hard work into making this possible. We are far from done, stay tuned.