A New Kind of OS

trader writes "OSWeekly.com discusses a possibility of futuristic OSes with both negatives and positives. From the article: 'Imagine if you will, a world where your ideas and perhaps, even your own creative works became part of the OS of tomorrow. Consider the obvious advantages to an operating system that actually morphed and adapted to the needs of the users instead of the other way around. Not only is there no such OS like this, the very idea goes against much of what we are currently seeing in the current OS options in the market.'"

Comments

It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux

[ackthpt]

Consider the obvious advantages to an operating system that actually morphed and adapted to the needs of the users instead of the other way around. Not only is there no such OS like this, the very idea goes against much of what we are currently seeing in the current OS options in the market.

I don't know about the parent, but when I build a kernel I don't just default to everything. I build for what I'll need. If that changes significantly then I'll do another with different options and settings.

While it may seem novel to "morph" to what's currently needed, it's not really so revolutionary an idea. It once was that operating systems cleared out unused libraries from memory (rather unlike the way Windows behaves, by loading 385 MB of junk you just might need during a session) and dynamically adjust the amount of processor priority and time (Priority and Run Burst) each task is assigned as needed depending upon system load, etc. Some things appear to have gone backward as we've got more dependent on ooh, shiny! features, whistles and bells.

Maybe like NASA digging up how they once did the Apollo Moon missions, to relearn, it's time for some of the people who do operating systems today to look back at how we did things 20-30 years ago.

Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux

[Fordiman]

"It looks like you're trying to write a slashdot post..."

Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux

[Dhalka226]

I presume the "Read the article" option would be permanently grayed out?

Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux

[Sinryc]

See? It needs to be made easier?

Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux

[radarsat1]

Normal people can't do that. I can't program worth shit, and I don't even know how to mess with the Kernal. They mean an OS that changes with you, without you having to do it with coding. If Linux could do that, it would be MUCH better.

You know, as a programmer, I get really tired of people suggesting ways to program computers "without doing any coding". That's where BAD things come from. That's where "dynamically hiding menu items" come from, so you never know where things are. That's where "visual programming" comes from, so you're staring at a screen full of boxes and lines with little to no organizational structure.

No. If you're gonna program a computer, learn how to program. The CS field as a whole apologizes for the fact that computers are hard. They are complex machines. Unfortunately it is not always easy to get them to work they way they should, or the way you want them to. But that's life. If you're not willing to learn how to program, you should be willing to learn how to use what other people have programmed, or learn how to write specs and make intelligent suggestions to the community. But this bullshit about "intelligently adapting the OS to a user's needs" is just asking for trouble. It's asking for "programming" without actually asking for any "design" or "specifications". It will end up being crap.

The fact is, making something "user friendly" means making the front-end more simple -- and thus making the back-end more complicated. But this complexity always eventually compounds and compounds until the end user can't understand what's happening and gets confused. In the end, we learn that computers are easier to use if you understand the back-end, and that can only happen if you use a minimum of metaphor. That is-- a straight-forward system that is obvious and transparent.

The mistake that Windows and many GUI systems have made is in trying to HIDE the system in metaphor. It always backfires, because although a transparent system may be harder to learn, it is far, far easier to deal with once the learning curve has been climbed. And since we've discovered that even the simplest metaphoric GUI requires "training", well.. you may as well train the end user how it actually WORKS instead of trying to hide it from them in a bubble of "interface".

Of course, that's just MHO. Though I believe Neal Stephenson agrees with me.

(My apologies to the parent. My comments aren't really directed at you, per se, I just get tired of people suggesting that computer programming should be effortless. Computer using should be easy, but programming is programming, if you know what I mean.)

Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux

[ScuzzMonkey]

I don't disagree with you entirely, but you can certainly understand that the line between using and programming has become blurred over the years, and not always with such negative outcomes. After all, in the beginning, everything was programming. Your argument could have been applied to someone just wanting a simple word processor back in the punch-card and teletype days.

Things have obviously changed quite a bit; you don't have to be a programmer to get WYSIWYG editing and print output anymore. It may not seem like it from here, but there are probably a lot of functions that most people consider "programming" that will fall into the same category at some unspecified point in the future. All that programming does is simply interface with the machine at a slightly more complex level than the average user. We're just talking about improving the interface to the point where some things, which now require "programming", will simply be "using" instead... and programmers will move on to more complicated arenas.

Macros or mail filters or Netflix's recommendation system are all ways that average users basically program computers today without any hardcore CS education. Ten or twenty years ago, they would have required such a background to accomplish the same tasks, but no one really considers it "programming" today; there is no reason that many other functions that we currently think of as programming won't become similarly easy or transparent.

There will always be the wizards responsible for writing the code that puts those things into place, and so that's where I agree with you--if you want to be a coder, go learn to code. In that sense, programming will always be programming, but I think the common definition of the word is a necessarily moving target.

Re:It's like nothing we've seen .. since Linux

[Jeremi]

The central problem I see with this adaptable OS concept is the fact that those who are programming the adaptability will not have any idea what the average person considers intuitive, or what the average user truly wants from their OS. One of my major gripes with Micro$oft is that their products always seem to think they know what you want better than you yourself do.

Indeed. In fact, Microsoft developed the very feature this article is describing, and they named it 'Clippy'. The rest, as they say, is history :^)

Where's the beef?

[AKAImBatman]

Must be a slow news day. I read through the entire article and I didn't find anything substantial. He spends 6 paragraphs on the first "page" explaining how cool (and "weird") it would be to attach adaptive intelligence to our workflow. (His example is, what if the computer knew when NOT to bother you with email?)

He then goes on for another 5 paragraphs just to tell us that Evil Corporations(TM) could misuse the data about our personal preferences against us. (Shocker, isn't it?) So we might as well forget the whole idea, because the Bad Guys(TM) have it in for us.

*Sigh*

I suppose I could plug my own Linux Desktop Distribution of the Future article to fill space and provide something substantive, but then I'd be accused of shameless self-promotion. So instead, I'm going to bed. 'Night all! :)

It's been done (sort of)

[TimmyDee]

This sort of "adaptive learning" for applications has already been done, albeit in a limited and utterly frustrating way courtesy of MS Office and their magical hiding menus.

As a Mac user who has to interact with PCs quite often at work, I find this not only not helpful, but completely obnoxious. I realize this is probably due to MS's fairly awful learning algorithm, but I think the lesson here is that it's going to take a long, long, long time before anything like this can make its way to the desktop without pissing off 50% of the users. Or more.

Tedious...

[applix7]

The OS is just a hardware multiplexer. Anything above that level is called an application.

Futuristic OS?

[eclectro]

I have seen it, and it's called LCARS

This is what I want in a future OS

[Travoltus]

More control of my computer by me, instead of by someone else.

I keep hearing about stuff like "all your base are belong to thin clients and remote servers" whenever someone mentions the future of OSes and that deeply disturbs me, especially the part about remote storage of data and subscription based access to remotely hosted apps. Forget morphing; I would prefer changing my OS settings as I please. In fact, give me OS the option where I can save my settings to a profile and then load up a profile to fit what I'm doing.

I'll pay more for having everything on my hard drive, under my control, without any need to phone home to authorize further usage of my media, software or OS. Unfortunately we the sheeple are being herded towards the digital corporate nanny state where the corporations decide what we'll get and these little heuristic tricks the OS of tomorrow will do for us, will give us the illusion that we have control.

Funny how it is that to get the kind of extra value I desire, I need to actually pay less. Ok, so I'll purchase a support contract, does that count as "paying more"?

Hate them! Hate them! Hate them!

[khasim]

This sort of "adaptive learning" for applications has already been done, albeit in a limited and utterly frustrating way courtesy of MS Office and their magical hiding menus.

Yes! And I am somewhat annoyed with them.

One of the FIRST things I do is go and turn of "Use personalized menues".

Hunting for the widget the FIRST time was annoying enough. Why would I want to hunt for it a SECOND time? I have already learned where it is the first time.

Not to mention that I'm usually doing at least 3 different tasks at once.

If you want to improve the OS "of the future", then START with a reduced set of commands and allow the user to choose what level s/he is comfortable with. Do NOT move items once they've been learned.

I think we'll see more specialized OSs

[PIPBoy3000]

For example, users will see flavors of the OS that are secure, fast, web-based, all-inclusive, or geared towards some specialized function such as controlling a robot or doing scientific calculations. Already you see Linux forks all over the place, just for this reason. I think the trend will continue down that path - an OS for every need.

Imagine...

[Venik]

...an operating system that actually morphed and adapted to the needs of the users...

Users? Aren't those the guys who always need their passwords reset and profiles restored? It already morphed and adapted and became Windows. We have only ourselves to blame. In Soviet Russia OS does not adapt to users; users adapt to... Oh, wait.

Good ideas

[ThousandStars]

The problem with articles like this is that they're filled with highfalutin and banal platitudes but low on nitty-gritty details about how one could actually construct the OS of the future. Look, I'd like "an operating system that actually morphed and adapted to the needs of the users instead of the other way around," but what the hell does that mean, exactly? And, once you've decided how it means, how are you going to implement it?

If those questions had answers, someone would already be writing the "OS of the future." Sadly, at least in present and near-future technological terms, those questions don't have answers, and so they'll remain in the world of hand waving prognostications about some techno-utopia.

Nothing to see here, move along.

[4D6963]

This article sounds like articles from 1990 about the house of 2015, you know, the ones talking about how saying "light" will turn light on, how you will check and reply to your video e-mails from your living room big screen TV well you know.. just like Back To the Future II.

My point is, I don't think you'll really see or even want a self deciding or modifying OS, even if the idea sounds cool. Mod me down for this if you want, but I think this whole article is just some nearly-worthless futuristic rambling, even if it's got some interesting ideas, don't pay attention.

Turning the computer inside out

[caseih]

Almost since the inception of computers and then later modern OS design we've been trapped in a paradigm that although mirroring some aspects of the real world (the desktop, tools, etc), is quite backwards from other aspects. I think it is time we ditched some of these decades old concepts. For one the concept of an "application" has to go. It's an outdated and locks us down and restricts what we can do. See it's not about the applications; it's about the data. The data is the most important thing. Data should not be imprisoned in an application or even a series of compatible applications. Rather than the application being the focus of our OS and UIs, we should make the data, or the "document" be the focus. Instead of applications we have smaller, simpler, tools that can be applied to the documents (data objects or whatever). Common tools can work equally well on like data objects no matter where they reside. A spell checker would spell check anything that is text. A pen could draw on anything that is a drawable (a surface of some kind). If you needed a better pen, you'd buy a better pen that would work on the same surfaces as the old one (but in a better way perhaps). Everything would be document-centric with the concept of, perhaps, tool palettes or something. But it would be very modular and loosely coupled. The irony of loose coupling is that it could lead to the integration of widely differing sets of tools. For years Microsoft has tought us that to have good integration between the various tasks (word processing, spreadsheets, etc) we need a tightly intergrated application. This is false. We really need just open document objects that can support a variety of types of data and the tools to work on them. The OS becomes the app and *everything* is then integrated, but in a more open and extensible way. Of course this dramatic shift would lead to the demise of many major software houses until they can learn to adapt to the new way of doing things. But in the end the OS gets out of the way and lets us *work*.

If some of these concepts sound familiar, it is because they are not new. Apple and IBM once talked about this in their Taliget (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taligent) project which died. Unfortunately while we talk about technologies like OOP, they really haven't moved very much beyond languages. OSs are modular and even object-oriented to a degree, but they haven't quite arrived at the things I describe yet. Having the KDE libraries being object-oriented and manipulatable over RPC and DCOP is a step towards a possible document-centric future.

The Future OS isn't an OS, really...

[rickb928]

It's a Hypervisor.

Your applications provide (or are provided with) enough OS foundation to function in the limited virtual machine they live in.

The Hypervisor manages the hardware, inter-application communication, networking for each, and of course picking up the trash and keeping everything polite.

Apps only see the shared resources the Hypervisor permits.

But most important, two features:

  - Each app gets the OS features it needs. My word processor may not need the same things the database needs, nor the e-mail app, nor the music player. So the OS for each app is lighter and nimbler.

- Each app is restricted in how it interacts with other apps. No more OLE, DDE, much less opportunity for the backdoor/under the hood shenanigans we call worms, viruses, trojans, and 'badware' (ick, stupid name).

I saw an article describing this and promptly lost any way to find the FRAKKING ARTICLE! Did anyone else, and where the heck is it? I thought it was *here*, on /.

Grrrrr....

But I love the idea. It ain't really new, but it's clever.

rick

A new kind of Girlfriend

[Heir Of The Mess]

Imagine if you are sitting there playing Halo. After stopping to go grab a coke, your girlfriend walks into the room asking you if you'd like her to roll into adaptive mode. You say yes and she begins to learn, as you play, what your needs are.

You go to resume your game again after the coke and almost immediately, you find that the your girlfriend seems more quiet and responsive to your needs. Out in the kitchen, she is out there preparing a virtual smorgasboard of all the food and drink you need the most. No longer are you being forced to locate old cheese snacks from some resealable container. No, instead your girlfriend has done the work for you with no interaction on your part whatsoever. Sounds interesting? Just wait, it gets weirder

During the course of your gaming, your girlfriend has already learned from previous experiences that you do not like to be bothered with request for attention when working on specific missions. It's not so much the game being used mind you, rather the type of "work" being done at the time.

An important sms from your brother with his score comes in along with a number of less important family messages. Thanks to Brandy X's new attitide, the only sms you are alerted to is the one your girlfriend knows will be critical. Even though the other less important sms are coming from the same person, your girlfriend understands how to respond for you, just the way you prefer.
....

What hogwash

[ClosedSource]

A CLI is no more "the system" than a GUI, it's just another abstraction. Most black-and-white movies were made that way because it was the best that could be done, not because the filmmaker thought it was more artistic. In a like manner, most OS's of the 70's used a CLI not because it was a "minimum metaphor", but because it was the only practical option at the time.

Re:What hogwash

[radarsat1]

I'm sorry, what? Where did I mention anything about the CLI?
I certainly did not mean to imply that there's anything wrong with a GUI. But there IS something wrong with dynamically hiding parts of a GUI based on some unspecified learning algorithm.
Do you understand what I mean?
Computers should be transparent and obvious, THAT is what makes them easier to use, not artificially messing with the interface to pretend the "hard parts" don't exist. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't be able to use the mouse to interact with them. It just has to be designed well -- meaning everything accessible in a logical manner, whether it is through the keyboard or the mouse.

My OS will learn from past mistakes

[Jacer]

User, From your usage history, it seems to me that you like bloated software, spyware, torjans, viruses, worms, and other malware. I've take the liberty of installing all of these with the latest features. I've also removed all productivity software, as my records indicate you were failing out of school anyway. Regards, Your new-age OS.

Re:My OS will learn from past mistakes

[DavidD_CA]

Dear User,

A review of your web browsing history reveals a preference towards redheads. For your convinence, the following actions have been completed:

  - Your desktop background has changed

  - Your password has been changed from "brittany" to "lindsey"

  - Your Match.Com Profile has been updated

  - Your wife has been alerted

  - NetFlix has confirmed shipment of "Porn Wars 3: Revenge of the Angry Redheads"

Thank you,

NewOS

Here's How That Works

[Greyfox]

First you find a person who can program the computer. You tell him what you want in English and give him a bucket of cash. Then you cross your fingers and hope that he was worth a bucket of cash. He goes off and writes a program based on what you told him. If neither you nor he were on crack at the time, you might get a system that approximates what you wanted it to do. You then use what he made for you to make two buckets of cash, at which point you can get two more programmers to make a computer do something else that you want it to. It's a very user friendly system, really...

Re:Other users?

[admactanium]

My major concern with such a system (besides the obvious privacy ones touched on in the article) is what happens when some other user sits at my comptuter uses it for a while. Would the "adaptive engine" or whatever be smart enough to figure out that there was someone else there or would I have to reset my settings and have it relearn everything?

sort of how your tivo starts to think you're gay because you're girlfriend keeps recording oprah?

TFA was completely worthless. besides the whole "big brother" strawman the author sets up, there are so many other issues that are simply not addressed. he uses a silly example of having the computer learn that you don't like to be bothered with emails while working on a video editing project except for "critical emails". well, how does the computer "learn" this behavior? if you don't check your mail when you edit video, you're not likely to find the "critical" email. thus, the computer doesn't understand that an email from "bob my client" is somehow more important than an email from "my nigerian ancestor who is also a prince." if you DO check your email during your video editing session, i suppose the computer would think that you like to be bothered with your emails while you're working on video.

then you have to factor in the complexities of whether or not editing video is in the same importance category as photo retouching. and is that also as important was writing a letter? i think i'd rather my computer let me be the judge of whether or not an email is important to me and when. besides, there's no easy way for the computer to know if i'm doing "entertainment work" (in my case, farking a photo) or "work work" (retouching photographs for publication).

also, as anyone who's used any sort of "learning technology" like voice recognition or hwr, we all know there's a long and frustrating process to getting the software to work even passably well. so i guess the first six months or so of your new system you'll have your computer making all sort of bad assumptions about your workflow and deciding to hide or highlight certain functions in your apps. while working within a tradition WIMP methaphor might not be the theoretically most efficient way to get work done, it's at least generally consistent. which, in turn, probably makes it the most efficient.

if i need a tool, i want it to be where i left it. i don't need my full set of hex keys as often as i need my cordless drill, but i sure don't need any magic gnomes running hiding all my hex keys and replacing them with my drill (which i already have a place for).