OSDev.org

I was reading the getting started guide on the Wiki, and this stood out:

"More than a few people have gone into OS dev when they really wanted to design a desktop environment, so this is a very important question to ask yourself."

Thinking about it, yup, you caught me. Does anyone know of a forum that would be better for this topic?

I never got into OS dev in a serious way, but what piqued my interest in it was the idea of creating shells or programs like Midnight Commander, etc.

It seems like "desktop environment programming" seems a little too narrow, but then expanding that to "desktop application programming" would be too vague.

Maybe just "low level programming" or "os level programming" (but not necessarily operating system development)?

A DE isn't really one monolithic program, so I doubt there are specific communities for the whole thing. A DE is like a software ecosystem that involves a window manager and some GUI apps, usually a dock and program launcher, among others. Each of these parts is its own separate program, and you could write a simple DE with just a simple list of these programs in your .xinitrc.

That said, if you are looking for community, I would recommend looking more into GUI programming in general. Unfortunately, I have very little support outside of maybe this forum for people making WMs and DEs, and in some cases even downright hostility. (Ignore the people saying you shouldn't do it elsewhere around the Internet.)

I don't contribute to any DEs, so take what this with a grain of salt.

rnd0 wrote: ↑Wed Jul 17, 2024 7:41 am Maybe just "low level programming" or "os level programming" (but not necessarily operating system development)?

systems programming is the name you're looking for, I think