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Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

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Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#101

Post by _trampeltier »

nly wrote: post #93

For many years it's seemed pretty obvious to me that most people don't have a need for a laptop for 'real work', but could instead just drop their phones in to a slick little dock connected to a keyboard, mouse and a large touch screen. I believe this was the original vision behind Ubuntu Phone before it was pared-down and made boring. Completely wireless pairing would be even better. It seems like the hardware is go…

HP tryed to do it with the Elite X3 and a kind of dumb notebook (all logic in the phone). When it came out, Windows Mobile was already dead, so .. On Android there is DEX (at least I have it from Samsung), but it seams it exist, but there is no big love from wherever-is-behind-it.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#102

Post by izacus »

nly wrote: post #93

For many years it's seemed pretty obvious to me that most people don't have a need for a laptop for 'real work', but could instead just drop their phones in to a slick little dock connected to a keyboard, mouse and a large touch screen. I believe this was the original vision behind Ubuntu Phone before it was pared-down and made boring. Completely wireless pairing would be even better. It seems like the hardware is go…

This literally what Samsung phones do right now. No need to wait for Apple to save you.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#103

Post by walrus01 »

fuzzfactor wrote: post #87
walrus01 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

some method to reliably run new stuff in a fully sandboxed environment (short of going through the time and effort to copy an entire disposable windows 10 home virtualbox machine), would definitely help with that problem. linux based ideas like qubes are are a step in that direction.

Once your full C: volume is backed up to a WIM file it's not too bad even on bare metal. If you keep C: under about 20GB, the resulting WIM is about half that size and easy to deal with. To deploy using a 30GB partition it only takes about 5 minutes to write zeros to the 30GB, another 5 minutes to quickformat and deploy the WIM file to the fresh partition (in naturally well-defragmented condition), then a judicious B…

that is a great deal slower than the time it takes me to duplicate a ready-to-go windows 10 home virtualbox VM, copying about 25GB of data SSD-to-same-SSD, and then run it.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#105

Post by bobthepanda »

wraptile wrote: post #65

Wow, I'm masively disappointed with this thread. We have so many different Desktop "OS's" already. There's hardly a need for a _revolution_; strong stability and support is needed but there's just no paying market for it by the looks of it. 4 biggest desktop environments are by mega corporations (apple, microsoft) and by big open-source collectives (Gnome, KDE). But is that it? No, there's also a bunch of tilling-win…

> Real question: Do we continue to dumb down software to exclusive casual usage for house-moms or we try to move our society to be more techn savy as we are clearly moving to a more tech relying world. Why shouldn't everyone know how to code?

Why shouldn't everyone churn their own butter? Why shouldn't everyone sew their own clothes? Why shouldn't everyone build our own homes? Should we continue to dumb down feeding, clothing, and sheltering ourselves for exclusive casual usage of ?

There are only so many hours in the day and time in our lives; why hide the benefits of technology behind arbitrary gatekeeping?

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#106

Post by ziotom78 »

rtpg wrote: post #99
wraptile wrote: post #65

Wow, I'm masively disappointed with this thread. We have so many different Desktop "OS's" already. There's hardly a need for a _revolution_; strong stability and support is needed but there's just no paying market for it by the looks of it. 4 biggest desktop environments are by mega corporations (apple, microsoft) and by big open-source collectives (Gnome, KDE). But is that it? No, there's also a bunch of tilling-win…

Here are some mobile concepts that I miss on OS: - not thinking about files: I can open Notes/Drafts on my phone and get a textbox. I kinda get this with Joplin, barely. - Real sandboxing, with a nice permission layer - Extremely easy sharing of data between apps. Of course files are theoretically a great sharing mechanism, but the sharing mechanism in mobile OS's are the logical conclusion of the clipboard - URIs th…

I remember that some of these points were targeted by the Étoilé environment [1]. It was a desktop environment targeted for GNUstep and programmed in Objective-C that tried to rethink a few fundamental concepts of the Desktop Environments available at the time (~10 years ago). Among them, proper file versioning for everything, seamless app interoperability and data sharing, etc.

Sadly, the developers never managed to go beyond a few core libraries and a nice theme (the GUI used GNUstep under the hood). I followed the development with great interest till they stopped updating the site; I believe that the effort would have required many more developers. What a pity!

[1] http://etoileos.com/

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#107

Post by throwaway_pdp09 »

dognotdog wrote: post #72
no_wizard wrote: post #63

I e recently arrived at the conclusion that we need semantic interfaces (think semantic web). Where things are naturally cross referential and indexing is useful beyond clever search hacks. With so much of our day to day lives being digital it would be UI 2.0 to finally break this barrier. It struck me like a brick wall how I released that my interactions with the “machine” are incredibly isolated from one another an…

Those observations resonate with me. This does sound a lot like the now almost ancient dream of Prolog/Smalltalk where you'd have this much more semantic and malleable environment to work with and shape to the specific purpose it needs to fulfill, without any artificial barriers. And I don't see why that semantic singularity couldn't be local (or at leat private), instead of the current hodge-podge of "cloud" offerin…

Could you and the parent please elaborate in concrete terms what you'd like to see. I'd be terribly interested.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#108

Post by m463 »

bobthepanda wrote: post #105
wraptile wrote: post #65

Wow, I'm masively disappointed with this thread. We have so many different Desktop "OS's" already. There's hardly a need for a _revolution_; strong stability and support is needed but there's just no paying market for it by the looks of it. 4 biggest desktop environments are by mega corporations (apple, microsoft) and by big open-source collectives (Gnome, KDE). But is that it? No, there's also a bunch of tilling-win…

> Real question: Do we continue to dumb down software to exclusive casual usage for house-moms or we try to move our society to be more techn savy as we are clearly moving to a more tech relying world. Why shouldn't everyone know how to code? Why shouldn't everyone churn their own butter? Why shouldn't everyone sew their own clothes? Why shouldn't everyone build our own homes? Should we continue to dumb down feeding,…

ok, here's your allotment of clothes: pants, shirt, size medium, shoes size 9

I actually think some game user interface ideas should make it to the desktop. Game interfaces are always customizable up-front.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#109

Post by Arainach »

mmackh wrote: post #62

I’ve had this thought for a while that the Desktop UI needs to be reinvented to fit the user in two main ways: - People Centric. Associate files, notes, alerts, calendar entries, emails, documents with your contacts or contact group. Chat using an open protocol. This is in stark contrast with the data silo approach we have going on now. - Project Based. Want to create a new app? Create a new project. All files associ…

Network effects are huge. People are on Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/etc. because other people are on them. The control over the network is of paramount importance to those companies, and they do not want to give it up. They don't want an open chat protocol. They want their branded experience with their specific font and their specific shade of blue (and it's always blue - Facebook, Twitter, Skype, it doesn't matter, it's always blue).

Microsoft tried to build People-centric experiences with the short-lived MyPeople experience: https://www.pcworld.com/article/3216489/windows-10s-my-peopl...

In the end, while the UX mocks were grand and there was the potential for some interesting flows, it was impossible to get the platforms interested. They don't WANT your contact list to sync to your device and integrate in your OS surfaces, they want to own that data.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#110

Post by soapdog »

nly wrote: post #98
fendy3002 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, ms surface?

Surfaces are tablets with plug in keyboards. I'm talking about a cellular device that you can slip in your pocket

The problem with that vision is that people break/lose phones a lot more often than laptops. We tend to carry your phone all the time with us, that leads to it being potentially exposed to way more dangers than our laptops. What happens to all your stuff when your phone is stolen in a pub? or when it fall into that subway gap?

If the answer to this is: it is all backed up automatically into the cloud and your new device will become a clone of your lost device, then you don't need the device in the first place, all you need is a terminal.

If the answer is: you're screwed, then maybe storing all your stuff on a device small enough to be easily stolen/broken was a bad idea.

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