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25 Years After DOS - Lessons for Linux?
E IS mC(Square) writes "Microsoft is planning to celebrate 25 years of DOS. An article at ReallyLinux discusses what lessons Linux can learn from the history of DOS. The article begins with 'What can the Linux world learn from Microsoft's past 25 years of unique experiences and domination?', and ends with 'Only question now is not if but when will Linux become the number one OS on earth?'" From the article: "First, we must admit openly once and for all that the 'best solution' is not always the 'most used solution.' There are few who would be foolish enough to argue that back in 1981 PC-DOS was the best solution. There were obviously a number of choices. PC-DOS was the least robust, the most temperamental, and arguably not very compatible with the IBM hardware and BIOS it was sold to work on. Yet, somewhat like the odd but obvious dominance of the VHS over BETA, this simple, cheap OS stole the show."
In other news the bacteria E.Coli is celebrating a glorious million year aniversary as the intestinal parasite of choice when it comes to sudden, explosive diarrhea.
Seriously, the only, and I mean ONLY good thing about dos was when you programmed for it, it got the hell out of the way and let you at the hardware. Software got full control of the machine at execution, giving great performance (which mattered at the time) and more reliable software. The only downside was a complete lack of library infrastructure for functionality sharing beyond simple io. Well that and the whole "ssh! pretend its a 8Mhz 8088" real-mode limitation.
The first rule of USENET is you do not talk about USENET.
... best solution' is not always the 'most used solution.'...
I'm wondering if this couldn't be explained by evolution theory where the best adapted to environment survive, not the "best"
There were obviously a number of choices. PC-DOS was the least robust, the most temperamental, and arguably not very compatible with the IBM hardware and BIOS it was sold to work on. Yet, somewhat like the odd but obvious dominance of the VHS over BETA, this simple, cheap OS stole the show.
A more apt comparison I have not seen. In the end, both were about marketing---the inferior product had better marketing strategies pushing them. Both were championed by groups whose main selling point was that it was "good enough" to do what you wanted, but without you having to pay out the nose for more proprietary solutions.
796409 and 1!
Factor it!
Well, what do you know. It is prime! Guess a particular AC just woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.
I think it'll really start taking off on the desktop when there's a truly plug and play Linux distro aimed at corporate Windows desktop user. Firefox and Thunderbird and Open Office etc. bring it much much closer, but as long as Word documents still open up a little weird and the fonts look ugly as hell and printing always needs a little massage and sound cards and video cards aren't perfectly supported and UNIXy warts keep showing through and there are still little usability and interface issues -- this is what I mean by plug and play -- it's not going to take off.
I don't mean this to disparage the work that has been done in this area -- it's gotten so much better in the past 5 years, and it will get there probably in the next 3 or 4, but until you can pop in a Linux CD and have most Windows users not really be able to tell the difference (yes, it's getting closer), there won't be the exodus everyone's been expecting.
-fren
"Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?"
Kde and Gnome look a lot like very pretty versions Windows 98.
No idea what version of KDE you are running. I think it looks earily close to XP On this page you can compare. It says Ubuntu and SUSE, but is more like Gnome and KDE next to XP.
To make Linux really cool
Why would Linux need to be cool? And because of F/OSS all aplications created for Linux will be available for Windows or anything else.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Windows 95 came just enough later to hit the first real wave of internet usage - IBM was just a hair too quick to take advantage of it.
A fine is a tax you pay for doing wrong and a tax is a fine you pay for doing all right.
Sorta. OS/2 had dial-up PPP support, but if you wanted any form of networking over Ethernet/Token-Ring, it cost a whole lot extra.
Crap, and I got was a lousy Jacobsthal number.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
It was not just simple, but darn simple and made it possible for the genius and the technophobe to achieve the same results: operating a PC. That's sort of exactly the problem. An ideal OS should allow a genius and a technophobe to achieve different results (even if it does allow the technophobe to operate a PC)...
Telltale Games: Bone, Sam and Max
If anything would serve as a disincentive to someone for porting Rosegarden to Windows it would be its usage of KDE. The amount of code that uses ALSA and JACK is trivial in comparison, and frankly there's nothing about ALSA that prevents a port of the program to target DirectX. Creating an ALSA API on top of Win32 would be trivial if not pointless; Windows basically has a much better media interface.
Further there are rather few syscalls, and looking them up is trivial. Unless you're opting to forego libc, you're not going to even provide a challenge. For that matter if only a handful of parts of the program are so obfuscated, it might be more worthwhile to just write them from scratch. You're not even talking days of work.
I'm somewhat puzzled by the claim that anything of this sort has paid your rent. I don't even think you're a programmer. If you are, you don't sound like a particularly knowledgeable one.
That's one of the rules of Slashdot at work, actually: you can increase your chance of being modded up by including lines like "I know I'm gonna get modded down for saying this, but..."
Of course, you still don't (usually) get away with really blatant flamebait or obvious nonsense, but generally, it works.
I also know that I myself will get modded Offtopic now for saying this, but I think it's an interesting observation with regard to how Slashdot works.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
Converting a userbase of idio...err... average users to linux will almost certainly introduce viruses. No amount of technology will prevent fools from being ingenious.
On the other hand, greater amounts of users would also make the linux market profitable, bringing in more drivers, applications, games(!) and commercial support.
Before that ever happens, however, you'd need to have the Linux dumbed down to something that treats you like a drooling, brain-damaged four-year-old before the mainstream would switch from windows xp.
And of course, the average drooling, brain-damaged four-year old can't compile from source, now can (s)he? And too many options are just confusing for the user, only a small percentage of people use more than the top-3 options. Differences between boxen? Complicated. We need to standardise everything to the average needs! Etcetcetc, you know where this goes.
The bottom line is that we, slashdot readers, probably make up for a large part of that "small percentage".
I *want* Linux to provide options that would confuse a luser.
I *want* terminals that look scary to lusers.
I *want* an editor a luser can't possibly use.
I *want* to edit the kernel source, fine-tune it and then compile it myself.
Almost everything we love about Linux, leaves the average user puzzled and confused and is thus incompatible with a large user base.
Whenever intelligent, but otherwise computer-illiterate, friends are over here and seem puzzled by my computer, I avoid talking about computers and Linux. It's impossible to make them understand and even if I could *make* them understand (obligatory cattle prod reference omitted), is it worth the trouble? Converting them would only make me their tech-support slaves.
It's in my interest to keep the mainstream away from Linux.
I think there is something to what you are saying, but you are missing a key point: back in the early 1980's, IBM had a solid reputation as a "serious" computer manufacturer. The old trite phrase, "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." was reality. Apples and Commodores and Ataris were "toys" no matter what their spec's were.
That was the reason for the initial success of the IBM PC, at a time when the Apple II was the clear leader in applications.
Of course, within a couple of years, we had 1-2-3 and Wordstar, and cheap IBM clones with ever-faster processors. Meanwhile Apple piddled around with a 1 MHz 6502 on the II line, the Lisa and Mac were too radical for business types, Commodore and Atari couldn't understand anything but games, and Visicalc experienced death by lawsuit. And then your line of reasoning took over.
There is no doubt Bill Gates has a big heart and really wants to help people and the world situation. Astrologers have been predicting this for over 20 years too. Few have taken the time that he has to raise funds and work it out.
However, the problem is that this culture isn't propagated to the business world. We need more human values in the business world, because frankly, the rat race and hunt for future pleasure and money (which never gets here NOW, it's a carrot in the future), is de-humanizing.
So Bill Gates is like Janus. He has two faces. I think people like him needs to integrate these faces into a better whole.