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Mercury OS

mercuryos.com

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Re: Mercury OS

#71

Post by juunpp »

scrubs wrote: post #46
ilyt wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It pretty much embodies everything I hate in modern OSes. I know what I want to do and I know how I want to do it, get out of my way. Meanwhile modern OSes can't even handle simple "maybe don't steal fucking focus from window I am currently writing something in just because some other app decided to make another windows."

Totally agree. I'm sick and tired of apps "helping me," constantly interrupting with tips, "did you know .." rearranging my windows and so on. I want to get stuff done not start a journey and relationship with new code. And nobody knows better than the user what stuff they wanna do.

It's like the corporate OS developers think they know better and need to constantly remind you how pathetic and insignificant your existence would be were it not for their omnipresent magnificence.

Re: Mercury OS

#72

Post by juunpp »

tyingq wrote: post #8

I see where they are trying to go with the "humane" approach, but the examples seem to require big companies to play along. For example, the shopping examples put the control back with the user, and companies supply basic info like pictures, pricing, descriptions. In real life, of course, they won't cede that control easily. You'll get the same sort of mess you see on Facebook Marketplace, for example..."for sale" li…

Yeah, it would require standards.

The web lost track after the dotcom. In the beginning there were protocols. Now we're in the corporate moat period, where N corporations build the same thing N times because each one of them wants to dominate the others. Consequently, we were left with low-level protocols and languages (http, html, css, etc); there is no standard for buying shit online, despite most businesses being online. No standard for payments, no standard for query/search/browsing, etc. Compare that with, e.g., computer graphics, where graphics vendors (except Apple) collaborate on the development of standards like OpenGL, Vulkan, OpenXR, and shit works relatively seamlessly modulo vendor bugs and extensions.

Re: Mercury OS

#74

Post by joshxyz »

i like it, these attempts to challenge the way we approach our os user interfaces and ux are very welcome in bringing new perspectives.

this design miggt be fit for narrowed down use cases for special set of users who can really appreciate it.

Re: Mercury OS

#75

Post by kindawinda »

I think this isn't the crowd to demo this too. Majority of the people here would prefer a command line. Too bad this echo chamber can't understand what might be useful to a wider audience than their own monitor display.

Re: Mercury OS

#76

Post by stephc_int13 »

People often confuse the Shell for the OS.

The Shell is the outer layer, the interface between the user and the system.

This should not be considered a solved problem, more research and experimentation is welcome.

In practice, systems should be designed for better Shell modularity, in many cases they can hardly be swapped.

Re: Mercury OS

#77

Post by SkyMarshal »

ilyt wrote: post #25
hexomancer wrote: post #18

This looks like the exact opposite of what I would do if I were to redesign operating systems. The job of operating system is just to run application and get out of the way, and most importantly be deterministic and reliable. I don't need my OS to "predict what I might need", I know what I need myself.

It pretty much embodies everything I hate in modern OSes. I know what I want to do and I know how I want to do it, get out of my way. Meanwhile modern OSes can't even handle simple "maybe don't steal fucking focus from window I am currently writing something in just because some other app decided to make another windows."

God, the fact that stealing focus still exists in 2023 is maddening. Please just let me open windows and apps in the background while I continue to work uninterrupted in the main focus window in the foreground. Even web browsers let you open tabs in the background, why haven’t OS’s caught up to the yet.

That said, I like the concept of this OS design. It reminds me a little of the theoretical concept behind Star Trek’s LCARS interface, where the interface adapts to the user and the task at hand. As a power user I doubt I’d use this myself, unless it could be installed on top of NixOS, but it might be more intuitive and accessible to a more general user base.

It will be hard to get rid of files and folders though, even for general users. As messy as that can get, it’s a simple abstraction burned into just about every human’s brain at this point.

Re: Mercury OS

#78

Post by ARandomerDude »

> Mercury rejects the Desktop Metaphor and App Ecosystems as fundamentally inhumane.

Inhumane is a strange word choice, to say the least. It’s neat to think about the possibilities of future UX, but to suggest the current system is cruel just sounds ridiculous.

Re: Mercury OS

#79

Post by msla »

hexomancer wrote: post #18

This looks like the exact opposite of what I would do if I were to redesign operating systems. The job of operating system is just to run application and get out of the way, and most importantly be deterministic and reliable. I don't need my OS to "predict what I might need", I know what I need myself.

I'm sure it's "well-designed" from a theoretical perspective, and unimpeachable from the perspective of Professional UI/UX Development, but it's so inflexible and non-extensible it comes off as something between a toy and a jail cell. "You will enjoy being productive in this environment focused on channeling productivity to Approved Ends. You will enjoy using Approved Technology in Approved Ways. You will ignore everything beneath the interface, for what the Approved Technology is doing is Approved, and therefore not for you to interfere with."

Cf: The Anti-Mac Interface, for a bit of a tonic

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/anti-mac-interface/

Re: Mercury OS

#80

Post by sillywalk »

I hate webpages like this (e.g. most of them :L) Javascript req'd. Also, I may have missed it under 'Architecture', but it doesn't say what (if anything it even runs on).. it looks like just a design concept.
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