131–140 of 188 posts
I remember people used to say, "Emacs is a nice OS, what it lacks is a good editor". While reading the Ultimate OS paper I was thinking about Emacs. It already exists.
I was thinking about the Oberon operating system, which also already exists.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Stability and flexibility from Linux I might have been using linux wrong. Because as a daily driver media consumption device, it has been anything but stable. I suspect it is because it was a laptop with a discrete graphics card, which for some reason completely trips linux up. > Forced updates in Windows 10 I think this has been solved in a recent update
Linux is extremely stable as a headless server. We have instances running for years with no issues. That is where Linux's reputation for stability most likely comes from. However as a desktop machine mainly used for media consumption I would take windows over linux any day. No doubt due to poor graphics and audio driver support.
The layers that sit directly above the hardware need to be simple and efficient (think like OSI layer 1 and 2). Actual hardware beneath this needs to be even simpler so it can focus on what good hardware should be: high performance. For example, having hard drives implement database-like concepts in hardware is bad. Because then you have to change hardware if your concepts evovle, which is expensive. So let the hard drive do what it does best, which is get data off of a platter or NAND, and let a layer on the OS abstract that for higher-level layers.
The UNIX API is the best we got so far I think, for OSes that are actually useable on a wide variety of hardware platforms. There's a reason why files are byte streams and "type" information is not part of a file - it's not a storage device's job to do anything but store and retrieve data fast and reliably. And it's not the job of the immediate lower layers of an OS to do anything but facilitate that and interface with a higher layer, like an SQL daemon.
The user facing layers high up, like the shell, are technically not OS facilities, they are "default applications" that, in a perfect world, would work under any OS.
I do agree our file-systems need to be more RDBMS-like. I'd like to see "Dynamic Relational" experimented with more. You don't necessarily need to pre-wire columns: add them as you need, unless not permitted for a given table.
Oh, it's the every OS sucks story again. It's all about the user experience. System should be friend and still enable the user to increasingly get more out of the computer. It also needs to be extremely responsive. AmigaOS got a lot right back in the 80s. BeOS (and now Haiku as spiritual successor) took a lot from that (system kits vs amiga's default set of shared libraries, and the concept of datatypes) and added so…
Being an RTOS is only necessary if your application has a requirement for real-time response and is also itself designd for bounded-response-time. Ignoring drivers for the moment, your typical desktop application does not have a need for a bounded response time. Desktop applications typically do not fail due to a dialog box being popped up a few milliseconds late. The underlying drivers, on the other hand, do tend to…
A great many people work with audio or want to work with audio, and Windows and OSX are lightyears ahead of Linux in terms of ease of use and overall quality.
You'd think the PulseAudio fiasco would have improved the situation, but I believe the developers thought as you did, and so built a system that's woefully encumbered with latency. Jack improves the situation WRT latency, but it comes at the cost of an altogether brittle and broken integration with PA, and thus with all major Linux desktops.
Bounded response times may not be needed for your word processor, but there's plenty of folks out there who would be better served by it. Hell, I'd love a snappier editor on account of predictable response times to keypresses.
All I want is an OS that has as few of the weaknesses as possible and all the best things about all the current major operating systems; examples: Flagship gaming support from Windows, Stability and flexibility from Linux, and Design principles from MacOS. Each of those three operating systems have some weaknesses that makes me jump between them quite often. Things like: Forced updates in Windows 10, certain lack of…
Well, this is very similar to the Haiku project's goals, though of course on many of these fronts we're only partway there. Care to come join us? :)
Split the OS into different services. The file system, the run-time (EXE) management system, the UI manager, the coordinator, etc. For one, you could mix and match and pick the best part for your needs. That's a more webby and cloudish view of things, I would note. I do agree our file-systems need to be more RDBMS-like. I'd like to see "Dynamic Relational" experimented with more. You don't necessarily need to pre-wir…
All I want is an OS that has as few of the weaknesses as possible and all the best things about all the current major operating systems; examples: Flagship gaming support from Windows, Stability and flexibility from Linux, and Design principles from MacOS. Each of those three operating systems have some weaknesses that makes me jump between them quite often. Things like: Forced updates in Windows 10, certain lack of…
> Stability and flexibility from Linux I might have been using linux wrong. Because as a daily driver media consumption device, it has been anything but stable. I suspect it is because it was a laptop with a discrete graphics card, which for some reason completely trips linux up. > Forced updates in Windows 10 I think this has been solved in a recent update
I have been running Linux daily at home because it's been rock solid for years on my home laptops. And that has involved plenty of media consumption.
I used to dual boot, but on the latest I couldn't untangle Windows from 100% disk usage and failed Windows Updates -- this on a laptop that was literally a few weeks old. So long, Windows.
Split the OS into different services. The file system, the run-time (EXE) management system, the UI manager, the coordinator, etc. For one, you could mix and match and pick the best part for your needs. That's a more webby and cloudish view of things, I would note. I do agree our file-systems need to be more RDBMS-like. I'd like to see "Dynamic Relational" experimented with more. You don't necessarily need to pre-wir…