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At least, it will be.
InterstellarOS will be a Linux distro focused on reliability, speed and usability. I am not going to limit myself by trying to limit the learning curve however. The distro uses SerpentOS as a base and will probably use a custom wayland WM written in rust. I will try to make things customizable where I can however it will be developed as a full DE experience. Computers should be fun to use without spending long hours making a custom wm setup. There should be a desktop environment focused on dynamically tiling windows with such good defaults there should be no major reasons to change them. A lot of the big DEs limit their potential by trying to make the keyboard shortcuts easy to learn. The result however is that they are both not very ergonomic and they aren't that useful.
The modern mentality in software for a long time has been that moving to higher level languages makes you a lot more effective. And that we can afford to use high level languages because computers are so fast these days. I personally don't think that using higher level languages make you that much more productive for it to be worth it but that's not really the point I'm trying to make. Every year the hardware industry makes faster and more power effiecient, the same year the software industry is able to make their software run just as slow as it did last year. Drawing the same amount of power and making its users wait just as long for things to load. This is free software and therefore I see no reason why the time to market argument would apply. I intend to make fast software written in compiled languages following good Data Oriented Design principles. Being fast makes users more productive and happy. Being fast reduces the need to spend money on expensive hardware. Being fast reduces power consumption saving money, it increases battery life and helps save the climate too.
Systemd might be amazing for servers. However it is not a good choice for the desktop. Its big, it has too many moving parts, and there are better and simpler alternatives out there that provide all the necessary features required of an init system for the desktop. S6 fits very well into the ethos of interstellarOS and will most likely be the init system of choice. This is however not a promise of any sorts, just the way I'm leaning as of writing.
I love dvorak. And I intend on using it with InterstellarOS so I will be making sure there is first class support for both qwerty and dvorak since those are the ones I will be in contact with. I do however intend on making it as easy as possible for others to contribute with bindings for other non qwerty layouts. The goal is to be able to navigate the OS with the same physical keys on any layout. And to be able to swap layout on the fly with ease.
If this has piqued your interest or you just feel like contacting me please do so. My email is sam.henning.smith@protonmail.com. I might also be posting about stuff I'm doing on twitter.
https://twitter.com/SamHSmith2
"This is InterstellarOS" was written by Sam H Smith on the 9th of October 2020, 2020-10-09.