Top all-time · #4134
Diverging the Desktop
Personal blog · divergent-desktop.org/blogsystemsdesignphilosophy
Diverging the Desktop is a personal blog at divergent-desktop.org about systems, design and philosophy. Since 2020, 19 different Hacker News readers have linked it 21 times, most often “Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future”. No feed was found, so read it on the site itself.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers link this blog for posts by the Arcan project on alternative desktop and interface design, especially its '12 Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future' and its posts on A12 Web and Arcan releases.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
This blog covers design, philosophy and reflections from a life long search for increased computing agency. It is the high level counterpart to the...
Most-linked posts?
- Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future7 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-08-11
- A Neighbourly Solution to the 'X Is Deprecated? ' Conundrum4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2020-10-30
- Diverging the Desktop – in search for better human computing interfaces2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-01-28
What Hacker News says?
I'm more impressed by 12 Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future [dd] which is the vision for the Arcan project. [dd]: https://www.divergent-desktop.org/blog/2020/08/10/principles...
Comment linking /blog/2020/08/10/principles-overview/
on “Bringing the Unix philosophy to the 21st century (2019)”Submitted A Neighbourly Solution to the 'X Is Deprecated? ' Conundrum as a story · 59 points
HN discussionThis is actually a small proof of concept for the much larger project that is Arcan or Arcan-fe. Did a fair amount of research into it. Its philosophy is to move away from the traditional desktop experience and create fundamentally unique, new interfaces. More on its founding principles can be found on this site: https://www.divergent-desktop.org/blog/2020/08/10/principles... . The core of Arcan is written in C with…
Comment linking /blog/2020/08/10/principles-overview
on “Cat9: A command-line shell written in Lua”Submitted Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> If this is about implementing capabilities, I think partitioned capabilities should be the default. I am not entirely sure, but probably. > I'm also curious how you're thinking of doing event handling in general, like D-Bus or something. I think IPC is best left as a point-to-point bare bones communication channel, but even then it's pretty complex as the central load-bearing construct. I dislike D-Bus. My idea do…
Comment linking /blog/2020/08/10/principles-overview/
on “BSD kqueue is a mountain of technical debt (2021)”Submitted Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future as a story · 3 points
HN discussionas mentioned in "12 Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future" ( https://www.divergent-desktop.org/blog/2020/08/10/principles... ) about the Arcan Project
Comment linking /blog/2020/08/10/principles-overview/
on “Fravia’s web-searching lore (2009)”Submitted Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI don’t understand the vision in the blog post, but I’m very excited to try out the Arcan-net as described in http://www.divergent-desktop.org/blog/2026/01/26/a12web/
Comment linking /blog/2026/01/26/a12web/
on “I'm building a parallel internet, and it's called The Thinnernet”Submitted A Neighbourly Solution to the 'X is Deprecated? ' Conundrum (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI found https://www.divergent-desktop.org/blog/2020/10/29/improving-... quite easy to follow and would guess the 'not so neighbourly' form would be in the same style.
Comment linking /blog/2020/10/29/improving-x/
on “Arcan 0.6.3 – I, pty: the fool”Submitted Principles for a diverging desktop future as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAs a separate note, I don't see how A12 Web ( https://www.divergent-desktop.org/blog/2026/01/26/a12web/#a1... ) is different from the current web, where (Javascript) apps are downloaded and run locally (in your web browser) all the time. There are some additional checks for digital signatures and package integrity, which are typically taken care of by HTTPS in the current web.
Comment linking /blog/2026/01/26/a12web/
on “Arcan-A12: Weaving a Different Web”Submitted Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThe vision of "one desktop, many devices" ( https://www.divergent-desktop.org/blog/2026/01/26/a12web/#a1... ) seems perfect for cloud hyperscalers to own all of compute. Your desktop will be in the cloud, the only computer with enough CPU power and RAM to run your stuff, and you will be allowed to access your desktop from any device you license from the cloud hyperscaler.
Comment linking /blog/2026/01/26/a12web/
on “Arcan-A12: Weaving a Different Web”Submitted Arcan-A12: Weaving a different web as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThere's been a closed version of https://arcan-fe.com/2021/04/12/introducing-pipeworld/ that was VR centric as well as wilder 'layouters' to https://arcan-fe.com/2018/03/29/safespaces-an-open-source-vr... that is still around in my piles here somewhere. For a handful of reasons (abusive and hostile actors being at the top) we focus elsewhere ( https://www.divergent-desktop.org/blog/2026/01/26/a12web/ and https://arc…
Comment linking /blog/2026/01/26/a12web/
on “Ask HN: The Next Big OS Leap”Submitted Arcan-A12: Weaving a Different Web as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Diverging the Desktop – in search for better human computing interfaces as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted Principles for a Diverging Desktop Future (2020) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionSubmitted A Neighbourly Solution to the 'X Is Deprecated? ' Conundrum as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
