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Leo Laporte On UNIX As the Future

Posted by Zonk on from the gaze-into-my-crystal-ball dept.

TractorJector writes "In a well-written interview with Mad Penguin, techmeister Leo Laporte (formerly of G4/TechTV fame) discusses his vision of the future of proprietary and open platforms: 'I think there's a lot of hope for Linux, although I don't think that Linux is the answer. I think that UNIX is the answer, in some form or fashion. It might be BSD, it might be Linux, it might be some third thing. But UNIX is such a well understood and smart to handle the issues that an operating system has to handle that it ultimately will prevail.'"

6 of 368 comments (clear)

  1. Unix is not the Future by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Unix is very flexible, and it certainly outlive Windows. However, its development will only take it through the near future. In the long term, the very idea of unmanaged code will disappear. As will the traditional concept of the Desktop.

    My predictions are:

    1. Desktops will be replaced with Browser simulations of a Desktop that can work anytime, anywhere.

    2. The traditional PC will then be replaced by a home server through which all activity will happen.

    3. Components for Music, Television, Desktop, and Video Game consoles will (in many cases wirelessly) interact with this server.

    4. The server itself will run an OS based on a managed code environment, making remote attacks difficult if not impossible. (Many Unix concepts would probably be reused in this system, but it won't *be* Unix.)

    That's my thoughts anyway. Sometime in the near future, I'll get them blogged down in detail. :-)

    --
    Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    1. Re:Unix is not the Future by AKAImBatman · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Citrix and X are far too low level. You need to think higher level. Think NeWS. NeWS would have creamed X-Windows in the market if Sun hadn't tried to keep it proprietary. Today, it's all happening again with Web Browsers. The difference is that X and HTML are complementary.

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
    2. Re:Unix is not the Future by AKAImBatman · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Perhaps the Network Stations were ahead of their time (i.e. like OS/2)?

      That was certainly part of the problem. But as an admin who ran Citrix, I can tell you that the other half of the problem was Microsoft. After Citrix gained some initial momentum from their NT 3.51 product, Microsoft took notice and refused to license 4.0. Instead, Microsoft worked out a technology transfer deal where they would produce NT Terminal Server. Citrix was "allowed" to install their superior ICA protocol on top.

      The result was that you had the initial price of Terminal Server, plus the price of each "Seat" (which was in number of users, not concurrent connections like Citrix), then the price of a full copy of Windows NT for each thin client that would access the system. If you wanted Citrix ICA, you then had to pay Citrix even more.

      The result was that Thin Clients ended up costing *more* than a set of PCs, effectively killing the market.

      Fast Forward to today, and we find that Windows now has the RDP client integrated and that Sun has been having reasonable success with their SunRay product. People are starting to become conditioned to the idea of thin clients. Wait a few more years for the WebApp revolution to shift all power away from windows and the time will be perfect to wretch the market away. ;-)

      --
      Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
  2. I agree by MacFury · · Score: 3, Interesting

    MacOS X and operating systems that can marry the power of a good command line with the ease of an excellent GUI shall inherit the earth. I'm interested in how the new windows command line stacks up.

  3. Control by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    PC as a thin client browser?

    I don't know about you, but that doesn't satisfy me and I think there will always be room for people who want a traditional desktop.

    As a gamer and just fan of controlling the computer in front of me completely without all this abstractness, I don't think that everyone is going to bite on this kind of stuff.

    I'm sure it has its place, but for everyone?

  4. Do One Thing Well by wild_berry · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Laporte says:
    "It's funny, because in the early days of UNIX, the philosophy of a program was, "do one thing well, and then pass the result along and interface with others." We've gotten to the complete opposite, which is do everything kind of okay, and interface with nobody. That was clearly a wrong turn. It's a response to market forces, not computer science forces."

    In the case where there is just the CLI and a list of programs spawned from a single input line, having a whole collection of tools that work well together is a must. But when you move to a graphical interface, so huge is the change in interface mechanics that the idea of the end-user setting up a chain of programs to run from one mouse click should be alien.

    The UNIX mentality of small, modular programs doing one thing well can still be maintained while a graphical environment is running, but his criticism that "do everything kind of okay, interface with nobody" can't be taken as criticism: it's just the way that GUI stuff appears to the user*. The computer system may be organised so that the GUI program you're using shares a lot of libraries and calls a lot of helper programs to do its work, but the user should only see the graphical interface, making his point moot.

    *: Maybe he means something else: that an environment where one program does only one thing, from ground to GUI, does not help people to tinker, develop and hack new features into the software.