TempleOS | Down the Rabbit Hole

What Hacker News said

Strong rec sas41 · 2019-06 · on “TempleOS: – God, the Random Number Generator”

Here is a great video on TempleOS and Terry Davis himself. It talks about the development of the OS, it's history and his life in a chronological order. [this video]

Strong rec Rendello · 2021-12 · on “TinkerOS: A Fork of TempleOS”

(Context, the late creator of the original TempleOS, Terry Davis, was very schizophrenic.) This video is the definitive rundown on his life and illness: [this video] Terry Davis, in life and online, was completely wild. What's interesting though is that when you play in TempleOS for a little while, it's easy to forget that. The OS is religious and super idiosyncratic, but that nasty, manic, hateful, attitude isn't there (with few exceptions). And the code and docs are damn good. I think Terry tried hard to keep the actual OS and documentation "pure", in a way. I think digging in and working on extremely complex C code was a regulating force that calmed him, in the exact opposite way that being je

Recommends beezischillin · 2019-01 · on “Troubled legacy of Terry Davis, ‘God’s lonely programmer’”

There's a long video about Terry and TempleOS by YouTube creator Fredrik Knudsen, [this video] It's pretty heart-breaking to watch, though. Had he not drawn the short straw, he could've gone down as a legend. He built his own home-made CNC milling machine in the 90s. Who knows what he could've accomplished? Rest in peace, Terry. May the Internet never forget your struggle.

Recommends kuroguro · 2019-02 · on “Show HN: The operating system I built as my high school project (2016)”

The author had some... memorable quotes. It was a reference to his most infamous post. I assumed the OP knew about the author's past and wasn't asking for a genuine comparison. Tho looking back I'm not so sure. For the brave of heart (NSFW): [this video] Won't make much sense out of context. The video does a pretty good job of explaining the whole story if you have time.

Recommends jszymborski · 2019-05 · on “TempleOS: Installation”

I felt similarly when I heard the news. I can't explain the sadness I felt when I learned that 4Chan brigades are largely responsible for how quickly his situation deteriorated. For those who, like me, didn't know, he had begun live-streaming, where he would take call-ins to his landline. It's there that a concerted campaign to get Terry to alienate himself from his parents (with whom he lived) and stop taking his medication. This is not to mention how they egged on romantic feelings for a YouTube personality who they would later impersonate and torture him with in awful ways. All this led to Terry's parents being unable to house him. They were very old and the situation became impossible. T

Recommends lethologica · 2019-11 · on “The Digital Human – Terry A. Davis and Temple OS”

There's another (lengthy) video that I watched on Terry and TempleOS recently here [1] which was quite good. Honestly, it's such a tragic story. The guy was clearly talented but wasn't able to ever get the help needed in order to properly harness that talent. [1] [this video]

Recommends Rendello · 2021-01 · on “The best things and stuff of 2020”

I love seeing interest in the OS! > I've never understood how much criticism the creator of TempleOS got. Terry Davis was very mentally ill, much moreso than I think some people realize. His schizophrenia made him think that he was married to a Youtuber, that Larry Page was watching his videos, and that he had a telepathic connection to Elon Musk. There's a good video about him and TempleOS by Fredrick Knudsen. [1] > Instead of being elitist and shooting down his contributions, the computer science crowd could have focused on getting this member of the community the help he would have needed concerning other parts of life. I think a lot of the CS community enjoyed seeing his contributions, e

Recommends qzx_pierri · 2022-11 · on “NSA urges orgs to use memory-safe programming languages”

TempleOS was an OS created by a genius programmer named Terry. Also, I very rarely use the word genius, but he was a genius by definition. He was extremely mentally ill, but his brilliance lives on through TempleOS (and HolyC). Check out this Down the Rabbit Hole video about him. [this video]