Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 271 posts

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#231

Post by NickM »

wsc981 wrote: post #211
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…

I feel the Classic macOS did one thing quite well. It was rather easy to manage the system. System functionality could be expanded through various means, but most often devs used Extensions. And if a software issue arose, it was easy to disable all Extensions by pressing SHIFT key on start-up. Also, on start-up you'd visually see what Extensions were being loaded. So at start-up you would always be aware what you had…

I do sometimes wonder if the lack of preemptive multitasking and memory protection in classic Mac OS may have ironically led to better quality software. Users are forced to be less tolerant of bugs if a piece of buggy software can lock up your whole computer.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#232

Post by Vrondi »

spurgu wrote: post #143
II2II wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that we usually discuss things in extremes. We don't need to know how to sew our own clothes, but knowing how to mend them is useful. Do we really want to live in a world where we toss out a shirt simply because a button falls off? We don't need to know how to build a home, but knowing how to fix simple problems is useful. Do we really want to live in a world where we have to call in an electrician eve…

It's not extremes. Modern society is designed so that we don't have to do any of those things (in extreme or even in between), we just throw money (that we generated doing one specific job) at our problems.

Amazing to see someone celebrating helplessness for the masses.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#233

Post by richardjdare »

richardjdare wrote: post #141
bobthepanda wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

I think the idea that programming is a back-room industrial or maintenance operation performed by specialists misses the point that programming is also another way to use your computer. The most fluid and limitless way, in fact. Programming is not just like being a car mechanic or factory floor engineer, its like being an expert driver at the same time. When I use my desktop, it often occurs to me that I could write…

Thinking about it some more, I'd like a desktop OS that not only provides extensive scripting, but also exposes system features to the language in an accessible manner. So I can easily write a GUI for my script in a few lines, or draw some crap on screen, out of the box without the bureaucracy or FFI business you'd need to do these things in Python or some other high level language.

In other words I'd like there to be a concept of OS-level "system features" available to high level languages through something a little more friendly and robust than interfacing to a C library. I don't know how I'd implement it :) but its how I'd like things to be.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#234

Post by Spivak »

Vrondi wrote: post #232
spurgu wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not extremes. Modern society is designed so that we don't have to do any of those things (in extreme or even in between), we just throw money (that we generated doing one specific job) at our problems.

Amazing to see someone celebrating helplessness for the masses.

I don't think this is a resolvable conflict in general; one person's division of labor is someone else's helplessness.

I think it's crazy that some people don't cook. Like every house and apartment comes with a kitchen, what do you mean you don't use it? "It's so much cheaper" I say ignoring the fact that I'm a cooking and baking enthusiast and so I'm not counting the fact that if I valued my time at any reasonable rate it's really not.

It's the same thing in the woodworking community -- "you'll save so much money, anything you see in the store I can make half as good, for twice the price!"

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#235

Post by tl »

NickM wrote: post #231
wsc981 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the Classic macOS did one thing quite well. It was rather easy to manage the system. System functionality could be expanded through various means, but most often devs used Extensions. And if a software issue arose, it was easy to disable all Extensions by pressing SHIFT key on start-up. Also, on start-up you'd visually see what Extensions were being loaded. So at start-up you would always be aware what you had…

I do sometimes wonder if the lack of preemptive multitasking and memory protection in classic Mac OS may have ironically led to better quality software. Users are forced to be less tolerant of bugs if a piece of buggy software can lock up your whole computer.

Greater difficulty / risk in development leads to fewer, higher quality applications, but breadth not depth wins the market, so we're stuck mourning dead systems with potential except for cases where depth results in a "killer" application.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#236

Post by Spivak »

anonymou2 wrote: post #154
spurgu wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not extremes. Modern society is designed so that we don't have to do any of those things (in extreme or even in between), we just throw money (that we generated doing one specific job) at our problems.

Then when that job is no longer needed by society you are really, really lost.

I mean that's already true. The kinds of skills that people talk about in these threads are typically very domestic. Even if you had all of them you still probably have a few skills that can bring in money if you're lucky.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#237

Post by waddlesplash »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #49
lupinglade wrote: post #46

Haiku is the only relevant answer. www.haiku-os.org It would be great if more people helped the project out, it is far more promising than Linux for a desktop OS.

Ironically, at least half of the things that make Haiku awesome are buried deep inside its kernel rather than being anything directly to do with the desktop. Also, the contrast between Haiku and Linux in my mind just points to the more fundamental difference between a design that says "you will do things this way, because this is better" (Haiku) and one that says "we'll give you a dozen ways to approach every problem…

(Haiku developer here.)

Ultimately a lot of the things Haiku "dictates" are at levels that 99.9% of people, including developers, do not care about: the window manager and display server, launch interface, package manager, etc. Certainly those decisions have consequences, but ultimately (for example) do you really need the freedom to decide whether you want ALSA or OSS? People just want audio to work, and programmers want a sane API to work with it. The internals matter little to most people.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#238

Post by waddlesplash »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #160

Honestly I think a lot of ideas about where to go with Desktop OSs these days are just complexity fetishist slashfiction. I don't think we need new complicated paradigms, instead we should take a look at our history of what worked and what didn't and build based a simple combination of good ideas we already have. My opinion, short version, hastily written, and incomplete: 1) Applications are self-contained objects th…

I know we've debated this point before, but as I don't recall seeing this particular list from you before, I just wanted to point out that Haiku already has (2), (6), and (7), the technical capability for (1) though it is not exposed to the GUI, about half of (4) though there is also no GUI for it (there is a command line tool for it however), and future plans for something like (3) and (5). :)

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#239

Post by fauigerzigerk »

rimliu wrote: post #218
bichiliad wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the portability of web technologies make them super appealing to new developers, which is what I think the appeal of languages like Java were a decade (or more!) ago. I think web tech has all of those advantages plus the ability to get started so much more quickly (it takes so little effort to get a simple website online). I started writing some Swift recently and built a small app, and it kinda shocked me ho…

I shake my head in disbelief every time I read someone touting web tech as the best way to make mobile apps and how more productive it is. It is obvious that that person has absolutely no idea what native APIs offer.

Maybe that's because you're thinking of apps that actually benefit from native APIs. There are other types of apps that are mostly interfaces to remote data primarily generated by other people.

The only native capability that many apps need is push notifications (something like a banking app for instance). And that's basically a random restriction imposed by Apple to protect their business interests.

Re: Re-Thinking the Desktop OS

#240

Post by michaelmrose »

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,…

Everyone probably shouldn't bother to churn their own butter but everyone should be able to cook and plan a meal. Everyone probably isn't going to learn to code but they ought to be able to reinstall or install an OS on their computer, replaced a hard drive, and perform basic troubleshooting steps.
Post reply on HN