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Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

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Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#231

Post by fasquoika »

gizmo686 wrote: post #119
georgeecollins wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that implies that no one needs a different OS than Windows NT or Unix. People are constantly coming up with reasons to have new programming languages. Are there no reasons to justify a new OS?

Unix, in the sense that we talk about it today, is not an operating system, but a family of operating systems that is based on the original Unix. Linux is Unix in the same way that C is Algol. In the grand scheme of potential languages/operating systems they are very similar, and familiarity with one will transfer well. However, if you consider the ML family of languages (Haskell/Ocaml), or the Prolog family, you wil…

>Algol/C/Java/Rust are in some sense variations on the same language

Actually, despite its syntax, Rust is more closely related to the ML family than the Algol family. The original Rust compiler was written in OCaml and it definitely shows in the algebraic data types, functional idioms, and immutability by default.

More to the point, maybe a new OS could gain meaningful adoption by seeming superficially like Unix while actually taking significant inspiration elsewhere.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#232

Post by digi_owl »

hermitdev wrote: post #145
cbhl wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paraphrase the question in the reverse and you get your answer: What makes this possible on Windows desktops? Stable binary driver ABI. Hardware monoculture. Expensive driver certification program. Letting hardware vendors release binary drivers without releasing the corresponding sources. An opt-out automatic update mechanism. (Disclaimer: I work at Google, but not on the Android team.)

Hardware monoculture? Surely you must be joking. There are only a few to several dozen current Android phone models being sold at a given time. There are thousands upon thousands of PC models being sold among major manufacturers. This doesnt even begin to account for home builds or customizations. There is a very slim chamce that anyone has the exact same hardware config as my PC, yet Windows still has to work on it.…

Intel started work on Moblin back in the day because Microsoft balked at bringing Windows to a x86 platform without PCI device enumeration.

Heck, if you crack open the ARM based Windows RT tablets you will find quite the odd duck of an ARM SoC inside. One more reminiscent of a x86 PC than what you find in your average Android device.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#233

Post by JonathonW »

JohnStrange wrote: post #49
georgeecollins wrote: post #18

When I was younger there IBM, Apple, Be, and Microsoft were all working on these amazing new operating systems. Now the #1, #3, #4 most popular operating systems are all some variation on Unix. What happened? Why did no one except Microsoft come up with a new operating system worthy of mass adoption?

Because of the application barrier. It's a chicken and egg problem, nobody wants to use an OS without applications and not many want to develop for an OS that nobody uses. To get it started, a lot of resources and power (e.g. quasi-monopoly or tons of money) is needed, or you need to have some binary compatibility with another OS. The latter is difficult due patents and copyright, and because it will likely make appl…

Apple was able to do it, but not without both a compatibility layer for direct binary compatibility (Classic) and a migration path to allow the same source code to be compiled for both OS 9 and OS X (Carbon).

Not to mention the heavy Java push they made for a while, which didn't end up becoming much in the long run but did provide one more way for developers to get their applications onto the platform. And developers like Omni that followed NEXT after their purchase by Apple.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#234

Post by Zigurd »

To all those pointing out that you can't get an up to date release of Android for your device: It's not all Google's fault, but it is increasingly becoming Google's fault because major SoC makers are keeping their Android Linux and drivers up to date.

Up to now, though, enough bits in OEM-specific drivers will go out of date to prevent Google controlling updates of all Android devices.

There is renewed urgency to solve this problem in general for Android Things. Having billions of unpatched things in the field for a decade or longer will be an even bigger disaster than phones that churn out of the installed base in 3 years. Google is building a field upgrade framework for IoT that should be applicable to handsets, too.

That MIGHT take enough OEM responsibility out of the picture to enable updatable Android phones.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#235

Post by cat199 »

criley2 wrote: post #121
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is a shocking difference here. Windows install is, for all compatible devices: 1. Insert install disc/USB. 2. Boot to install disc. 3. Spam the next button. Installing new Android OS versions manually often involves custom third party unlock tools from sketchy download sites.

And yet, if you ask a non-technical user to install a new OS, it's entirely likely they'll refuse, be uncomfortable with the implications of what they're doing, and if you do force them to do it, will be frustrated with the result. I worked in a Computer Repair shop for years through college and believe me, the average user has ZERO interest in installing or re-installing an OS. They will pay >$100 to have someone "s…

On the other hand, semi-technical users would probably do a windows reinstall if they knew they had a techie friend handy to call, but probably would not run an bootloader crack that has the potential to brick their phone, and instead would ask the same techie friend to do it for them.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#236

Post by temac »

bubblethink wrote: post #204
temac wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how microkernels have anything to do with all of that? Userspace drivers exists in all systems and arguably they are not more backward compatible or anything than kernel-space drivers, just the incompatibilities appears against other system-frameworks in other address spaces, instead of the (micro)-kernel. Ex: when windows switched to 64-bits, 32-bits userspace printer drivers where incompatible (it could…

>And more competition in the h/w space? Common, you already have an insane amount of competition for Android phones That competition is only on the surface. For SoC, GPU, baseband, radios etc., you are stuck with Qualcomm. Or maybe Samsung's exynos, which isn't necessarily better.

Not sure how exaggerated this is, but even then, those vendor can very well have the bad idea to don't give a shit about compat between one chip and its next version. Given where there go and the associated ecosystem, I suspect they do exactly that...

And then on PC too, you pretty much only have competition on the surface; then it's Intel and AMD. Given how modern CPU are SOC (and chipsets are now paired with CPUs, and with no 3rd party licence anymore), you have almost all of what matter in your system (for system compat) there...

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#237

Post by digi_owl »

asveikau wrote: post #163
hermitdev wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hardware monoculture? Surely you must be joking. There are only a few to several dozen current Android phone models being sold at a given time. There are thousands upon thousands of PC models being sold among major manufacturers. This doesnt even begin to account for home builds or customizations. There is a very slim chamce that anyone has the exact same hardware config as my PC, yet Windows still has to work on it.…

My understanding is the interface between hardware and kernel is more vendor-specific on ARM than it is on the PC. So the PC has lots of hardware diversity but the way you talk to a given device is already somewhat abstracted from the perspective of the kernel.

A major thing you have on PCs that you do not have on ARM is bus query.

With PCI and later the OS can ask each device on the bus to ID itself and thus figure out if it is a known device type or not (and if not, ask the admin to install drivers).

On ARM You have things sitting off various buses that expect the kernel to know what they are and how to talk to them from the word go.

It has gotten better as now there exist something known as a device tree that can be read by the kernel at boot. But not every SoC provide support.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#238

Post by cat199 »

discreditable wrote: post #68
Someone1234 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sad part is that these are issues with Android that Linux already solved. Google uses Linux within Android but instead of allowing the underlying parts to be updated via package management-like functionality, the kernel level stuff is only distributable as images in one "big bang" go. You could have a bug in a single binary at the kernel level, but instead of a tiny 1Kb diff patch you wait a year for a giant 1.2…

Part of the problem is that Linux has no driver API like Windows. The result is each vendor maintains their own fork of the Kernel with their crappy drivers shoehorned in. On the next Kernel version, they have to uplift all of their garbage to it.

> Part of the problem is that Linux has no driver API like Windows. The result is each vendor maintains their own fork of the Kernel with their crappy drivers shoehorned in.

Linux has a driver API; the interfaces are not as stable as windows but they are there - the vendor shoehornning has more to do with closed hardware blobs, drivers not being developed in the open, and profits than a few struct member tweaks here and there shifting across android releases..

the handset manufacturers have no profit incentive to ensure that the phones are compatible for a longer term, and keeping the hardware drivers closed/behind version-specific blobs serves as convenient way to facilitate planned obsolescence

plenty of windows hardware doesn't get new drivers across OS release boundaries for the same reasons so slightly better API stability is not really a very good argument here on its own..

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#239

Post by digi_owl »

temac wrote: post #227
Const-me wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are Windows versions that work on ARM: phone/mobile, and Win10 IoT. They update just fine, sometimes even on the major versions. E.g. my phone initially had windows phone 8.1 and now it’s windows mobile 10. And despite the phone is 3 years old, I'm still regularly getting OS updates. That’s why I don’t believe ARM hardware is responsible.

It is half-responsible, but MS did the necessary thing to achieve their capability to independently update the OS (and deliver it as binaries, instead of letting phone vendors built it from source, which MS do not want to distribute to anybody): they specified a common plateforme for ARM phones, that is, IIRC, basically ARM + ACPI. Then they mandated secure boot with keys that cannot be controlled by the user, so tha…

Pretty much. MS even balked at supporting mobile ATOM back in the day, because Intel had stripped out PCI support to reduce power requirements.

The The PocketPC and Windows Mobile situation was not much different from the Android situation today, i believe.

Re: Android overtakes Windows as the internet’s most used operating system

#240

Post by yomly »

Shank wrote: post #185
narrator wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to play devil's advocate: Windows became the dominant platform when it had terrible security. Android became the dominant platform when it had terrible security. Maybe people don't care that much about security vs other features. At it's low point, Windows security was a lot worse than Android security. At one point, a fresh Windows XP machine plugged into the Internet would be compromised within a couple of min…

I don't really understand this metric at all. I've heard it colloquially, but I highly doubt anyone was scanning IP address ranges so often that you could be passively attacked on the internet without any interaction by two minutes in. Even more so, people are often behind NAT, which acts as a good firewall on its own. Maybe it's related to browsing habits? IE? I mean, you aren't going to get hit by a drive-by attack…

There are others posting here but dropped in to also confirm that I firsthand witnessed this.

I had a single device and had to do a fresh install from factory settings. This meant I had about 30 mins before my 500kbps connection would grind to a crippling halt from all the accumulated malware.

This meant I had to incrementally procure protection, save it, then fresh install and repeat until I could access the Internet safely.

I don't miss those days.

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