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Leo Laporte On UNIX As the Future
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.'"
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
um os x?
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.
"In a well-written interview with Mad Penguin..."
;-)
"'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.'"
Yep, seems pretty well-written to me
OS X winning would be a huge step back for humanity. Mach is terrible and performs like ass.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Playstation, XBoxes, Mobile Phones, DVDplayers type of operating system are the future. The OS has been developped far ahead of most people abilities. The future is going towards less and less user control on this OS. Quite the opposite of UNIX.
\u262D = \u5350
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?
Talk about ignoring the elephant in the lounge room.
Drag n' Drop DVD Recommendations
Unix is fine. It works.
But....it's 40 years old! Wouldn't we all like to see a completely MODERN operating system? I know I would. Keep all the good stuff from Unix, update it, and throw out the bad stuff.
Of course, in the end, we'll still be stuck with Windows and MacOS and Linux because they're the only 3 that have developer support.
the future is the HURD. Even in the future, the future will still be the HURD.
HURD still has pipe dream status. Yeah, you can download it and use it, but given the rate of development of Linux, plus the investment by all of the large firms, plus the rising deployment rate, no one has the momentum to keep up.
Linux gains new ground every day, and it seems particularly hard to lose it. I'd say that the only threat Linux faces that is "serious" is te fact that it is the only threat Microsoft faces that is "serious" (Microsoft has said as much themselves). Expect Microsoft's moves to restrain against Linux to become legal ones, from lawsuits to "campaign contributions".
"Not only is UNIX dead, it's starting to smell bad."
--- Rob Pike
Always nice to read such well-reasoned arguments on Slashdot.
which is a BSD. which is really a Unix, though the people who made Unix into Unix(tm) won't let us say that
...is that back in the day when really only technically savvy types owned or operated computers, is when MS gained their stranglehold on the market.
We would like to think MS somehow bamboozeled the teeming masses, but that is BS. It was us they bamboozled with MS-DOS of all things.
We did this to ourselves.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
But, doesn't it worry any of you that Microsoft is currently doing their absolute best to squash out every other OS on the planet?!?
At the rate that they are strong-arming hardware manufactures, and this DRM bullshit, there may not be any hardware available to run this wonderful new system on!
I don't know about you, but that's about scarey concept to me!!
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Remember when they first announced opensolaris and everybody on slashdot was like "it's going to kill linux, bla bla...". Where is it today? It has a small handful of users and nobody really cares. Like it or not Linux has you pwned!
Meh.
But until Linux's GUI developers get a contract with Video Card manufacturers to produce better device drivers, or until GUI developers get their act together and make the GUI's faster and more user friendly, I'm afraid to burst your bubble.
Mac OS X is in a position no operating system has been in for 10 years. In 1995 when Microsoft brought out Windows 95, the operating system shattered the market because it was faster, prettier, and just plain cool. Now, OS X is in the same position. And they're going to have to screw up just as bad as Microsoft did with Windows to lose this creative lead.
On top of this, OS X is based on Unix, meaning that it's going to stay secure for a long, long time. As time goes by, bugs will be found and squashed, as no software is perfect, but UNIX by design has less issues with bugs, and the bugs are harder to exploit.
Linux has promise, but it's being held back by developers that simply don't care, because they aren't paid to care. They're doing their own, individual thing, and not working towards what a User wants, they're working towards what a developer wants. And if they took a minute to have an objective look at things, they're not too different. Mac OS X mastered this with XCode. And the only good IDE I've found for Linux is KDevelop, which requires me to install another set of GUI libraries, just to use it.
It's really past time to have Linux desktop-ready. It's time to replace X with something that renders faster, or to simply get Cairo and the other eyecandy, GL-rendering, bad-ass GUI systems up and running. You guys are five years behind Mac OS X, and about a year or so behind Windows in this department.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
Yes, but Linux effectively is UNIX, if not technically. It conforms to the POSIX standards for the most part, and it is these standards, and these UNIX philosophys (that Linux developers also adhere to) that will live on. Be that through the actual Linux kernel or not is really a side-issue.
At least that's how I interpreted the original article.
This sounds like one of those statements that future generations look back at and laugh.
One extremely important point to consider that everyone seems to ignore in the Linux vs. Mac debates... Linux is open source, Mac is not and never will be.
Meh.
Is it just me?
... in the article?!?
I cant find the quote: '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.'
It has spawned a discussion, but the linked article is much more about Open Source, than UNIX. Try search for 'hope for Linux'. Am I the only one who try to read the article before posting?
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
those who bet their $$ on this will get waxed by those who squeeze the most raw power out of their CPU's/hardware well into the future. The goalposts will just keep moving. But some well behaved apps will live nicely in JVMs/CLR's but the edge will be in real code. They have made claims about byte interpreters since the Series/1, VM, UCSD P-System, and Java.
If it were done when 'tis done, then t'were well it were done quickly... MacBeth
This is a distinction I do NOT understand.
The underlying code open or not is just the implmentation.
And some implentatoins have different switches on the commands.
Like BSD,Irix,SYS V5, didn't
Sticking to a design (what UNIX standard, POSIX?) is the bigger issue in my opinion.
But the end result is the same.
"Everything is a file" ( read,write,block or char)
Or is there really a major difference ?
This is my opinion based on what little I know and understand of the rumors and lies Thanks, Randal
This just proves that time IS, in fact, cyclical! Consider trends with fashion? The 70s came back, the 80s came back, the 90s are coming back... Remakes of movies and music, too... The same is true with computers! Remember how we used to have these big centralized machines that occupied cabinets or frames in rooms? And people used these things called 'Terminals' to interact with the 'MainFrame'... Now we call it a Server, and the Terminals "Thin Clients", but its the same thing! If this was such a good idea AND the future, why did we abandon it when the PC came out?
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.
-----
WTF??? I mean, really, come on now... WTF!
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
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.
OpenBSD (or something else) running on firewalls. Then eventually home servers brought to the masses.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
Isn't there going to be some sort of Unix failure in like 2038? How can it be the future if that's true?
Oh yes, a microkernel that up until the very last release of the OS had the so called "funnel locking model" of having one big kernel lock, then one smaller one for a corner of the functionality is good.
Their increases in lock granularity in Tiger simply moved the locks to subsystems. "Oh, I've got IO now... it's MINEEE"
In fact, I remember Anandtech (I think it was Anand) benchmarking it against Linux and found Linux to be *substantially* faster at anything that invoked the kernel.
Although this interview doesn't have the controversial tone of a John C Dvorak article, the content seems to be similarly well thought out.
Whoever corrects a mocker invites insult;
whoever rebukes a wicked man incurs abuse.
--Proverbs 9:7
If there is anything that drives me insane, it's people dribling on about what OS they use. Dude, it doesn't matter like it used to 20-30 years ago, we're past the OS era and what Linux or Unix really needs is some good quality, easy to use applications that complement a great graphics engine. Changing the OS is highly unlikely to change the success of a particular system, but changing how you think will...
Microsoft's platform is the standard because they focused on the business of the software products market. They promised something to independent software vendors and delivered it-- a single platform that any developer no matter how big or small can target. At the same time they pushed hard to get this platform on as many PCs as possible, breaking kneecaps along the way when necessary.
They achieved a form of write once run anywhere. In 1985.
It does not matter what's under the hood, it mattered that the ISV only had to write one binary and not have to spend the money supporting two dozen incompatible platforms. Even Java cannot match this (I know, because I have to deal with it).
Today there must be half a billion PCs that the ISV can generate one single binary for, and with that you've covered what, 90% of the market?
Linux needs to offer big marketshare (doesn't have) and good developer support (has, sorta) for ISVs to care about it, because Microsoft proved that most ISVs won't bother targetting more than one major platform.
One need only look over this book and do six months of desktop end-user support on Windows to see how insane an idea it is that Unix of any kind is going to win in the market over Windows as long as the Unix community remains ruled by sadomasochistic techie dweebs who love things based on how hard they are which is the exact opposite of the attitude that has allowed Microsoft and AOL to prosper and thrive in the common end-user market.
I love my FC3, but once again, don't mistake my technical abilities and the chance to flex them each day on it for meaning that everyone is going to take to it like a fish to water.
Apple's OSX most definitely is the best Unix-ish distribution ever conceived, built, and sold to end-users without any doubt in my mind. But do the Linux geeks get it as to why? No, they try mightily to avoid the BSD-ish ancestry of it and sit there wishing this beautiful *nix-style OS with such wonderful design and construction were a Linux distro.
Won't happen. Linux is dominated by the sort of people on whom it is still lost that ease of use, administration, and support are paramount over everything else for end-users. Windows XP and Mac OSX give them what Linux never will as long as the current crop of leaders and movers and shakers controls the Linux scene.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
I've met the man, he kicks ass. Shut up. Been an avid fan of him for the past six years and the guy is pretty smart.
the Political Inquirer
Why does this matter at all in the debate of who's better? While Linux has the ability to improve faster (more eyes on the code, yadda yadda), it has repeatedly failed to live up to the promise. Meanwhile, a few good coders who are getting paid to make their operating system better and to innovate at any costs are creating an operating system that's better and growing at a rate faster than Linux.
The fact that Linux is open source is it's Achilles heel and its most shining gem. Because it's open, not enough people are doing the nessicary work to get the operating system useable and competitive. But because it's open, the potential for anyone who wants to, is there.
In my eyes, OS X is open enough, having all of Darwin, most of Safari, and a bunch of other well documented APIs. Meanwhile it's competitors are all scrambling to try their best to beat it, but they simply can't match the momentum that's currently pushing Apple up the hill of beans Microsoft has accrewed over the past decade.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
If you notice.. for desktop computing anyway - the easier the UI (not even necessarily prettier) is, the more successful the OS is likely to be. I think when it comes to desktops of the future.. they'll always evolve - always borrowing heavily from the norm and making small leaps forward. UIs will have to look pretty and work the same way - not cutting out the same mundane steps to do smaller tasks, because Joe and Jane can't be bothered to remember multiple paths to a solution. When it comes to high end OSes - be they number crunchers, art machines or big honkin' servers - this is where Linux has the greatest chance of beating everyone - the users of these OSes care about productivity. Yes the UI will be important - but it'll be to make things more productive than to look pretty. Continuous streamlining of the OS and the UI - even if it means not having the same OS for all things - thus making linux the best choice since it can be built like (as someone mentioned a little while back) like Old lego sets ;).
_Vishal www.squad9.com
there is no reason why there will be one single answer, 'the answer'.
Mac toys and accessories blog
OS X could be ported to another Unix. There are rumours that Apple code is being made more portable (well, things like iTunes need to run on Windows too). NetBSD has an almost finished Mach emulation layer; when OS X is mainly an Intel platform other Unixes will probably do this too.
Apple are also making the non-Mach parts entirely FreeBSD compatible, rather than the slightly partial compatibility there is now.
OS X on Solaris might be an option but probably too much work. Migrating to FreeBSD is more likely.
Most apps dont address the Mach layer directly anyway, only the core system libraries.
A thirty year old operating system is the future of computing?
Of course Linux isn't ready for the desktop! But what they don't tell you is that Windows isn't either!
C'mon, Spyware, Adware, Numerous Bugs(My Soundcard driver crashed the other Day. My Microsoft Certified Driver completely crashed. A reboot and it worked, but that's unacceptable as it never has any trouble in *Nix). Crazy Service Packs, bad to no real support.
Hell, you NEED an Anti-Virus just to browse the net and check your email, even if you don't download and open any attachments. Just to protect you from the wild internet. You have to combine XP + Norton + Ad-Aware/Spybot S&D just to get a near usable PC. That's quite a stone's throw away from a desktop.
The problem with it, is Windows IS used as the desktop, even though it isn't ready for it yet. That means it is the standard, however, how often has your mother had to call you over to fix it? Linux wouldn't require the same thing, especially if all they want is browsing and email. They're quite matched at that point. But no, Linux isn't ready. Neither is Windows.
(I can't speak of OSX, I don't actively use it)
What does it matter if Linux, FreeBSD or OSX winds up on top? The important thing, is that ideas like freedom, the GNU and GPL, Open Source, and individual liberty survives. Right now, that is the biggest threat.
What we need to worry about is stuff like TCPA destroying our freedoms of speech and expression. Worry about that before whether or not we worry about whether our favorite OS becomes the leader. If we don't take that threat seriously, it won't matter what OS Comes out on top bcause we won't be having this discussion.
Unix in the backend, handling all computery stuff(services, servers, etc).
A nice, pretty GUI up front(Macintosh, Windows, whatever you like), that grandma can use.
IIRC OSX does this to an extent already.
Thus, the reverse mullet approach. Party in the front, business in the back.
So fans proclaiming he "kicks ass" is a qualification? On that note, I'd like to proclaim my love for Tucker Carlson and Bill O'Reilly on their insightful political science knowledge.
yep, and here's a perfect example of what you're talking about.
Slackware
It reminds me so much of the company I work for where endlessly arguing about how something is impossible and how change is absolutely the wrong thing to do is what we do in and of itself. Explaining to ourselves why we need to continue to safely fail is really what we spend almost all of our time and effort doing.
I celebrate mediocrity and I cheer that open source is finally in the boat with us!!!!!
Huzzah Huzzah!!
Some things never change, eh?
Yeah, whatever. Name-dropper.
Video games current drive the hardware market and have always had some very tight code.
While the avrage user may not have noticed it back in the Commodore 64 days frame rate was an issue. However getting 30 fps was very unlikely. It was more of getting enough frames so the human eye didn't see jerky motion.
The faster the hardware the smarter the AI. The faster the video card the better the detail.
Thats just the games.
The scientific community is always updating hardware and even worked out that it's better to delay a project a week to get new hardware than be stuck on old hardware. The newer hardware will get the job done a few months faster than the old.
Then you have the movie industry. CG movies and CG specal effects were the domain of super computers and high budget films. The new Doctor Who series is using CG effects and PC farms are being used to render CG movies.
There is something else to consider,
Linux can run on 2 meg ram and 1 meg disk.
It's hard to imagin anyone making anything with requirements lower than 16 megs total (memory and storage)
Just fab a X86 clone with 64 meg ram and 2 gig flash and you have an imbeded Linux on a chip.
(Didn't somebody do this already?)
Linux is already populare in servers and gainning popularity in the imbeded market.
(Totally acing out Microsoft. Linux compeates with the far more practical PalmOs.)
Linux isn't the only OS for this. BSD works pritty well.
And if you want to drop to the 6502 then Lunix (not Linux) is your only choice.
I don't actually exist.
I wonder why MS is working on a new command line at all.
Try comparing the old CMD shell in Windows to Bash...
Do people buy Xserves so that they can use the OS X command line? Do people run linux because they love staring at those grey characters on a black screen? No one really likes the command line... plenty of people get by with it, but it's obviously the most primitive computer interface. So why is Microsoft developing it? Do they really believe that *NIX users like their OS because of the command line?
People buy Mac servers precisely because they marry Unix/Linux based commandline power with the advantages of the slicker and simpler Windows GUI interfaces. Most Unix/Linux systems have a very good commandline toolkit but the GUI toolkit often sucks, on Windows this is the other way around. Yes GUI management interfaces have their advantages just like the Command line has its advantages. Alot of computer Geeks seem to believe that GUI tools are for morons but that is crap. You have to choose your tools based on the task you have to perform and sometimes the GUI tools are just better. When you want oversigth and have to deal with alot of information GUI interfaces like the one for MS IIS are very good. The problem begins when you gets stuck with some huge project like, say... migrating 800 websites from IIS 5 (Win 2000) to IIS 6 (Win 2003) with as little downtime as possible. If you do not have a REALLY good set of commandline utilities and scripts you will go mad doing a project like this with GUI management interfaces only. Microsoft is just waking up to the fact that GUI tools nice as they are can not replace the commandline completely and it has taken them far to long to make that realization.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
CP/M will rise again!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Consumer technology follows psychological factors, not engineer's logic. Hence we have iPods dominating the mp3 player market. It will also just be easier to just stick in well-known un*x and let managed code run on top of it. Not really secure, not the best way to do it, but its easy and time-saving and pointy haired managers will like it better than developing an in-house solution.
May i ask which three-letter acronyms you find meaningless?
Is that programmers like to develop for an open source system. It's easier that way, and if they release their code as OSS, it just keeps building. People always ask me, "How do I do X?" where X is a semi-difficult task. I always find myself saying, "Well, I'd do it with this program in Linux, it would take about 5 minutes. The windows equivilent, on the other hand, takes the afternoon to figure out and get right." If there are any moderately useful programs for windows, they are usually cheap payware or annoying shareware. The reason that UNIX/Linux/BSD/OS X will work is that you can do almost anything for free.
http://kde.sw.com.sg/food/worse_is_better.html
Un*x isn't the best solution. LISP machines like those from Symbolics were much better 20 years ago. I think VMS was more secure and reliable, also. Un*x will prevail because its good enough, not that its "the best"- New Jersey solution.
As the OS becomes less visible to the users, the dominace of a specific OS is no longer a sales argument. It will be more important to the vendors of the devices to have a customisable, stable and cheap OS on which they can put their polished wonderware.
...Of ZDTV Fame, not G4/TechTV
I miss the basement studio
"It's the little touches that make a future solid enough to be destroyed" --William S. Bourroughs
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I guess it's a pretty safe prediction to make, when all the major OSes in the market (windoze/OSX/Linux/*BSD) are POSIX compatible.
I am still waiting for L4 to take off any day now.
sure I'll have a sig.
Poor Leo confusing Unix falvours to the point of claiming that hey are not Unix.. Okay lets help the poor old geiser out: Unix Flavours: BSD FreeBSD MacOSX SOlaris HP-UNix Linux AIX Xenix BeOS .and many more..
Constrast this with how many up to date windows flavours..:)
Fred Grott(aka shareme) http://mobilebytes.wordpress.com
It might be BSD, it might be Linux, it might be some third thing
So, its either option A, or option B, or an option C which can be anything.
He has given himself quite a bit of leeway there.
If Marshmallows evolve into the dominant lifeform on this planet, his dying breath will be, I was right I tell ya!!! Its the third thing!!
(yes I RTFA and yes he really says that)
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
WTF?- meaningless 3-letter acronym. Sorry, I found that attempt at humor irresistable. Personally I'm bothered by two letter acronyms like MS, VB and IE.
The Anandtech benchmarks were useless. They benchmarked applications tuned for Linux on Linux vs. applications tuned for Linux on Mac OS X.
Ignoring the Apple-provided versions of the same applications tuned for OS X.
UNIX is such a well understood and smart to handle the issues that an operating system has to handle that it ultimately will prevail.
Leo, what the fuck are you trying to say, dude?
mstyne: real name, no gimmicks
The people who care about this are about 1% of the market, if that much. The fact is that OS X is open enough source. The foundations are open source. The graphics library (Quartz) and UI library (Aqua) are not. The apps are generally not. If being 100% open was so important, Linux would have taken over years ago.
If you care so much about having something like the OS X graphics and UI that is open source, then get involved with the OpenStep project.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Why does every UNIX article/interview/water cooler discussion have to turn into a fanboi flame war, with people flaming about how OSX is UNIX, and how MacOS already has all the needs of the desktop, etc, etc, ad inifinitum. As much as I love operating systems and product evangelists, the discussions are here are really starting to get out of hand.
::Gasp!:: even start doing it.
What would be nice to have people talk about would be the feasibility of the prediction that is being made, in reference to principles that are desired by the average computer user. Not how a current operating system already has all of these things, and thus should be considered the obvious future choice.
Someone already pointed out that the most technologically sound examples don't neccesarily make it in the industry, and this is illustrated time and again.
Let's start talking about stuff that actually matters, or perhaps
Read the only personal Runyon page out there.
Those that are fans of the screensavers can hear leo's new podcast at www.twit.tv.
Leo has been hosting call for help Radio and Television shows for almost 10 years. He's written a number of computer books. I respect his opinion more than a slashdot troll.
I was never a big fan of his Call for Help show on TechTV but when I did watch he seemed to be very bright. He answered Linux, Windows, and Apple questions. Why the hate?
He seems to be a big proponent of Open Source. His site is proudly release under the Creative Commons License. He recomends a number of open source projects on his shows.
I agree with the points you make but I'm unconvinced by the idea of a home server, at least, as we understand it today. My guess is it will prove to be more like a combination of a wireless broadband router and a Network Attached Storage device.. to provide simply DHCP configuration, authentication, connectivity and storage in a locked-down environment.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
One day, Steve Jobs won't be around any more and someone else without even a touch of his abilities will come in to run the company.
One day, Apple may well revert to the old Apple of the mid and late 90's.
Then what will you do with your "open enough" operating system?
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."
That looks like blue smoke to me. Sure, one day Steve will retire, and I'm 100% sure he won't leave without taking care of business before he leaves, and putting someone in charge to do the business the way he wants things done. Look at Microsoft for an example of that one.
Good job on the dramatics though.. "I'll get you yet Captain Planet!!"
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
You Canadians really are glutons for punishment eh?
Leo is just the dopier version of Bob Villa, who knows how they still get on TV... Well, Bob is starting to know what he's doing atleast.
Kind of. While I personally don't find OSX(Tiger) to be the high-performing, uber-intuitive, victoriously user-friendly OS people keep telling me it is, it's impossible to ignore Apple have created an incredibly successful, reasonably brand-loyal consumer base.
And I agree, they are in an advantageous position, however one stricken by a crippling glass ceiling.
OSX simply isn't the kind of platform nomadic OS it needs to be to reach ubiquity. Linux, being non-proprietary, has developed a talent for adaptability innately - arguably a the bulk of Linux kernel development itself is invested in sustaining this critical attribute. While some complain about KDE and Gnome not having the bells-and-whistles of OSX, Linux (if ever one can sum it's parts) has quietly been frying more important fish, and very wisely too.
Nowadays, it's increasingly hard to move data around a network without it being touched by Linux. Now phones, kiosks, ATM's and game consoles.. The word 'Linux', not being publically obliged to carry a brand, increasingly represents the set of robust and future-proof tools a given service provider deploys to get the job done. Now we're seeing it extend to public utility, government and administrative desktops en masse.
'Linux' simply doesn't appear on the kinds of brand-conscious radars we're used to using when tracking technology and culture, yet quietly continues to be the fastest growing operating system in the world. Apple however, is a company built on brand innovation, initially as the 'popular minority'; a vain, techo-arian multinational that has boldy engineered a bridge between the computer (as appliance) and the public space of popular culture. Here, the Apple brand is both a boon and an anchor, something to protect (not just any x86 machine), yet something to wear out (iPod).
In the context of popular operating systems, OSX is thus a social, yet exotic animal. As such it is desired as pet, but quickly dies when transported from it's natural habitat. Comparing OSX to others, outside the context of it's crippling architectural dependence, produces false and unrealistic prospects.
"I'm rooting for OS X, personally. It's funny, because I absolutely hated Mac OS = 9."
I find it neither funny nor odd. Back in the 80s, I couldn't stand the Mac platform - and its inflated cost - in comparison to the ST (and the Amiga). When both of those platforms ceased, I gave in and switched to the VHS of the industry, Windows, because it looked like Apple was nearing its end (back in 95/96). However, since OS X 10.2, I've really been rooting for OS X and Mac hardware in general.
Who knows? If Longhorn - excuse me, Vista - fails and Apple sells millions of Intel-based Macs in 2006, perhaps Dell, HP, Gateway and Sony will be forced to devote a large amount of monies to getting Linux up (or down, depending upon your perspective) to "average computer user" abilities and then the industry will once again pick up and innovation will return.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Sort of like Elvis. For better or worse, by virtue of POSIX compliance (sort of), even WinXP is 'just another Unix', just not a particularly good implementation. If the trade press didn't have pro-monopoly blinders on (thoughfully provided by the monopolists, and would be monopolists) they would have noticed that FOSS, through the mechanism of the BSD TCP/IP implemeention, not only out-innovated everbody else, it decimated the proprietary competion virtually extinguishing it.
He's a living, breathing commerical and he's pratically in bed with Apple... you should've heard him crying on his radio show after apple annouced the intel switch... something like: 'Biggest mistake, i'm sad to hear this, i don't think this is right...'
(I know what you're about to say but my shower radio is set to KFI AM 640 so i occasionally hear part of his show)
He knows just enough to do commericals on his radio show and will step over his own toes to do them, yet he's regarded by the media as "The Tech Guru"
Boycott Laporte!
Fine, I don't remember the article well enough to confirm or deny, so point conceded. But the differences in lock granularity are still *substantial*. Linux locks data as a rule (granted it wasn't always this way), and OS X, even with the "great advances" in Tiger locks subsystems. Hence, lock contention is higher. Spinning pinwheel of death.
3. Components for Music, Television, Desktop, and Video Game consoles will (in many cases wirelessly) interact with this server.
We are getting there: Orb Networks
Oh where to start? This intro is so misleading in so many ways.
Anyone who has noticed anything about computers has noticed that software is intrenched by the network effect; that is, you use a particular bit of software because your friends and colleagues do, and you want to be able to interoperate easily. Windows is a bit of software, and the network effect tells us that it's not going to go away unless Microsoft actively work hard to destroy their market. (This is possible - groups of people make mistakes all the time - but it's not likely.)
Excluding computer geeks, who are a tiny though influential minority, there are only two points where people change operating systems, and one is much less influential than the other.
Firstly, people will change OS when they change computers. BUT everyone wants to completely retain their existing investment in skills and software, so people make the minimum change for the maximum benefit. For most people this means that they are prepared to upgrade operating systems to a later version, but aren't about to change OS completely.
(To change completely the OS has to be 10 times better. That's a tall order since most OSes have incorporated the ideas of command line and GUI, and there aren't many fundemental breakthroughs floating about which can lead to 10x value. Anyone want to prove me wrong?)
The other point where there's the possibility of change is when there's a form-factor change. By that I mean computers physically change shape or function. It happened when mainframes gave way to minis, and when minis gave way to PCs. During the switchover period there's a lot of flux and it's anyone's guess who will come out tops.
But Microsoft recognise this as a serious threat to their business, and whenever a competitive model arises, they work overtime to crush it, whilst making sure that they can switch if need be. (Sensible strategy since it protects the value of their existing investments.)
When EO and GO where hot new ideas that looked like they were on an exponential upwards curve, MS used FUD, Pen Windows, and allegedly anti-competitive behaviour to bleed the idea dry. When thin clients threatened Windows, MS made sure that it was more expensive to use thin computing with Windows than it was to not. When MS figured that there were an awful lot of Playstations, each of which could easily be turned into a computer, they made sure that they had a competitive product so that they could take care of the market if it grew. And with set-top boxes, we have Media Centre edition.
There are two noteworthy cases where there's form-factor change. Firstly, there was a virtual form-factor change with the Internet where was a window of opportunity when the browser could have become the de-facto way of interacting with software, but Microsoft responded to the change fast enough and the opposition wasn't united. MS built IE which took enough share away from Netscape during the period of upheaval which meant that Netscape fell below critical mass for the network effect. This was as much Netscape's failre as MS taking it, because NS didn't build in mechanisms that re-inforced the network effect and they didn't keep providing developers with a better and better platform, whereas MS did, but at the same time made certain that it didn't get so good that it threatened the traditional software model.
The article touches on one area where there's a form factor change which threatens Windows - - cellphones. MS have followed part of their usual strategy - make sure that they own part of the market to fragment it, but also ensure that there's some retained value should there be a serious trend. Cellphone operators play a hefty part too - they don't really like the idea of having an open software platform, probably because they wouldn't/couldn't control it. So while every phone has an OS, only a small percentage of phones expose anything with any serious capability to developers and the user. And what is exposed is tightly controlled. And the platform
cli and gui continue to make many mistakes. The OS to fix these first wins my vote (even if it's M$):
In general, gui and cli have ignored one another for too long. Share some ideas!
You're so right! Laporte is exactly like Bob Villa... Who is far from Norm Abram!!
That is a fantastic comment, I love it!
More and more people use UNIX or Linux every day and don't know it. One example would be the Tivo. There are many many more examples of Linux being used in the embedded space. This is proof that UNIX or Linux CAN be made user friendly. There will ALWAYS be the Debian's, the Gentoo's and others for the real top end geeks, but lots of people CAN be comfortable with Ubuntu, Linspire and others. The sheer customizability of Linux is how this all can happen. Managed code can be run on top of UNIX and users will have to type a password or do some biometric security to install certain items. The modulairty of UNIX saves us from the hell of a integrated Windows. That does not mean that software will perform bad or every program will have a different interface...one CAN have a system that is LESS integrated, yet the componets work well. Just look at pipes, grep and regular expressions in UNIX. Things like these allow you to make it seem like desparate programs that were made by different people with different ideas can all work together. Small components working together hand in hand instead of giant monolithic api's will save the day.
Gorkman
I recall the days when computers didn't network very well at all. Even your IBM mainframes couldn't talk to your IBM PCs without installing some proprietary special-purpose product to make communication possible -- and they were both made by the same company. Once standardized networking began to emerge (IP networking) the industry changed. I do recall the suggestions that the PC could probably run some of the applications that the mainframe was running and how absurd the IT folks thought those claims were... it would never happen. And yet... it did happen. Once computers could finally communicate, a reason for open standards, open systems, and open software emerged.
Zealots like me like the idea of "openness", but I don't think Joe Average Consumer really thinks a whole lot about it. But... I do think that Joe Average does want "interoperability".
A common comment you'll hear from Apple owners is that they perceive their computer spends more time helping them do what they want to do rather than them spending all their time supporting their computer. Taken differently, these (mostly non-technical) people are really just saying that they don't want to care about their computer... they just want it to work.
So far, consumers do still need to "support" their Linux installations. Linux doesn't "just work". Windows still needs too much care & feeding... it doesn't "just work" either -- especially where security is concerned. Mac OS X seems to be the best at just working -- even for people who don't know what they're doing. Yes it happens to be Unix. Yes Unix has a more stable foundation than Windows. But we only know this because we're largely a technical community. Joe Average doesn't know this and doesn't want to know this. Most of them probably have no idea that Firefox is considered to be "open" and that IE is considered to be "proprietary". They run what they run either because (a) it was there or (b) their computer buddy told them that's what they should use or (c) that's what they learned to use at work or school -- and I almost forgot... it works with the sites they need to visit.
Open software tends to be more interoperable - so I think it's tends to slowly erode away at the market share of non-interoperable systems. But I think the real difference is that interoperability wins over non-interoperability... not that open systems win over proprietary ones.
Though I want open software to win out, I must confess that I don't believe the average consumer really cares a whole lot about it.
...and so does UNIX, from time to time.
If we mandated the use of fire-proof building materials, incredible amounts of damage to personal property might be avoided, but the costs of retrofitting the building industry are excessive.
But... if you absolutely, positively, cannot tolerate a fire, then you probably want a "VMS" house (if you don't mind writing your shell scripts in FORTRAN).
In the same way, object filesystems, system-wide GC, system-wide bounds checking, and permissions that support a more complex model than ugo would lead to fewer system cracks.
We don't do it because we're lazy.
Traditionally, typical users have very limited access in Unix while PC operating systems such as DOS, Windows (pre NT) and Mac OS (pre OS X) allowed the user to pretty much have complete control of the hardware. It seems to me that locking users out of the hardware is much more in line with the way that Unix traditionally works than the way that PC operatings systems have traditionally worked. The only difference is that instead of the root account being controlled by a BOFH that lives down in the ops center, it gets controlled by DRM chips.
This is probably one of the best posts I've read on slashdot for a month.
"Hi everyone, I'm not a technical expert, but I play one on TV."
> No one really likes the command line... plenty of people get by with
> it, but it's obviously the most primitive computer interface.
Speak for yourself, MCSE.
The command line is the most natural interface possible if you are computer literate. Think of it as comparing books to TV. If you are a literate person you might still watch TV to veg out and because it is a totally different medium it can do some things better. But even though seeing the Battle of Helm's Deep was hella cool, the books tell a much more detailed and better story.
Yes, graphical tools are handy for new users and even us old timers can use them for really simple tasks, but dependence on them should be avoided by those seeking mastery. UNIX is a language and you won't ever understand it until you reach a conversational level at the command prompt.
> Do they really believe that *NIX users like their OS because of the
> command line?
Yes, and you will pry it from my cold dead fingers. Command prompts, everything is a file, pipes, redirection. These things are what make *NIX what it is, any attempt to change that will be met with fierce resistence. See resource forks for an example of an idea the graphical dweebs try unsuccessfully to foist off on us every year or so for an example.
Democrat delenda est
Rex quondam, Rexque futurum.
In short thers's simply not, a more congenial OS.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
one day Steve will retire, and I'm 100% sure he won't leave without ... putting someone in charge to do the business the way he wants things done.
Like he did the first time, with Sculley?
Still, I agree with you in that I think it's ridiculous to judge Apple on what a future CEO might do. If we're going to take that train of thought, let's just assume that Microsoft will become entirely non-evil sometime next March as well.
± 29 dB
But until Linux's GUI developers get a contract with Video Card manufacturers to produce better device drivers, or until GUI developers get their act together and make the GUI's faster and more user friendly, I'm afraid to burst your bubble.
There may be some validity to this, however, it is very very easy to find video cards with great linux support and drivers - just buy nvidia. As for fast, user-friendly linux GUIs, where have you been, rip van winkle?
On top of this, OS X is based on Unix, meaning that it's going to stay secure for a long, long time. As time goes by, bugs will be found and squashed, as no software is perfect, but UNIX by design has less issues with bugs, and the bugs are harder to exploit.
Agreed, OSX foundation is solid, but so is Linux, for the same reasons.
Linux has promise, but it's being held back by developers that simply don't care, because they aren't paid to care. They're doing their own, individual thing, and not working towards what a User wants, they're working towards what a developer wants.
No idea where that bizzarre idea came from - the continuous incremental improvement in the linux GUI environment over the past 5 years, the user-friendliness, the eye candy, the easy customizability, all attest to a great deal of care.
And the only good IDE I've found for Linux is KDevelop, which requires me to install another set of GUI libraries, just to use it.
Hmm, kdevelop is certainly a good ide, but not the only good one, not by a long shot. I't's unclear what you mean by "requires me to install another set of GUI libraries, just to use it". OK, let me get this straight: You want to install a qt-based GUI, for creating qt-based apps, and you complain that you must have the qt libraries installed in order to use it? It's unclear exactly what your complaint is here. In any event, my installation of kdevelop consisted of checking the box next to "kdevelop", during the OS package selection phase of the linux install. That took what, a second or so? How could that be made easier?
It's really past time to have Linux desktop-ready. It's time to replace X with something that renders faster, or to simply get Cairo and the other eyecandy, GL-rendering, bad-ass GUI systems up and running. You guys are five years behind Mac OS X, and about a year or so behind Windows in this department.
FUD, I'm afraid. I use linux primarily (suse 9.3 ATM) but I also spend a lot of time on my wife's OSX box, and random expee and w2k boxes in the course of my daily work. I'm sorry, but I just can't see any reason for all the microsoft hype, I really can't. Where are the microsoft advantages you speak of?
OTOH, OSX is nice, but IMHO the interface preference is more a matter of taste. I like OSX better than any microsoft desktop I've seen, and the unix underpinnings are a huge win over the microsoft pc OS internals, but I actually prefer my suse linux desktop to OSX.
Ultimately, apple will capture some market share from microsoft, but the idea that OSX will kill linux is just silly.
I don't know quite what this is supposed to mean. OS X is directly based on OpenStep, which ran on a variety of hardware architectures. It has been shown that OS X is portable between x86 and PowerPC, and it is almost certainly portable to other architectures without much of a problem.
If you mean it is limited to using the Mach+BSD+IOKit XNU kernel, then this is probably not true either. The NetBSD Mach/Darwin compatibility layer can run Darwin programs including XDarwin. XNU is an interesting kernel - it trades performance for a few extra layers of abstraction which make developing it easier. If it had been started from scratch now, it would probably more closely resemble L4 HURD, but at the time it sacrificed many of the benefits of a microkernel in order to run at a reasonable speed on a 25MHz 68040.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
And I'm sure Aqua can run on Linux.
Of course OSX is portable to many target architectures, however it just isn't being ported. This is under duress of of Mr. Jobs, whose tactically retentive business agendas are exactly what I'm talking about above.
Five years to x86. Linux is only three times that in age.
This will always be the case for software one doesn't own (the right to modify and pass on), but rents, like OSX and Windows.
Else SCO will start asking for licenses from confectioners.
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
I think (but then I realised yanks write both with -se, so, as The Rock would say - it doesn't matter).
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
More clueless crap, for Unix to really be the future, it needs to get rid of its legacy bagage and truely become "well understood". Frankly a lot of people think they understand unix because they are stuck in a single process/text based enviroment mindset. In reality the "extensions" made to unix to support current programming models are full of holes.
When RAS, threads, async io, multiple processors, and may other things that really are the "future" (or rather the current state of the art) are well understood by the unix community they will understand what needs to be changed in the model from the 1970's the people claim is Unix. When that happens unix will be the future, but it won't be "Unix" as you know it.
Now for some more concrete examples. Lets start with a simple one. What does the system call "close()" do? Thats right, did you know it can fail? Whats the solution? Try again. Now think about what happens in a multithreaded enviroment with open() happening in other threads. I can't find a link to Linus's comments on this but they are ammusing. The bottom line is that in a threaded POSIX enviroment you have to write code that looks like (in psudo code to remove the specifics):
app_open(filename,...)
{
lockmutex(globalopenlock)
rc=open(filename,...)
unlockmutex(globalopenlock)
return rc
}
app_close(filehandle)
{
lockmutex(globalopenlock)
while (close(filehandle)!=EBADF);
unlockmutex(globalopenlock)
}
If such a simple unix concept as open/close is screwed up by threads, just imagine what happens when you write code to trap percise floating point exceptions, deal with async filesystem IO over an unreliable network, the list goes on. Basically unix is good for certain kinds of applications and absolutly blows chunks for other kinds. Everyone doing a lot of these things has tied themselves to a particular Unix implementation and uses system specific knowledge to solve the problem.
Damnit! The original poster was trying to make a sarcastic comment about unix! My whole point is that UNIX IS NOT A SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY. It has gained acceptance, and will continue to be a major factor in the future because IT IS GOOD ENOUGH. I also was hoping people would READ THE CLASSIC "Worse is Better" ARTICLE!!! UN*X WILL NOT BE SUPPLANTED BY SUPERIOR TECHNOLOGY IN THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE, and it has never been GODDAMMIT!
The AC is also just wrong about what killed LISP machines. That's made me angry.
Have you read the old "Worse is Better" essay?
I posted a link to it and rambled a bit a bout LISP machines, and I got replies from people who just didn't "get it." I hope more people in the future get a taste of using lisp, but I'm cynical about it ever getting out of a niche in the programming world.
I think that Common Lisp and Scheme are probably more popular now than they ever have been. A great deal of this is due to the essays of Paul Graham, who despite his faults has been an excellent evangelist for the Lisp family of languages.
Of course, what really interests me is the next step: the language which offers features no Lisp can. Is that even possible?
Ah, how the mac people forget rhapsody
http://toastytech.com/guis/rhap.html
Which I know runs on x86 because I have a copy.
Leo simply moved to Toronto.
No he didn't. He flys up to Toronto and films a bunch of episodes all at once. Then he flys back home.
I believe he's in Toronto for about 1 week per month.
Yeah... it's worse now than when he was on USA TechTV...
:/
It's kind of like all the irrelevance and inaccuracy of Dvorak, and all the excitement factor of Dave Chalk's old show, but with a very small set.
"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.'"
I think not, Leo. UNIX is of the past, and with its decreasing market share, and lack of mainstream marketing, it's not going anywhere but down.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I don't think the GUI-ness of an interface has much to do with it. There are already several programming environments (often aimed at children) that are based around the organisation and connection of graphically-presented blocks, each of which does some function. Some of them are designed to give lots of graphical and visual feedback about what's happening, and hints about why something is or isn't working. Command Line Interfaces are a neat and efficient way to do similar things, but they're not the only way.
If there's a problem, I think it's that most people who are general users of computers don't want to have to learn or understand how to chain things like this together. They're after much more immediate results, and usually more intent on dealing directly with their problem rather than wanting to learn how to construct a program in detail. I can sympathise with that -- often if I buy something as a necessity, without being really interested in it, I'll settle for something that's recommended instead of taking the time and effort to get or build one suited exactly to me.
Brilliantly insightful! Wish I had mod points (hint-hint for any who do).
The Linux desktop isn't going to take off in the first world. No chance. Now, developing countries ... I believe that's where Linux will make a dent.
Then, after a generation of new coders in these countries grow up with it, Linux will storm on to the desktop scene.
Until then, just watch it take over the server and smartphone markets instead.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
I don't support these eye-candy arguments. Aqua is one of the things I dislike most about my mac, and the finder is another strong contender. Integration is important and responsiveness, but eye-candy - well - I think it's counterproductive. I prefer gnome to any other desktop UI. If I could swap aqua for gnome tomorrow and still have the great java integration and application support that I have on the mac I would.
Believe with me, my saplings.
It is true that Sun seems to have made some improvements. Weren't they supposed to fix ufs with Solaris 10? DOn't get me wrong. Solaris pays a lot of bills.
Solaris scale better then the others and runs well on 64-way multiprocessor systems
This Linux box scales to 64 processors. So does This AIX/Linux box.
Slashdot: Where nerds gather to pool their ignorance
The same goes for all the other features you requested. All of those fits very well into UNIX if you really want them. The reason they aren't there is not because it can't be done, it's because people hasn't cared enough to implement it.