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Where Are Operating Systems Headed?
An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Dobb's Michael Swaine breaks down the question of where operating systems are headed. Among his teasers: Is Vista the last version of desktop Windows? (Counterintuitively, he says no.); Did Linux miss its window on the desktop? (Maybe.) And, most interestingly, are OSes at this point no longer necessary? He calls out the Symbian smartphone OS as something to keep an eye on, and reassures us that Hollywood-style OSes are not in our short-term future. Where do you weigh in on the future of operating systems? In ten years will we all be running applications via the internet?"
I think the author of the article is displaying a great deal of confusion over Operating Systems vs. Programming Platforms. Which is understandable. We've had the concept of "everything included on the CD is part of the operating system" idea drilled into our heads for the last decade or so. There has been little attempt to recognize how distinct different portions of today's "operating systems" actually are.
Consider for a moment: What is Debian on FreeBSD? Is it a FreeBSD operating system or a Linux operating system? Or is it a Frankenstein kitbash of both? The answer is, neither answer is correct. It is the FreeBSD kernel combined with the GNU Platform.
Separating the task of operating the hardware (traditionally the job of the kernel) from the higher level "platform" has a variety of implications. The most important implication is that the software is as portable as the platform is. It doesn't matter if the underlying kernel is FreeBSD, Linux, or Windows NT. If you software targets the GNU platform, it is portable across all those systems. At least at a source level, though binary compatibility is ideal.
Thus when programmers make the comment that Java "is like an Operating System", what they mean is that the Java Platform is sufficient to replace the platform that shipped with your operating system. While the focus is currently on integrating the disparate platforms, what you're starting to see is that the OS is taking a back seat to the platform. Programmers want portability across devices, and Information Technology wants more flexible deployment solutions. Combined, these two needs add up to a drive for further portability of platforms with an eye toward using the right kernel for the right deployment solution.
That is where "Operating Systems" are headed. Not the monoliths of yesteryear, but the flexibility to provide familiar functionality where you need it and when you need it.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
What geek would run a operating system without using his or her head? We're not all mindless consumers.
Virtualized machines running a base os integrated with an online os / data storage.
Vista Help Forum
Windows Vista Help Forum
Everybody is talking about running applications through the internet. Why would we, as consumers, want to do this? The RIAA and MPAA are attempting to limit our ability to make backups of things we purchase. Now, software appears to be heading in the same direction. If we start streaming applications, then we could easily get into a pay-as-you-use function, or some other horrid distribution system. Frankly, I would not want to be charged every time I open a text document, or an IM window, or an internet browser. And I don't like the idea of paying a subscription fee either. I think forcing people to stream applications through the internet will only push more people into using Linux, so that everything is right there on the machine.
The definition of an operating system I like to use is:
An OS is a collection of code that is used by software to manage access to system hardware via a well defined API, along with a collection of standardized utilities that provide for user access and management of system hardware and data structures and data streams associated with that hardware.
So, under this definition, the kernel is a peice of the OS, disk access utilities are part of the OS, but applets such as a mini word processor and paint program are mearly bundled utilities.
I'm worried that we're going to keep building on top of the macrokernels we already have, without cleaning up and simplifying things as we go. I'm worried that the future will be as presented in Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky, where everyone runs an operating system too large, un-modular, and spaghetti-like for anyone to understand, much less debug. Hurry with The Hurd, RMS!
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
{...buh-dum-ching...}
Thank you, I'll be here all night...TRY THE VEAL!
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Too bad you posted as AC. I was looking forward to a mature conversation about your assertions...
Oh wait, this is Slashdot. What am I thinking?
"Piter, too, is dead."
The vast, vast majority of internet-goers are already running a lot of stuff on the internet, like email, various activex controls, etc. which aren't technically traditionally installed apps, even if they're not entirely internet-based either. The transition phase is over, and now that more and more internet-based apps are coming out, it will just be a more diverse environment -- not just a "pc only" or "internet only" world.
stuff |
Two words: Consumer devices.
I think Steve Jobs has seen the future, and realised that the PC won't be so important, the action is all going to move to various types of devices aimed at consumers. So, he started with music players, is moving into portable video/gaming and now of course telephones, and has made the first steps towards TV. Television is the biggie of course, and I believe Jobs is being deliberately low key about his intentions there - with the low key announcement of the Apple TV box, for instance.
Here's a prediction, in the next few years Steve Jobs is going to make a presentation where he says something like "First we revolutionised the personal computer, then the music player and the telephone. Now we're going to revolutionise television..."
"Hollywood-style OSes are not in our short-term future."
Which leaves Vista where?
Symbian? You've got to be kidding me, right?
He definitely never looked at it or never tried to develop something on it.
If Symbian is your answer, you've got the wrong question.
Counterintuitively, he says no.
How is this counterintuitive? Of course Vista is not the last version of desktop Windows. You don't think Microsoft will want to retain their revenue stream in 5 years? Plus with China growing economically there will still be much demand for new computers with new OSs for many years.
In ten years will we all be running applications via the internet?
Maybe, but that doesn't mean there will be no OS. Even thin clients need some form of OS. Your web browser has run on hardware somehow.
Developers: We can use your help.
BeOS was/is the future. If only we could get the source code.
Why include things like "a mini word processor"? That gets into too much interpretation of what "mini" is.
I prefer to define an OS as the code that controls the local hardware.
If the OS allows some other app to control the local hardware then that OS has a "vulnerability" and is not "secure". There are lots of examples of that in history.
Apps run on the OS. And app can be something such as Java which can run apps itself. But Java should never be touching the local hardware.
I'm inspired by Ray Kurzweil's keynote at RSA Conference 2007.. http://singularity.com/
If you're a M$ hater, just wait until "sap and impurify your precious bodily fluids" is a system requirement.
Among other nanotechnological breakthroughs, Kurzweil says it will be possible to inject robotic blood cells that will enable you to "sit at the bottom of a swimming pool for 4 hours."
OK, for now I'll settle for Fedora Core 42 and nano-robots that will let me drink as much red wine as I want without getting a headache.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Here's a hint: if it's already possessive, it doesn't need an apostrophe. You don't write her's, hi's, their's, or do you?
Headed doesn't look right, shouldn't it be "Where Are Operating Systems Heading?"?
More like 100 million.
For a computer to be useful, you need hardware, applications, and input and output. That's it, nothing more.
Everything in between is there as a convenience.
Whether it's convenience library routines like math libraries, a hardware-abstraction or -virtualization layer, or things that let more than one application coexist and even communicate, or whatever, OSes and other "in between" parts of a computer are there to make the application more useful, easier to write and maintain, or both.
We will always have these in-between layers. Whether the "in between" layers of the 22nd century are anything like today's OSes only time will tell.
Personally, I think 10 years from now you will see just about every application running in an isolated environment, possibly a VM of sorts. In particular, applications which access machines or applications that are not "trusted" will be run isolated from other applications on the system. They will be able to save files to a scratchpad area and send events to certain other applications such as a printing subsystem, but that's about it. Applications will communicate with other applications on the same PC in much the same way distributed applications, such as a web application, communicate today.
By 2017, I also see most applications using virtually no local storage except security credentials and cached data. All "real data" will be stored on "the big server in the sky" or "the big server run by the IT department." The exceptions will be applications demanding extreme privacy, such as diaries and non-networked dayplanners, applications demanding offline use, such as cellphone notepads, and "convenience applications" like calculators and non-networked games.
By the time our Kindergarteners reach High School, the distinction between wristwatch, cellphone/PDA, and laptop/desktop/home-entertainment-center will be one of scale and purpose, not architecture or raw capability.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Spelling matters.
Sadly I fear OS's of the future will be much like OS's of today, at least for the common man. MS still has no incentive to really make OS's better for consumers instead of better for MS and a lot of incentive to make their Windows OS's more and more restrictive. They know their model is slowly being undermined, but they plan to use .Net to effectively create the internet equivalent and lock everyone into one online platform instead. Other companies still have little motivation to invest in the desktop OS market and decreasing motivation to invest in the Server OS market.
I predict we will still have the same glacially slow pace of improvement as we've had for the last decade, with a lot of foot dragging and backwards steps as MS does their best to hold us all in the past. In 2015 I predict the mainstream OS from MS will finally support spell checking in every .net application from the same dictionary. They may even support other common features like grammar checking, but it will still be hard for developers to add arbitrary functions. I predict security will still be an issue and MS's solution for determining the trust of a given application will be broken and abused for anti-competative reasons. Further, configuring the permissions for an application will be painful, lack granularity, and still be something users have to worry about.
There is some hope. Maybe outside of the US, Linux or some other OS will rise to supremacy, and major corporations will carry the effort to progress beyond Window's artificial limitations. Maybe enough people will buy Mac's so that the market share undermines MS's monopoly and the free market brings innovation again. I have serious doubts however.
Until devices and other hardware components have enough built-in intelligence to communicate with each other and with user programs, and until their built-in intelligence is presented to applications through a standardized communications interface, there will always be a role for operating systems.
And the reason is simply that this is the primary role of an O/S: to glue together many rather dumb components (some virtual, some non-local), and to provide a standard abstraction for them, so that applications can be programmed with a degree of sanity. Everything that O/Ss do can be considered in those terms.
Host operating systems will disappear when they are no longer needed. And *that* will happen only when/if their key functions have migrated into the hardware, so it's a defensible argument to say that actually they will never really disappear, but transform.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
I envisioned a modular OS where the core provided essential features and all the trappings were completely pluggable. Don't like the UI framework? Use a different one. Same for the filesystem, etc. At the heart of the OS I expected to see a sort of object database where all these features were installed and managed, with some sort of OpenDOC layer on top to retrieve modules as needed. Of course, I was way off the mark, but this is the kind of OS I would like to see in the future.
Unix has this to some degree, partially by virtue of it being old, but there exists no structured management system for the packages at this basic level (that I'm aware of). And while I grant that one isn't necessary (the shell/filesystem combination is fine for package management), the lack of one tends to complicate things from a user perspective. Linux has made great progress over the years in achieving high-level usability, but many low-level tasks still require a good bit of domain knowledge and thought, largely because of the filesystem/shell nature of how these tasks are typically performed. If this process could be simplified and in turn made more reliable (it's a bad example, but compare installing an application on MacOS compared to any other operating system), then I think things would be moving in the right direction. This isn't to say that being able to mess with the core of things is bad, but it should be an option, not a requirement.
In 10 years, your OS choice will be pretty much irrelevant. With virtualization built into desktop processors, you could just go ahead and run a hybrid linux/bsd/windows/osx box and run whatever application you want or need natively. Your host OS would be irrelevant.
Ok, Apple will keep it's fiefdom - but there's really nothing in that world I'd miss.
I would love to see some sort of unified driver type - your driver and hardware not tied to an OS, but that's unlikely.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
You're right. Until the software needs to directly access hardware, in which case "Windows only" or "Mac only" will still apply.
Big Deal. I can do that NOW, without any nano-anything. Heck, I bet YOU can, too!
Now, if you insist on filling the pool with water... <grin>
While the author correctly identifies a huge potential market for smartphones in the coming years, maybe his assumptions about Symbian are a little naive.
These smartphones are becoming popular because they are becoming more and more like a standard PC every day. The only exception being the user interface (if anyone has an idea how to fix this, give me a call ! I promise to share in the huge profits ! ).
This is facilitated by the increasing processor power that these phones have available to them. Symbian was designed for small memory, low performance processors which incredibly strict power consumption requirements and limited connectivity running in a highly controlled environment (i.e. software environment).
The cost of developing drivers for Symbian (with all its quirks) is enormous. At the moment, the semiconductor companies are getting hit with the cost of this development. This will not last forever, they will always strive for the cheapest possible solution - and this helps explain Linux large penetration in this market.
The company that holds the best cards in this field is Apple. They have waited until mobile devices have become powerful enough to run (only slightly modified) standard PC kernels (XNU). This is going to save them a fortune in the years to come. Microsoft has missed this boat - they are trying to split their OS into as many different branches/versions/flavours as possible, while neglecting the requirement to try and maintain a common "brand" across all devices.
[ Monday is a terrible way to spend one seventh of your life. ]
Think of a computer as a layer of platforms. Applications can target any platform unless some part of the platform stack restricts such access.
A typical PC:
CPU and other hardware, BIOS, OS kernel including kernel-level library routines and virtual-machine subsystems, OS-supplied and 3rd-party library routines including OpenGL and non-kernel virtual machines, and applications. For the sake of simplicity I'm ignoring complex scenarios like OSes running in a VM that's running in an OS that's running in a VM.
In principle, applications can "call" functions at any level in the stack, although in modern OSes the kernel blocks direct access to the BIOS and some other hardware and the chip itself blocks access to privileged instructions by unprivileged applications.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
"In ten years will we all be running applications via the internet?" Ah, and we'll have perfect internet service, never any interruptions in services and no security problems? Thank you, I prefer to have my system in my lap or on my desk. I'll use the internet as one more tool to get my job done but I certainly won't rely on in for critical computing.
I dispute that. And even if Linux does die out, its legacy will continue.
Linux has had a huge positive effect. For one thing, it gave the GNU project a serious kick-start. Sure it was possible to run GNU on a BSD kernel before Linux came along; but next to nobody actually did. Anyway, BSD had its own set of Open Source userland utilities, and still hardly anybody used it. Suddenly Linux came along, and Open Source was trendy. Linux had its limitations, for sure; and some of the people who tried Linux moved over to BSD for what at the time were valid reasons. Some of them moved back when Linux cleaned its act up. These peole might never have tried a free OS, if it had not been for some young upstart Finn with a bee in his bonnet about performance of monolithic vs. microkernels.
Do you think Solaris would have been open-sourced -- possibly even under GPLv3! -- if it hadn't been for the fact that GNU/Linux posed a credible threat to it?
If anything is "headed to the landfill", it's the whole Closed Source model -- or more strictly, the egregious idea of keeping the Source Code of a program secret from its own users. The extent of the damage that this has done is just beginning to sink in, ever so slowly. Within a generation, there will be more than one country in the world where it will be illegal not to supply Source Code with software, even if you are not allowed to give out copies of it.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Hardware + software = device. No amount of mindless drooling by Gartner "analysts" will change that. Sure, the OS may get smaller, and Nathan Myhrvold's much feared vision of the "Megaserver" (see here) may be fulfilled - oh wait, it already has. But at the end of the day, a device with some semblance of UI presentation to get the "'net goo" off of the Interweb tubes to the glass will still be required. And to print. And to play audio, video, and store info locally. Because at the end of the day, sure you can store stuff up in the cloud. But it has to come down at some point or another in order to be useful enough to even keep. Hence, an operating system (or embedded OS, whatever) is necessary.
Seriously?
An AC posted! Let's not listen.
The point of Internet applications, or equally, Intranet applications, is "run anywhere" convenience.
My ISP offers webmail. If I use it instead of POP, I can read my mail anywhere, anytime. In exchange, I lose the privacy that comes with keeping my data local. I also lose the ability to read my mail when the ISP has a hiccup.
Google offers maps. In most cases Google Maps is a lot more convenient than firing up my local street-maps program. It's also "run anywhere."
On the other hand, I don't think I'd want my doctor to put my medical records on any online database unless it was very secure and run by trustworthy people and didn't allow unencrypted connections.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I think operating systems will increasing become less and less of a concern for all of us, except for hardware scientists. Those of us more interested in applications care more about the platform, which I see over time being standardized in freedesktop.org, with various implementations or bindings in about every major "platform" interpreter/machine, be it C(++)/Kernel, the JVM, the CLR, or Mozilla. I also see all the major scripting languages having JVM and .NET ports one day.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
The problem with relying on the internet, or any network, is that it becomes the single point of failure. If no local copy of the files you need exists, you're SOL if something happens halfway between you and the server. And unless a tremendous breakthrough occurs in the construction and deployment of fiber optic cables, bandwidth will be another problem. If everyone starts keeping all of the files they need on the internet without caching them to local drives, you'll suck up bandwidth like a sponge.
I decided to give linux on the desktop another go, I've been trying it about every other year for about 12 years now. During that time I've seen windows progress from 3.1, to Vista. Sure, there's a lot to hate about microsoft, but if you cant look at that evolution and tell me they've significantly improved the product, you're just being a zealot.
/dev/dsp or what? What the fuck? I think ESD is what I want to use, but now all sound is delayed by a half second. What about all the piles of graphics libraries, what's a game developer supposed to work with? DirectX may be kludgy in a lot of ways, but it's a HUGE asset for Windows.
During the same time, I've seen the linux desktop evolve - well none. OpenOffice works, but it just feels clunky - it feels like the versino of word I used on win 3.1 so long ago. MPlayer will start and randomly not play sound. Sound is still a big kludgy wtf-is-goin-on type thing. Should I be using ALSA, or ESD or
Bon Echo feels bloaty and slow - but firefox under windows XP on the same hardware is snappy and responsive. I'm using nvidias latest drivers, and glx.
I dunno, it's usable, but it was usable in the early 90s. I know that things have improved, but it still feels like the same experience I had back then - right down to fucking around with monitor frequencies by hand?. The big difference is that file is called xorg.conf now. What the fuck is up with that? Are people still using monitors without EDID? Even if a handful are, why are we still designing for that outside case? Why cant I just have " Section Montior / EDID True / End Section" or something like that?
The one thing that's gotten me excited is NX, and when I can migrate a session from windows to unix and back, and hijack the local desktop, then maybe I'll be a bit happier and find a little more use for my linux machine. Of course, Windows already does all of this.
Linux, in my home, is still just a big thing that runs samba so I can store all my porn on a computer built out of spare parts.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
yes.
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...not that I have any idea for a new one, but the OS as we know it is one of the prime examples of a system whose rationale is "we've always done it that way."
People have forgotten that the original goal of the "operating system" was nothing other than to automate the function of the "operator," reducing personnel costs and making sure that the computer wasn't sitting around at $200 an hour waiting for someone to square up the next deck of cards and load them into the hopper.
The only people who think they can tell you what an OS really is are the students who have recently memorized some textbook definition. An OS is an intertwingled hairball of utterly arbitrary functionality. It has evolved from competitors copying whatever it is that another competitor did, messing some things up, adding some cool stuff, and doing random things dictated by marketing strategy.
Want to bundle HyperCard, but you promised the database vendors you wouldn't compete with them? Easy, don't call HyperCard a database, call it part of the "system software." Want to hide the fact that your graphical shell could run on a competitor's operating system? Easy, just say Windows is part of--no, wait, IS--the operating system. And so it goes.
It is quite possible to use a computer without an operating system. I'm not saying any of these are viable paradigms for today, but none of the original versions of BASIC required an operating system. MUMPS is largely self-contained, no OS needed.
There is an opportunity for some kind of brand-new conceptualization. No, I don't know what it is. If I did, I'd promoting on it. But, yes, I think it's very likely that twenty years from now the idea of an operating system will seem as quaint as the idea of a front panel with lights and switches on it. There was a time when nobody believed you could run a computer without _that_, either.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
There was a time when people tried to cram an http server into Linux.
It may still be there but it's not used outside special-purpose environment.
Likewise, until recently people tried to cram almost every filesystem and pseudo-filesystem under the sun into the Linux kernel. With the advent of FUSE, future pseudo-filesystems and even real ones will be in userland. Sure they won't perform as well but at least they won't kill the kernel when they bug out.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
People still can't wake up and smell the Hummis. The debate never has been about the direction of technology, but about the direction of freedom and liberty. The saying "the stone rejected by the builders has become the corner stone" has never been more true. People go on and on about how this feature matters, or that GUI, or such and such technology, ease of immediate use, or this and that driver/optimisation, consumer/corporate adoption, or DRM - and they still gon't get it. When people have the freedom to copy and modify without being punished and fenced off, those things will come naturally and more, when they don't then it does not matter how nice it is - it will eventually be overtaken and become obsolete. Free markets are not about technology or markets, but about freedom and people using it to create wealth and opportunity where it hasn't existed before. If that doesn't define the free software movement, then I don't know what does.
How come script-kiddies from Turkey is a way of comparision.
The Linux kernel is already microkernel to some extent.
So you are wrong.
What I'm saying is that you can't have a conversation with an AC since you can't differentiate one ac from another. You would never be able to know whether the ac that just posted is the same person.
"Piter, too, is dead."
I recall this summer a CEO proclaiming that with in two years there would be 60% of the third wold population experiencing the internet for the first time. And these people would not have computers but advanced cell phones not on today's market. The deals and marketing have been set in Brazil and Venezuela for the first instalment. His claim is that information age is giving over to the participation age.
I agree that Vista isn't the last Windows OS. Case in point is OS/2, thought to be DOA in 1995 is still around and Windows will probably be too in 10 years.
Linux? Yes, the argument is very good but he doesn't take into account the raw power, quality, robustness and flexibility of Linux especially the Kernel. He expounds on the lack of drivers which indicates that the author isn't quite up to date on Kernel development.
As far as the OS being outdated I think not, maybe for the casual consumer a transparent OS will come true but there will always be a OS it is in the nature of computing machines. Running all your applications on the Internet will probably come true however accessing the Internet will still requite an OS AND an application to connect to it.
Without a UPS, your desktop is at the mercy of your electricity provider. You may be blessed with a reliable electricity provider but in many areas, short outages are almost as frequent as thunderstorms.
Even with a UPS or laptop, you are at the mercy of your battery. Hope it's not a Sony.
My point is, there will always be "points of failure."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
the egregious idea of keeping the Source Code of a program secret from its own users
As long as your biggest market is people who want it done for them, and as long as it's affordable, the OS will continue to drop into their hands. The price increase for the various iterations of Vista show that Microsoft is at least aware of Windows' continuing strength.
If you want OSS to blossom, it has got to become sexy and work with much less nerd/geek presence. Symbian happens to power smart phones, but it's not sexy either. It can't spoil you in that "mainstream-moves-the-most-water" way, like Windows can.
well, maybe not in 10 years, but maybe 20, nobody will have a PC-as-we-know-it. Maybe some of us, geeks and nerds, will keep some beige boxes on the basement. But majority of the people will carry and interact with highly portable or tiny embedded systems - but with double+ computing power of what we have now ( wild prediction). Which leads to the conclusion that the OS of the future is not what we know of now ( as in Desktop Loaded with a OS called Windows). At least for the client/consumer part. So, Symbian, Linux have great chances for belonging to future. WinCE maybe, possibly. OSX in the iPhone. For all of them video/audio streaming will be a standard. Communication will focus on all major areas: Personal Area Network ( some kind of network between all gadgets on us), LAN ( device at home, or near vicinity), and WAN ( accessing the internet - or whatever will be called in 20years).
;)...
On the server side, we will build huge machine-servers, capable of virtualization. Which here i see lots of players, Linux included, but i see no OS from Microsoft. I see Google here too, as provinding enterprise-level services to all of us (aka email, office, anything else). Speaking of that, there is a reason why Google does not build a OS: it's irrelevant. We should follow the pack-leader
And, not to forget, on the enterprise side, i assume a big load of thin-clients will prevail. Maybe Windows-as-it-is-now has a slight chance here...
you can't differentiate one ac from another.
I'm Spartacus!
(glad to have cleared that up for you.)
Kurzweil is such a crank. Am I the only one who thinks he's completely full of crap?
There is a lot of discussion about various parts of OS's, but here is something. This is my wish list of what I'd like to see i the ideal OS released in 3 years:
Well, that is the list off the top of my head. Does anyone else have any wishes for the OS of tomorrow?
Does that really matter? I posit that you can have a perfectly good conversation with one-or-more anonymous repliers, so long as everyone involved reads all the parent posts.
If you do know what you're talking about, you'll be able to provide an extensive list of documented vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel that allow a remove attacker to fully compromise the system. Since these vulnerabilities are, in your words, showing up "weekly", you should have no problem in finding a good number.
A quick look at your posting history confirms you're a troll, but hell, I've already written a reply now.
I dispute that. And even if Linux does die out, its legacy will continue.
This is very true. Not to mention if 'Linux' dies it will just be the kernel. there is so much more to a linux distro/application stack than just the kernel.
If anything is "headed to the landfill", it's the whole Closed Source model -- or more strictly, the egregious idea of keeping the Source Code of a program secret from its own users.
This is the key statement. Do you think people these days would be buying Dells and running Solaris on them if Solaris wasn't open sourced? No; they would be too afraid that Sun would pull another quick one and decide that Solaris 11 (or whatever) wouldn't be released on x86. People forget about history, but not when this stuff happened so recently. Over time people may forget exactly why, but using Open Source Software will become second nature. People will start asking why there's no open development process, why there's not publicly available mailing lists, why the documentation for a peice of software isn't editable by the users, why the end users can't directly submit a bug request. All of those things lend themselves to a faster and more adaptable development process, and quicker turn around time for the customer. Why call up your proprietary vendor, sit on the phone waiting for an hour only to find out some information that you could have just looked up if their data sat in an externally viewable location? Transparency is also a great tool for the customer to evaluate the real quality of a product and the people behind it.
"but money is the God of Algiers & Mahomet their prophet." - Rich. O'Bryen June 8th 1786
The summary doesn't even mention Apple... (then again, I didn't rtfa, but I think the question stands.)
My wife has a symbian. She can't get off the fucking thing. Some days she takes meals on it.
You should see her. Sometimes she's moaning so loud I expect her head to start spinning 360*.
But phone?
It's got attachments, and I admit I'm a bit confused by it sometimes, but I'm pretty sure it DOESNT have a mouthpiece.
right down to fucking around with monitor frequencies by hand?
You don't actually have to do that anymore. Just put the resolution in the format "800x600" (with the quotes) in the screen section as you would ordinarily do, but don't define the mode. X will make up the details.
FreeBSD not a hobbyist OS?
Big Giant Lock?
inetd instead of xinetd?
filesystems?
fibre channel support?
Stick to desktops, FreeBSD is not a server-level OS
Linux still has a good opportunity for the desktop market.
Microsoft will make another Windows operating system. The money is there, and so long as the money is there, Microsoft will be too.
Internet applications aren't going to take over just yet. Not as long as there's still a good number of people on dial-up (without even the option of broadband). And those of us who do have broadband have fairly shoddy connections, at least as far as running internet-direct applications would be concerned. Networking implies two-way communication, but thus far the majority of us are sold one-way connections (high download capacity, low upload capacity) which makes latency a huge issue. When you consider things the idea of all your data and applications being completely reliant on the availability of your network connection, anyone who's ever experienced even a couple hours of downtime will be slow to make that adoption.
I think we have the technology to build a completely internet-based operating system, but the requirements for it to function efficiently are not spread widely enough for it to be viable. It's like having a really awesome, solar-powered car, that can do 300mph on the road, but there's only one road in the world that it works on. No one would buy the car no matter how nice, they'll just stick with their old beat up 1984 chevy; It might be inferior by all technical specifications, but the roads you can drive it on are everywhere. Similarly, the number of people with a residential connection that has the quality required to use a completely internet-based operating system are so few and far between, it wouldn't matter how slick of an internet application you make, it's little more than a novelty for the curious.
You can always identify a crackpot running a large racket, because the crackpot can't resist smearing his name and face all over his or her product.
Kent Hovind's name and face pop up everywhere in the campaign to popularize Creationism, and Ray Kurzweil's name and face pop up everywhere in the uhh... I guess you could call it the campaign to inform people about the singularity. (Which, incidentally, is undefined, and every attempt to define it necessarily uses undefined terms and unquantifiable statistics like "progress".)
Even the website you linked shows Kurzweil's smug little face in a JPEG with a caption saying "he is the rightful successor to Thomas Edison". Give me a fucking break. I hope this guy gets raped by a 15 massively endowed donkeys.
If it is so useless, then please pay Microsoft for the privilege to serve your porn and stop wasting your time trolling about how much Microsoft rulez.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I'm pretty sure everyone is realizing the potential for SAAS right now, and as a result the home user will eventually be using dumb terminals connected to their TV's to access their software, personal files, etc... all for a nice little (maybe not little) fee.
:D
I'm pretty sure Google and Microsoft know this, which is why they are creating more and more online services and products that will require less powerful machine. We will still need to wait for really fast broadband to make it to the home user, but when that happens, game on.
Hopefully by the time it happens the government will be less intrusive than it is now... otherwise they can simply google whatever they want and search through all of your personal data; All without a Warrant!
Relocating to San Francisco / Palo Alto... Hire me?
Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (be kind!)
Why should we be kind when you dump marketing nonsense like "Enterprise Edition" into your post? Do you really think we're going to believe that the Enterprise Edition kernel is more stable than the regular kernel? Why shouldn't we begin to suspect that your definition of a "reliable" OS is one that says "Enterprise" on the box? Are you even aware that 0-day exploits from Turkey are rarely caused by kernel code?
Really, most people find that Linux on servers doesn't crash, either, especially now that we're through with the clunky days of 2.4. Usually crashes that do occur are caused by hardware drivers. Of course, a cluster of homogenous machines (all of them within the narrow range of older hardware that would be supported by OpenBSD) isn't a tough environment for hardware drivers.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I suspect that we'll see a great deal more virtualization in the future. Certainly that appears to be the direction the major players are moving in, and there are a number of problems that virtualization solves quite nicely. For Microsoft, the big attraction is, I suspect, the ability to easily retain backward compatibility. For server farms, the ability to run several operating systems on the same piece of hardware is a desirable way to cut costs. For minority operating systems, virtualization gives users the opportunity to run non-native applications. Abstraction from the underlying OS and hardware architectures has a great number of benefits, and hardware is becoming fast enough that performance issues can be solved through multiple cores, specialised hardware, and Moore's law.
I've always been using & trying Linux too.
I think a lot of people forget just how much tech went into Win2000 as an improvement from NT4. I think that Linux desktops are still at the NT 3.51 or NT 4 technology level.
I'm amazed that XP being so "old", is so fast and quick and works extremely well. It was ahead of it's time. I don't see people wanting to run 6 year old Linux desktops.
But Linux desktops are improving, slowly. The last Ubuntu 6.10 I tried was the fastest Linux I've used, feature rich & easy friendly, it's a great system. But I reboot into XP and it's so much faster in operation. A lot of that must be down to having great Windows drivers.
I think a lot of people use Linux almost as a toy, it can run Firefox very well so it's good enough to use for general things. But as a real workhorse OS ? It's getting there but it needs a lot of improvement. The 3D Linux desktops for me are a waste of time, the only thing I wanted from 3D was a good Expose feature and Linux and Vista lack that.
Here you go. Feel free to scan the hosts in that list to see what OS/Version they are running. Also, read this for some background.
This comment of yours:
you'll be able to provide an extensive list of documented vulnerabilities
is absurd. I specifically said 0-day, which implies NO documentation as of yet. There are several groups like the individual linked to at zone-h above that are using suexec'd processes to smash the stack on RHEL kernels and escalate privileges. I do not mean to be an ass, or a troll, but come off of your ivory tower and into the real-world: these tactics are used daily without any documentation other then what we can gleam from logs and conversations with other admins and researchers. God help you if you rely on CERT or some bugtraq list somewhere.
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Here's a really interesting project. Though it's not the kind of OS we'll have within say, the next hundred years, it's interesting to see how OSes could be so much more:
http://tunes.org/papers/WhyNewOS/WhyNewOS.html
Theory is often inaccurate(TM)
If you ever find yourself asking this question, you are not qualified to be discussing the subject. It's not interesting at all, it just displays a severe lack of understanding.
Although Google and others does a lot of 'magic' with computers running in parallel, the processing power required for many tasks on the desktop has not replacement on Internet. What we see is an obvious branch between the applications required to run on the desktop and the other ones on Internet.
But do you imagine a 3D rendering engine running on Internet instead of a GPU?
You apparently do not know what the differences between standard edition and enterprise edition are. Please remove the foot from your mouth and come back when you know what you're talking about.
Win Server EE supports clustering, failover, federated directory services and larger addressable memory space. The other OSs I listed have supported those things for a while(through other software albeit), and Win Server Standard does not support those particular features. That is why I included that "marketing nonsense". You foolishly thought I included the "marketing nonsense" because I thought it would make it appear to be a more capable OS. Foolish indeed, as the EE does have capabilities the other versions do not.
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I agree with you. I use Linux every day, all day, on my workstation at work. I've tried using Linux as my home desktop OS on and off since 1995. Yup...too clunky. $200 for Windows XP Pro is chump change. Well worth the money IMHO.
You are either ignorant about how windows 95 was or ignorant about how linux is doing in the desktop. Either that or are exaggerating to put emphasis in your words, which is kind of dump. To say that today's linux can't touch windows 95 is so false it hurts.
I am unable to see the stats on solaris x86 overtaking linux on the server.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
You san say what you want about Kurzweil, but there is one glaring hole in the Singularity. The Singularity is basically a log plot of Time on the X-axis and the Difference in Time between Great Technological Advances on the Y-axis. This produces a remarkable straight line:
| -
| A - Invention of tools, speech
| -
| B - Invention of writing
| -
| -
| C - Invention of computer
| -
| X - TEH SINGULARITY!!
At The Singularity, all latter in the universe is pervaded by complete computational informational nano-thingys, or something like that.
Well, consider the tecnological progress chart for the Dinosaurs:
-
| A - Mmmm, giant ferns, tasty!
| -
| B - Mmmm, stegosaurus, testy!
| -
| -
| C - "Hey the climate is warming, the mammals are taking over and we all
| - have brains the size of a walnut!"
| -
| X - Asteroid the size of Maryland impacts Yucatan!!
So what happens at "X" is a big question.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Now that sounds like an OS full of gaping holes.
Terrible security, that.
Ignore this signature. By order.
Running every software from the net? One of the most stupid idea ever brought up. It is almost as ridiculous as using someone's server over the internet for everything.
What happens when your connection is cut? or the company that you are dealing with goes belly up or they get pissed because you haven't paid your monthly bill?
You must have been sniffing some burning carpet, glue or flour to even push such a moronic idea. I know that it is the dream of many like Sun, IBM and Microsoft to have full control of our lives this way but to think that everybody will go for it, you have to have completely lost your mind.
I don't know, but it sure as fuck better be more intuitive and stable than OSX or Vista. I'm thinking Beryl-esque features and scalability, but with a touchscreen or gestured interface device.
But it also lets Windows and Linux applications run at native speed on Apple hardware
Gee, you mean you couldn't run Linux on Macs before?
- capability-based security, from the ground up
- Microkernel architecture, which brings tons of benefits (principally modularity and isolation). Yes, microkernels have a bad name, but I'm building on L4, a practical, Open Source microkernel that got it right
- extensive support for low-latency and real-time applications (there is no reason that media players on today's hardware should ever glitch)
Like I said, it's totally vaporware at this point, but if this sounds interesting to you, check out my blog and my wiki to check out my ideas and my progress. My effort might totally flop (statistically speaking, this is likely to happen), but I have tons of ideas and an intense passion to see them realized.> The Linux kernel is already microkernel to some extent.
The linux kernel is in no way shape or form a microkernel. It is about as anti-microkernel as you can get.
Not only are the pieces of the kernel symbolically linked together, but you ususally have to recompile a module when the kernel changes, because there is no ABI defined.
Maybe you are confusing the fact that the linux kernel is modular with being a microkernel.
robotic blood cells that will enable you to "sit at the bottom of a swimming pool for 4 hours."
I wonder what those "blood cells" are going to do with all that HCO3-? Lung physiology doesn't simply consist in oxygenating the blood. The lung also has to get rid of that excess CO2 (dissolved in the blood as HC03-), otherwise the blood pH will decrease very quickly leading to respiratory acidosis and death. I'm not sure how you can breathe out without breathing in, though...
Oh, and we won't forget about how those lungs you're not using will collapse as the gasses in them get absorbed over those 4 hours. It's called atelectasis. Then think about how this prevents the lung from cleaning itself, and how many bacteria will have reproduced in those static lungs in 4 hours. The person will be looking forward to a severe bilateral pneumonia within a day or so. Whoever proposed this is obviously NOT a physician - or needs to review physiology rather urgently. It's a terrible idea.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I, for one, am really glad to hear that "Hollywood-style" operating sysytems are NOT the future. They seem to be so easy to break into.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Win Server EE supports clustering
Not in the kernel.
failover
Not in the kernel.
federated directory services
Not in the kernel.
larger addressable memory space.
Wow, a kernel feature! See, your credibility problem is that you come in here and praise the likes of OpenBSD, which is an extremely minimal kernel shipped with extremely minimal supporting software, and criticize Linux for kernel problems, and then talk about a bunch of non-kernel features in a specific edition of Windows. OpenBSD doesn't have any of these features at all, so why do you need them out of Windows? If you need all this great shiny Enterprise stuff, you'll have to accept the extra complexity -- and thus the security problems -- that those features entail. You need to pick a component and stick with it; if we're talking about kernels, let's talk about kernels.
If we're talking about "best tool for the job", then don't bring toys like the BSDs into the discussion.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I'm not sure if it was Sun's slogan that triggered it originally, or what, but here's an idea I've been kicking around for 20 years now, at least... why not treat the components inside the box as a network. I don't mean literally using ATA over Ethernet to the drives... use fast interconnects... but design the system as a network. Latency between components is a problem? Why, look, networks are designed to deal with that. Have one (or more) application servers, on physical processors or virtual machines, netbooted off internal file servers and talking to display servers. Don't want people pirating your word processor? Sell it as a plug-in module with its own application server and local flash image. Get that funky DRM out of the CPU and file system completely, and make it a special purpose display card. Want to run it in a window? Have the display server run as a client and do the final compositing in the Windows Media Card. Need to run that old 2007 version of OS X? Here's the display-server video driver for QE3D...
I guess I would disagree on useability for normal home consumers-what is it missing again beyond specialised games? And how long would the game guys wait if they saw a market there? We have online games, consoles, etc and there is at least a nascent linux gaming scene. Everything else is in there already, available. What do folks at home do really, surf the web, type school reports and email, IM, view and listen to entertainment media? Ya got all that already. Works fine. and you can look at any of the top contenders, they come with a huge variety of apps that windows doesn't come with, end users have to go hunt them down and install them, and pay serious money for a lot of them.. In that circumstance I would say desktop linux is way, way ahead, not behind.
warning, many bad car analogies ahead....
As soon as one of the major mainstream vendors crack the MS monopoly and offer a linux on the consumer desktop large scale critical mass will be reached in short order. And I think the combination of the newly announced linspire and ubuntu deal will be the one that gets picked. Linspire has wedged the door open a crack with some lower tier vendors for OEM placement, they have a small but viable track record there, and a winner in one click click-n-run, and ubuntu has shown that offering a one CD version that works and is really pushed hard with just a mere modicum of advertising (compared to a lot of other products) can get people's attention. From no where to topdog on distrowatch in a short time frame and no signs of it losing that position any time soon either. I mean, AFAIK, you have windows and mac being advertised heavy where most people can see it, as soon as they become aware that this thing called linux even exists-you'll get interest. You as joe consumer can't get something if it isn't there to see or you even don't know about it. Stuff takes availability plus adveritsing, that's the minimum needed. And there are any number of cutsie commercial angles, guy getting his car filled with gas, two stations, one with real expensive gas, the cars get filled up, make it a block down the street and thick clouds of black smoke coming out. Another station across the street, normal gas,1/4th the price for the "high test-full version", the car drives away just fine. I mean a good advertising firm could just beat hell on the 400 bucks for vista imperial warlord deluxe version whatever that is called, oh, and you also want to type up ofice reports? that's an extra few hundred bucks there, your imperial warlordship..neener, and conversely show how pitiful the hundred buck version is with the complete lack of features for joe lowball at home, crippled version hobbling along on crutches. Then rub it in saying the full version is on the disk but they want to gouge you to use all of it, whereas our brand of linux stuff comes with all these apps, and etc.....
Advertising guys can get pretty creative.
You see, most people aren't even *aware* that they can put different OS-gas in the car-computer. Make them aware, have it there to get-things'll change quickly.
That and when the OLPC starts really shipping in million unit chunks will do it. I would say don't understimate what that will do globally with linux adoption in general, it *is* going to have an impact.
Sometimes changes start really slow then *wham* it goes fast as anything. Witness hybrid cars-nearly all the so called economic experts and car companies said that it would remain a tiny niche product, they laughed at the notion, weren't interested, etc, now, across the board with all the big manufacturers it is the fastest rising type of transportation, getting the most buzz and interest, and it has only taken a relatively few years. It took one company-in this case toyota, to bite the bullet, to actually use some corporate nads, and take a chance and ship in quantity. They got freekin' swamped, orders backlogged, waiting lists, there was so much pent-up demand for something/anything/please, just something beyond the same old tire
Because the future is filled with so so many devices, the winner in "operating systems" will be those which are the most portable. And in that category, we have four clear winners for different parts of the software stack:
Linux: most portable kernel for talking to the hardware.
GNU: most portable userspace.
JVM: most portable VM for taking to userspace and scripting languages.
Mozilla: most portable platform for web collaboration, especially if Firefox 3 goes forward with the "information broker" role it wants to fulfill.
These four levels give us a good solid platform for the shifting hardware landscape. Because no matter what, everything always comes back to physical devices, physical presence of some kind.
random underscore blankspace at ya know hoo dot comedy.
I wish I had modpoints to mod you up. While your statement is strong, it has validity. Linux is great, yes, but I'd never use it for a production server based on my experiences with it. it isn't terrible, but there are much better alternatives.
Now, for my own personal experience, I prefer Ubuntu and hardly ever use my windows desktop. Even over VNC, my Ubuntu desktop is more responsive than Windows XP on the Dell, and much better than Windows 2k on the laptop. Infact, the only thing that runs on the laptop anymore is vncviewer, so it's essentially a dumb terminal. Since installing Dapper, I upgraded to Edgy with no problems, and plan on upgrading to Feisty as soon as the upgrade path gets tested. Edgy performs better on the same hardware than Dapper did, and Feisty looks to accomplish the same thing. When was the last time a Windows upgrade resulted in better performance on the same hardware?
http://www.mhall119.com
Kurzweil enjoys an unparalleled record of being way off with his predictions - and rightly so! Only Kurzweil would see sitting "..at the bottom of a swimming pool for 4 hours" as something to look forward to.....
I'll try that.
Why do all the docs still tell me to run xorgconfig, which asks me the same questions, in the same console interface, as back in 1993?
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
VNC is bloaty and based on rasters and bitmaps. It works, but its clunky, and both a resource and bandwidth hog. NX is a compression scheme for X11 traffic. Over dialup it feels like X11 on a LAN. I've set up everything you have, and it works, but it's nowhere near the performance of RDP into my XP box. You are flat out lying to yourself (or just clueless with windows) if you say that VNC is more responsive than Windows natively.
Mplayer plays all my video content just fine, but the interface is ugly as crap (repeat for VLC). OO.o does everything I need it to do, but it just feels slow and bloated. If I can type faster than it can display characters, it feels wrong. It feels like GeoWrite on my C64. It should not feel that way on a 2.6ghz machine with a gigabyte of RAM, and no other user apps running.
Everything on the linux desktop works, but it all feels unpolished, like it's almost there. It's felt like that forever.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Or perhaps you are claiming that these zero day exploits are a recent and rare phenomenon?
Asian countries are leading the US in internet bandwidth and connectivity, and if we migrate to a web based application scheme, it will only hurt the US even more. Perhaps this is part of Bill Gates' big plan to outsource all of IT in America. Make all the applications web based so the performance will suck when used from the US, but it will be perfect when used from Bangalore. This will cause all the American IT workers to lose their jobs, and Bill just gets richer....
...that's where, except of course for Plan 9 which will stay right where it is until or unless something better than Rio gains favor. At which point it too will go to hell in a handbasket.
It's the nature of the beast.
Caveat Utilitor
What the hell! Don't the people who are pushing applications via the internet remember anything about the mainframe/dumb terminal dark ages??? When the network (internet) is down, you're basically fu**ed! And dontcha just love the idea of ALL your private data residing on some server out there somewhere? This is a really dumb, bad idea that just won't die! But, like some other really bad ideas (Origami, anyone?) Microsoft just keeps beating the drums for this online applications thing, which they will be happy to provide to you for a (phe)nominal fee and everlasting monthly payments. Thanks anyway, but this kid is going to pass!
You keep making universal declarations of windows offering a better user experience, even when I stated explicitly that my linux desktop experience is more appealing to me than my windows desktop experience. Maybe you don't like it, maybe it doesn't feel polished to you. To me, Clearlooks feels more polished than Windows Classic or Windows XP themes. I didn't say VNC is more resposive than native windows, I said that Gnome is more responsive than native windows, even when used over VNC.
Again, I'm not famility with NX, but would that require you to have an X server on windows? How does NX handle apps that don't use X?
So you didn't like your Linux experience, fine, stick with windows. But don't act like just because you didn't like something, nobody else should or would like it. If you handed me 2 CDs, one with a complete stack of WindowsXP, MS Office, Visual Studio and Terminal Server (thats what, $1000 or more?) completely legal and free of charge, the other a Ubuntu LiveCD, I'd take Ubuntu.
http://www.mhall119.com
Do you know that today's computers are really fast? I mean, those GHz processors are incredibly fast, it is unbelievable what they are able to do in a second. But you might not know it from just using a computer.
In my daily work I often receive very slow responses from both Windows and Linux machines. I often have to wait seconds for things that should (and could) be instant. I mean after the screen saver on my desktop machine locks the screen, the next user request invariably will be to unlock it. The OS should know that. And it should sit there waiting for any sign that its master wants to work again and then it should instantly present the password dialog.
Or what about those apps where I have to look for seconds at animated splash screens saying that they load this or that module or plugin. Why can't the OS provide means for loading pre-initialized applications (some folks might remember the undump utility).
There are possible performance improvements all over the place, which could be achieved by using techniques like caching or using database technology or being able to hint to the operating system which ressources might be needed next. Together with maybe a little more RAM this could create a really reactive user experience.
I often wonder how you can spend so much money for creating software and come up with such bad and slow design :-).
...it's a kernel (and I'm not just picking nits, I swear :). X11 is not a desktop either; its a low level graphics interface, a uniform API to access your input/display devices. GNOME is something that I consider a "desktop", as is KDE. I agree with all of your points about mplayer, vlc, and oo.o; I just don't think that that is, in and of itself, indicative of a lack of progress for "linux on the desktop". If you use GNOME, you get a bunch of well-integrated, simple, attractive applications (eg. totem/abiword/gnumeric). If you just run X and pick and choose whatever X applications you want, things ARE going to look a little mismatched.. it is certainly *a* desktop on linux, but it isn't "the linux desktop". (Of course, the fact that you CAN do that is still a plus, but imho alot of progress has indeed been made on providing a cohesive desktop experience, if that's what you're looking for.)
About VNC, of course, you're exactly right..
Just because you know big words doesn't make you any more of an expert than he is. Why would the lungs be static and collapse? Wouldn't they fill with water rather than gas at the bottom of a pool, and use the water as a medium of oxygen exchange rather than air? But that'd make sense and be obvious to most people...
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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but then he can't call you names, eh
This is not an either-or discussion: an OS is a kernel and its supporting applications. On the whole, the Linux development community is poorly organized compared to the BSDs and MS.
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You can read/interpret the tagging as: say no to windows, yes to pclinuxOS. If this is what slashdot is becoming...
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
Full of water is really not a problem. Everyone can do this, even for much longer than 4 hours.
The price increase for the various iterations of Vista show that Microsoft is at least aware of Windows' continuing strength.
A few years ago I bought an OEM copy of XP Pro. I don't remember the exact date, but I do know for a fact that it's vanilla, and so pre-dates SP 1. A quick google gives me this article, implying that SP1 was released September 2002, so I bought my copy at least 4.5 years ago.
I do remember that it cost me roughly £120. I priced up an OEM copy of Vista a few days ago; overclockers.co.uk are selling the OEM version of Vista Ultimate for £130. That's just under a 10% increase in 4.5 years, which is more or less consistent with inflation here in the UK (which is 2%-3% per year).
What price increase? The "top of the line" version of Vista costs today roughly what the "top of the line" version of XP would cost if it were released now.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Personally I hate the interfaces of both of them, and much of their functionality actually.
;)
Wait, are you using GNOME?
I'm a KDE partisan myself, I must admit. I'd recommend trying out something like Kaffeine (using the Xine engine, perhaps?), I switch off between that and xine-ui for video (xine-ui is a bit less polished-looking, though I suppose that it might be better with a different skin, I just haven't bothered, heh...I got attached to xine-ui when I first started using Linux and KDE, so it's that and a few minor functionality tidbits that has me alternating between the two players.) If you're looking for an interface that doesn't look like crap, try one of those two (Kaffeine'll be much better if you're actually in KDE, you'll need nearly all of the libraries to run it in anything else probably anyways). Each of them has a different way of "not looking like crap". Kaffeine is a native KDE app, so it basically looks like however you have KDE looking at the time; Xine-ui is skinnable so you can make the main interface part look however you want. I'm not saying they're perfect . . . personally I love Media Player Classic
I do shy away from OO.o myself somewhat. Despite the bugginess in previous versions (though I haven't had any issues on my current computer) I keep getting called back to KWord. It has issues, certainly, but I like how it's very non-bloated yet doesn't lack essential features (so it isn't like using, say, Wordpad for writing something). I actually like it more than any other "modern" word processor (my ideal one, I must admit, is still WordPerfect 9 I believe it was).
Full disclosure: I'm typing this on my main computer, which runs almost exclusively on Kubuntu 6.10 AMD64. (By "almost exclusively" I mean that I also have WinXP, Vista and OS X installed, but I mainly use each of them for curiosity's sake).
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
And that's exactly what most users are doing. I'm sure the Linux supporters out there appreciate how quickly you have obsoleted all of their work to promote linux.
XP Service pack 2...
People seem to REALLY believe the "Desktop Revolution" will some day come.
Wake up! Until software houses continue to develop windows-only shit, better drivers, and with people still pushing shit like DirectX, instead of going OpenGL and multi-platform, there won't be any "Desktop Revolution".
If there was, for example, a native Photoshop for Linux, since the MacOS X version is both x86 and unix, if games were opengl (windows/mac/linux!), there would be something.. people could BUY shit and run on their os, without fucking emulators.
Well, the world ain't perfect, there is no defacto fucking standard. And i'd be fucking bored if there ever was.
If things were perfect, the world would be a shitty place. Humans always want less.
There is always cache and prefetch
That's the one that deals with broken tubes.
Kurzweil's one of a kind, super intelligent human being.. but as with all super intelligent human beings with a highly developed imagination (not to say this is bad), he often times comes off as a (a favorite term among physicists) 'crank'. Granted, for what he has accomplished, he is anything but a crank, however some of the things he predicts in his book, at least to me, is in the category, of how shall I put it gently - too optimistic.
:).
Then again, maybe it is I that is limited, so I guess time will show...
None of what is said right now about him or anything else will matter on a long enough timeline anyway
'A lie if repeated often enough, becomes the truth.' - Goebbels
Exactly.
Not many people who have gone to the trouble of owning a cow and stuck at it for awhile are going to go back to buying milk and cheese from the supermarket. The big dairies will try to make out that milking a cow is too difficult for ordinary people to manage. Some will believe them, but others will have a go and some of them will succeed. And just because people aren't buying prepackaged milk anymore, doesn't mean they won't be needing other things. The smart investor would be thinking in terms of cow food, churns and maybe fancy gadgets like fully-automatic electric cheesemakers and home semi-skimmers, which cow owners will need if they don't want to go back to Tesco.
Microsoft are getting too big for their boots. One day now, they'll mess with the wrong people, and be told to go forth and multiply. That will make a lot of people wonder why they didn't have the cojones to blow Microsoft off sooner. Some will give it a try. Remember also that interoperability is improving all the time. Microsoft can't change their proprietary protocols too quickly, for fear of breaking everything. If they introduce a new server protocol, everything still has to be able to speak the old one for awhile. Open Source is behind now; but if Microsoft stall, it'll catch up quickly.
And there's always this sort of scenario;
Once Open Source deployment -- whether that's Linux, BSD, Solaris or something else altogether -- reaches a certain critical mass, it will automatically and suddenl
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Once you accept the existence of nanobots, you might as well give them infinite capability. It's almost like... religion.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I have to agree. The smartest move Microsoft ever made was dumping the 95 series for NT. However, a lot of recent improvements were driven by Linux bringing design flaws to light, especially in the area of security.
OpenOffice works, but it just feels clunky - it feels like the versino of word I used on win 3.1
That's not really surprising. OpenOffice is trying to feel like MSOffice because that is the only office suite most corporate types know. Now, if you're saying that MSOfficeXP (the most recent version I've used) isn't as clunky as MSOffice97, I'd have to disagree.
MPlayer will start and randomly not play sound. Sound is still a big kludgy wtf-is-goin-on type thing. Should I be using ALSA, or ESD or
It sounds like a conflict between different sound servers. Personally, I'd dump everything except ALSA. ALSA can handle multiple applications and all major sound applications include direct support for it.
Bon Echo feels bloaty and slow - but firefox under windows XP on the same hardware is snappy and responsive.
Are you comparing the same versions? Bon Echo was the development platform for Firefox2. I currently use 2.0.0.1 on the same hardware under Gentoo and XP. It feels the same.
right down to fucking around with monitor frequencies by hand?
Why would you need to do that? Sure, you have the option. However, X is very good at setting up the monitor without that information. My current monitor section reads: 1280 x 1024 works great on my HP LCD.
The one thing that's gotten me excited is NX, and when I can migrate a session from windows to unix and back, and hijack the local desktop, then maybe I'll be a bit happier and find a little more use for my linux machine.
It's good that you are excited about technology was developed for Unix years ago.
Linux, in my home, is still just a big thing that runs samba so I can store all my porn on a computer built out of spare parts.
I too picked Samba for my file server. It doesn't have any silly restrictions on how many connections you can have.
I can tell you the one thing that sold my wife on switching all of our home computers to Linux, multi-user capability. Windows is trying to copy this feature. However, it's still very buggy under Windows.
Request a Linux Shockwave player here: http://www.macromedia.com/support/email/wishform/
"Finally, the box that they currently call the AppleTV I believe is not the final product - that will come in the next few years, and I'll bet you won't need a Mac or PC to use it."
The interesting thing about Firewire as opposed to USB is that it doesn't require a computer to work.
Just because you know big words doesn't make you any more of an expert than he is.
No, but my doctorate does make me more of an expert than him, especially when we talk about something in my field - the human body.
Wouldn't they fill with water rather than gas at the bottom of a pool
I was imagining someone holding their breath for 4 hours - theoretically possible if someone is balancing the CO2 and O2 levels in the blood, since changes in these concentrations are what stimulate the breathing reflex. If you propose to have someone actually BREATHE that water - especially FRESH water like you'd find in a pool - that person is dead.
Fresh water will be absorbed through the alveoli in the lungs. This will dilute the solutes in the blood, which will cause red blood cells to lyse in this hypotonic medium, which will release a whole lot of potassium into the bloodstream, which will kill the person from a cardiac dysrythmia in about oh, 5 minutes after they "breathe" water. This is the usual cause of death when someone drowns in fresh water.
You get once chance at breathing fluid - and that's when you're in your mother's belly. What you "breathe" isn't water but amniotic fluid, which has pretty much the same solute concentration as blood. Also note that any differences are almost immediately nullified by the placenta, because mommy can buffer a much bigger difference than baby can.
If you ever get your lungs filled with water, you are dead - despite everything you see in films or on CSI. No amount of jumping up and down on your chest - or oxygen in your blood - will save you.
But that'd make sense and be obvious to most people...
If the universe ran strictly on common sense: we wouldn't have any need for experts now, would we? Feel free to breathe all the oxygenated water you want, but as a physician I don't recommend it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Kernels, APIs, and everything else like that (I group 'em up to kill confusion) will be here forever.
There's no doubt about it. At all. PCs will forever be able to work without being connected to the Internet, at least here in North America, and over in Europe. No one's allowed to force you into connecting with complete strangers, even though it is a very useful tool. How else can you laugh at noobs?
We will still see regular software like we knew before, completely dependant, but alot of things are going to change.
- GUIs will be different. Somehow. Or replaced by something completely different maybe.
- Alot of stuff will be internet-connected, but not forced into it
- Empires will rise and fall. That can never be forgotten. It's only a matter of time before MS goes down, and someone else takes that blasted place.
Not for me, anything accessing the network is slower since I upgraded to SP2
http://www.mhall119.com
UEFI will move drivers into the bios
in 10 years about 80% of all pc's will run windows fiji which will just have been released
people will go nuts about the newest two features MS will have developed in those ten years:
- wobbly windows
- multiple desktops on a rotatable cube...
also they'll introduce a smashing new technology they call "eMail" (and file a patent)
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
I don't know other than getting toyota to make computers. Like I said, takes a little more then mediocrity level corporate intelligence and balls. It takes a company willing to take a chance, and not just talking about it and engaging in self destructive behavior, like GM did with the EV1. Gm play acted at offering an alternative car, ya they built a few and then only leased them, whereas toyota built one and shipped it to all their dealers and actually sold them because they made it affordable enough and functional enough that people actually tried it and liked it. They didn't play act at it or engage in deliberate sabotage, which a lot of folks thought GM did when they killed the electric car.
There are no major vendors doing anything with linux other than play-acting at it with the desktop, and one might think there might be a bit of behind the scenes sabotage going on to make sure that it never happens. Can't help but be suspicious there.
And here's the deal-even if they made a lot of them and they didn't sell, they could always be wiped and sold as windows OEM like they were originally designed to be. It's not like there's any huge difference with the hardware, all the major vendors use the same crap for most practical reasons. This *strongly* leads me to believe that there still remains the strong arm of the 800 lb gorilla corporate monopolist at work, any "lawsuits" notwithstanding. I think that is your 8 year "why hasn't it happened?" answer. This is 2007, the linux desktop is as ready as it is ever going to be.
Keychain computers - OS and Apps on your car keys with your data files.
Right now you can keep your Linux Operating System, and a bunch of Apps all on a USB Memory Stick.
This can put your whole system in your pocket.
As memory density increases and price declines, a 64 GB Flash Drive Memory Stick will come about at reasonable prices.
With More than 50 GB hanging from your keys - all your data and system files can boot and run on any machine.
Walk up, plug in - run your system.
Shutdown - everything is saved to your USB Flash Drive. Even in encrypted files if you wish.
No hard drive needed. Better security - easy to back up. Finger Print reader to boot. Even play MP3s (Think the creative MuVo MP3 player / USB Drive combo).
These will be the walk about systems used by many people.
Only to be out done by the Ultimate Expression of technology,
an Apple iPhone version of the OQO computer system:
An iPhone that is a phone/information device in your pocket,
and a full powered desktop system when plugged into it's base station dock.
(and with Samsung's 10 Megapixel camera phone camera (photos/video)
The Ultimate Singularity in all devices rolled into one:
Desktop Power, Cell Phone, 10MP Video/Photo Camera, email, voice mail, chat, web browsing, MP3 player, video player.
About the only thing NOT in your pocket is a printer and coffee maker!
The real trick is that the All-in-one pocket gizmo functionality is not compromised,
each of the individual functions should work as good as or better than the stand alone devices,
and all the functions should work seamlessly together - multiplying the usability 10 fold.
And stop making the Darn things Thinner, Smaller, and Swoopier!!!
Give us a Battery that actually lasts 24~48 hours run time at full operating power! (watching movies while chatting with a friend and downloading files in the background).
I honestly don't mind a phone that is 8 mm thicker - if that thickness gives me plenty of run time.
Recharging should be a once a week experience, not a once a day necessity.
My Thinkpad died after apparently one too many Linux distro installations (I was adding a new one about every other day for a while). As a long-time Mac user in a Windows world, adding another OS to the mix made sharing files an often frustrating experience. With much more emphasis on compatible formats, moving from Mac to Windows to Linux and back again is relatively painless these days. And yet, maybe the real promise of Web2.0 is to make the OS irrelevant.
Cory Doctorow describes himself as "someone who lives in his browser." I would put myself in that category as well and have been messing around with the idea of creating my own application service provider ever since I first heard that term back in the 90s. I love the idea of using any cpu as a terminal on the net where all my data and applications are stored.
Here are a few of the apps that are making this more possible all the time:
* gmail - now with nearly 3GB of storage, my current storage of over 1000 messages is only using 12% of capacity. At the rate that the service continues to upgrade capacity, I may never come even close to tapping out this service. Of course, Google may be running algorithms on all of us that will soon create a Minority Report world where we are bombarded with highly customized ad-sense commercials everytime our rfid-embedded brains pass a location-aware plasma screen.
* google calendar - with nice integration with gmail and the ical standard, this is a shareable and syncable web calendar that seems to get the job done for now and is sure to improve over time.
* del.icio.us - still the best social bookmarking / tagging service for my money (as in none since it's free)
* thinkfree online - this is a seriously cool product that I just started playing with over the past couple weeks. Despite the slower start time, this nifty little web app kicks Writely's ass by allowing you to create, share and store (up to 1GB for now) MS Office compatable docs, spreadsheets and presentations all using a relatively intuitive interface that duplicates the look and feel of ThinkFree's destop product (which is very similar to its Office counterpart). It even has wiki-type versioning history and allows you to post to a remote blog too.
* openomy is one of a bunch or new data storage services on the web these days. Openomy is written in Rails gives you a nice interface and 1GM of free storage.
* bloglines is still my favorite web-based RSS reader. It is incredibly easy to use and is one of the first things that I open when I am traveling or just have a quick minute to check in with what is going on in the world (or at least the world that I am interested in)
* So this sound great for common productivity tools but web-based apps will never replace apps like iTunes to play the music you have, right? Actually, Pandora, BlogMusik and similar apps to come might be even better to help you explore music you don't have (and both are free, at least for now)
* E-Messenger and KoolIM are a cool web-based instant messengers that allows you to IM with AIM, MSN, and Yahoo (including Yahoo Beta) without dowloading any client software.
With web-based applications and data storage that enable us to work and play beyond the desktop, could the "OS wars," and maybe the OS itself, soon be a thing of the past?
"And dontcha just love the idea of ALL your private data residing on some server out there somewhere?"
Or laptop.
"Operating systems will always be necessary, in some form or another."
Were's YOUR OS?
Lemme think, I know I've heard this idea before... Oh yeah, the idea of building smaller, leaner, faster, working items - that'd be shell scripting on your beloved *nix (mine too). And the OS in a ROM cart, a take off of the old, but venerable computers like the C-64. Computing wasn't easy then, but it could be now. But if we did that, the Geek Squad, et al would all be looking for new jobs.
You make some good points, but I think you're missing the biggest factor that will prevent the realization of your theory of the future: interest.
Most people don't own their own cow and make their own dairy products because they *can't*, but rather because they don't care and would prefer to spend their time doing other things. I don't want to be responsible for taking care of another life (providing ample pasture and quality food and veterinary care and making sure it is comfortable in the winter/summer) and I don't want to culture my milk for cheese or stir constantly. I would prefer to go to the store and just buy it. I don't care if I could do it myself for 30 cents cheaper, or even for $1 cheaper.
I could easily sit down and dedicate my time to learning low-level programming and make some huge contributions to the software community, but I don't want to. I don't have interest in that. I appreciate the idea of open source and the reasons why some people don't like closed source, but I don't care. If Microsoft or Sun wants to hire people and make their own software and not give anyone the source, that's their right. That's what so hilarious about the "libertarians" on Slashdot. They want government to pack up and go home, but they want someone to do away with DRM and closed source--communized software. Do they honestly believe that companies wouldn't be WORSE without regulation? The RIAA doesn't need the government; a libertarian government would simply allow privatization of the justice system and the RIAA wouldn't need due process to punish people. Who do you go to when you've been robbed of your house by the RIAA if you're governed by libertarians? Without taxes, there's no authority. Without legislation, there's no protection.
Back to the point, though, hardware is becoming commoditized. This involves standardization in some areas in terms of components and the like, but more importantly, it involves specialization and striation at the consumer end. Only hobbyists and professionals care about standardized hardware and the "nuts and bolts" (so true that it birthed that very expression). Everyone else just wants a bench or a bookshelf or an appliance. "Rolling your own" will still be important to many, and that's great. But the public at large just wants a complete product that works. A computer should be an appliance, and it shouldn't matter what goes on beneath the surface. You don't care about the operating system used by your microwave--it does what it's meant to do.
You can even see this progression as the days of the personal computer have unfolded: early on, you couldn't have a computer without learning a programming language and learning the intimacies of its design. Later on, all of that was handled by OSes. You just needed to learn how to interact and how to use the software you added, and how to modify system files and jumpers for new peripherals. Today, people don't even need to know anything to install new hardware. Mainstream computer places barely carry internal components at all (aside from RAM and hard drives). The next layer to drop out of relevance is the operating system, and I think that's the shred of truth to the article's premise.
In the relatively near future, people will be able to pick up a computer like they pick out a new refrigerator or a TV. There will still be distinguishing features and varying specifications, but they won't get in your way much if you don't care. Apple's got this basically down. You turn on the machine, and it works. Standardization doesn't imply universality. Replacement parts and accessories are still tied to the original product (for appliances, basic electronics, and all sorts of mundane things). While the parts used to build them are standardized, the finished goods aren't, and likely never will be. Software tools will likely wind up standardized for developers, but I think the ultimately result will be self-contained products rather than strictly interoperable ones.
Run programs over the internet.. Sorry for me asking, but what did he espect that the browser runs on? Air? Maybe Firefox will be converted to run native on PS2? Ofcourse we need an OS. How about the servers, those that shall host the programs, yeah right they run without an OS.
Try koffice. It isn't as functional, but it does feel a lot better.
MPlayer will start and randomly not play sound. Sound is still a big kludgy wtf-is-goin-on type thing. Should I be using ALSA, or ESD or /dev/dsp or what? What the fuck? I think ESD is what I want to use, but now all sound is delayed by a half second.
Agreed, but it's getting there. On any current system I've seen you can use any of the three and it'll work, and ESD is officially deprecated - sure, it's not gone yet, but progress is certainly being made.
What about all the piles of graphics libraries
Ignore them, pick the one you like and stick with the applications that go with it. I'm running a pure KDE system here - just because other graphics libraries exist doesn't mean you have to pay any attention to them.
what's a game developer supposed to work with? DirectX may be kludgy in a lot of ways, but it's a HUGE asset for Windows.
SDL. And again, yes, it's still behind directx, but you can't deny that progress has been made.
I dunno, it's usable, but it was usable in the early 90s. I know that things have improved, but it still feels like the same experience I had back then - right down to fucking around with monitor frequencies by hand?
I could say the same thing about windows, right down to rebooting four times to upgrade my video drivers. What are the ways you feel windows has improved?
The big difference is that file is called xorg.conf now. What the fuck is up with that? Are people still using monitors without EDID? Even if a handful are, why are we still designing for that outside case? Why cant I just have " Section Montior / EDID True / End Section" or something like that?
Actually the nvidia drivers do that now - you still have to specify a frequency range, but it gets ignored.
I am trolling
The programming language C and the user/kernel mode will not survive for much longer.
First of all, the C model has been proven to cause more problems than benefits. The C model is defined as the model where native code is executed directly by the hardware, absolute barriers exist between programs, the kernel routines live in a different universe than the programs etc.
There are great problems with this model:
1) co-operation between programs proves very difficult both for the O/S designer and the programmer. Very specialized mechanisms are required for programs to communicate: pipes, sockets, shared memory, etc. Those things work nicely, no doubt about that. But to code an API on top of them is not straightforward and it takes time.
2) viewing a process as a giant array of bytes resulted in billions of dollars of damage in buffer overflow exploits, null & wild pointers, etc.
My prediction is that at some point in time, someone will come out with an O/S that is not based on C, but on a more advanced programming language, like Java, Smalltalk, Erlang or Haskell. And those O/Ses will prove that APIs are more important than O/Ses, and that modules are better than processes.
But with the advent of cartridge-loading hay mangers and self-cleaning cow byres (just requires a 13 amp electrical supply, 1.5 bar water supply and sewage connection) and the BoviProbe electronic cow health monitor, looking after your cow will be easy. And the Cheesemaster 360, with settings for Cheddar, Camembert, Edam, Stilton or a rapid one-hour programme -- what's not to like about that? It's only the absence of such labour-saving gadgets at cheap prices that make cow ownership (or, for that matter, a programme where you lease a cow from a burger restaurant on a guaranteed buyback!) unviable. And if a scandal broke that Big Dairies were putting addictive drugs in their products to make you buy more from them, the benefits of milk-independence might outweigh the perceived inconveniences.
Remember too, there used to be a time when everybody relied on public transport to move them around -- nobody seriously believed that people would ever own their own cars on such a scale.
Actually, no, it isn't. That's like saying "It's my knife and I can stab whoever I like with it". Your right not to get stabbed trumps my right to stick my knife where I like, just like my right to know what the software I am running on my computer is really doing trumps anyone's right to keep that secret from me.
I've no objection to paying a chef to bake a cake and him not showing me how he does it, as long as he answers truthfuklly when I ask him about specific ingredients it may or may not contain. That's his prerogative. But when I'm paying him to bake a cake in my kitchen, using my ingredients, my utensils and my gas and electricity, it becomes very much my business what he's doing in there. How do I know he's not calling premium-rate pr0n chat lines on the kitchen extension, helping himself to my cooking sherry or making rude gestures to my neighbours through the window?
Likewise, if someone wants me to run a program on my computer, they'd damn well better show me exactly what it's doing in there. Otherwise, I've exactly two words for them. And the second one is "off".
Depends to what level you mean. If an amplifier blows its output transistors, I can replace them with identical parts; the originals might have been made by Mullard, but if SGS-Thomson supply ones with the same part number, they will do fine. At a coarser granularity, whatever TV set I buy, I know that it will have the same 3-pin plug on the power lead that will fit any socket on my ring main, and the same 21-pin socket on the back that will connect to any VCR, DVD player, satellite decoder, games console or any future device to be invented that plugs into a TV set. I'd call that pretty well standardised.
If you look at software that's been around awhile -- mail servers, databases, web servers, FTP and so forth, there are well-standardised protocols. Any POP3 client will talk to any POP3 server and any web browser will talk to any H
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Remember too, there used to be a time when everybody relied on public transport to move them around -- nobody seriously believed that people would ever own their own cars on such a scale.
Well, other than the fact that it was mass transit and not so much public transit, that's essentially correct. But having your own car is a far cry from being your own programmer or milkman. It's a largely American phenomenon to be obsessed with car ownership, as well. There are some things people like to do themselves, like driving on their own schedule to their decided destination (the weakness of using a system). On the other hand, milking cows and programming software are things that the general public would prefer to leave to specialists.
Actually, no, it isn't. That's like saying "It's my knife and I can stab whoever I like with it". Your right not to get stabbed trumps my right to stick my knife where I like, just like my right to know what the software I am running on my computer is really doing trumps anyone's right to keep that secret from me.
That's just silly. If they're offering to stab you and you don't want to get stabbed, don't sign on the dotted line. If they're selling a product you don't want (because it's closed source), don't buy it. But I don't think that they should be prevented from selling it if people will buy it. Let the customer decide. I absolutely do not care that OS X is partly closed source. I don't care that Windows is closed source. I'm not a technophobe and I'm not anti-FOSS; it's just largely irrelevant to me personally. I use open source software wherever it's feasible and superior to other offerings. But sometimes I like closed source software better--not because it's closed source, but because it's better for what I want it to do.
How do I know he's not calling premium-rate pr0n chat lines on the kitchen extension, helping himself to my cooking sherry or making rude gestures to my neighbours through the window?
Because you can monitor all those activities yourself externally. You can monitor what software takes in and puts out, too. What your analogy is asking to do is permission to see inside his head to see what he's thinking and how he thinks it. If he wants to share that with you, great, but if he doesn't, I'm willing to accept that if he's Bobby Flay and not Johnny the burger boy.
Depends to what level you mean. If an amplifier blows its output transistors, I can replace them with identical parts; the originals might have been made by Mullard, but if SGS-Thomson supply ones with the same part number, they will do fine. At a coarser granularity, whatever TV set I buy, I know that it will have the same 3-pin plug on the power lead that will fit any socket on my ring main, and the same 21-pin socket on the back that will connect to any VCR, DVD player, satellite decoder, games console or any future device to be invented that plugs into a TV set. I'd call that pretty well standardised.
All of that is true of the computer industry today. I don't see hardware as growing any more standardized than it already is. What I do see is a changing software market that tends toward consolidation. Operating systems are becoming more end-to-end complete. Right now with a Mac, I can do just about everything a typical PC user would want to do. With a properly-built MythTV box, I can do anything I can imagine with TV (sadly no Linux iTunes to seal the deal). I don't need a Microsoft spreadsheet or an Adobe PDF maker or a Lotus email client or a Mozilla Firefox. All I should need is a computer that does it all properly. Apple will have its style and will do well. HP will have whatever it is that makes people buy HPs. Dell will have its cheap price. I can buy all sorts of microwaves; they're all essentially the same but there are still dozens of manufacturers and minor variations. Computers should be more of the same, with a thriving niche for those of us who want more control an
1) Open source UNIX is the future, long term. OSX, and to a lesser extent, Linux, will continue to be the public, lowest common denominator face of that. The BSDs will continue to have a place for people who care more about technical quality and aren't simply looking for a *nix based Windows clone. Barring the appearance of another alternative, (which definitely needs to happen) OSX will probably inherit the bulk of the consumer space after the demise of Windows/Microsoft, although Apple need to start making a lot more intelligent decisions before it can happen. If there is a mainstream move to Apple, it will be out of necessity, due to OSX being the least-bad option as far as the mainstream end user is concerned...not because it is what most people will want. Linux in my own opinion is not going to become a genuinely mainstream end user operating system any time soon, despite what some of its' advocates might want. The death of the FSF is the single main thing that would need to happen to enable mainstream adoption of Linux.
2) We'll either come up with a global form of/substitute for assembler at some stage, or the 8086/its' derivatives will become so completely dominant that we won't have to. Said global form is not, in my own opinion, likely to be C as some have speculated.
3) In terms of interfaces, at some point (probably beginning around 10 years out) we'll figure out how to make 3D work for us. (And I mean really work; not cosmetic crap like Beryl or Aero, but interfaces which involve a genuinely 3D environment...something more like Croquet) I don't know what that looks like yet...and to be honest, I don't think anyone else really does either. I don't believe it's going to ultimately resemble the Gibsonian "Matrix" model at all, (at least superficially) mainly because such is far too complex for mainstream use. Graphically/visually speaking, Gibson's and the other earlier VR models were conceptualised via modernism, which is now long dead. If the existing pattern holds true, you'll probably see the interface prototyped within experimental games like Black and White (which used gestures very widely) or Spore, (whose development of a direct object-manipulation interface I think stands to have implications that will reach much further than just that game itself) and then backported out to the operating system itself.
4) Microsoft will largely cease to exist at some point between 2015 and 2025. I use a ten year bracket there because given the size of the company's cash reserves and the number of other variables, an exact date is impossible to predict with any certainty. We're not going to see a reduced consultancy role for the company post-monopoly like IBM, either...in the case of Microsoft there is far too much hostility and too many people with an active desire to see the death of the company. Vista is going to greatly exacerbate and speed the sinking process, and I think hindsight will allow us to see that with Vista being the abomination that it is, Microsoft have squandered their last real opportunity to create a scenario where they might have been able to survive, long term.
5) The arrival of 64 bit is going to be an entry in the "so what?" category. It's a phased, incremental upgrade; people will quietly buy 64 bit machines, the various operating systems will quietly release 64 bit ports, and the world will keep turning without interruption on that score.
6) The microkernel model will remain the road less travelled for kernel development, mainly because of its' degree of difficulty to implement. A less intelligent but more simple hybrid monolithic/modular kernel, making a gradual transition towards being more service oriented, a la Plan 9, will I think take shape. Professor Tanenbaum might well have been right in his opinion that a microkernel was technically superior, but at the end of the day, having something that works well is going to be trumped by the need to have something that works at all. This was again proven by
Operating systems will splinter into multiple dramatically different forms but eventually survive. For offices, the desktop will evolve into an ultrathin client connected to a large array of "personal servers". This will NOT mean "Web apps". It will mean a new breed of dedicated high bandwidth fiber connection between offices and server centers; A new breed of "instant on" all ROM, ultra reliable, ultra minimal, OS on the desktop; And a new breed of of "mega OS" at the server center. I have written about this paradigm a couple times in the past decade -- on blogspot in particular -- and called it "aircraft hangar architecture" becuase the server centers would gravitate towards low rent, secure locations. Maybe aircraft hangars. The AHA revolution will develope as the great sleepy dragon rouses. Microsoft will fight against AHA because monopolists always cling to the paradigm which begat their monopoly. Think IBM and mainframes. And free software development is slow and disorganized. Massive organized development is needed. Small Western entrepeneurs may initiate some steps towards AHA, but the vast armies of techies in Asia will dominate. The result will be the economic collapse of the West, gravely abetted by rising energy costs and other problems [[residual racism; educational failure; yadda yadda yadda]]. This in turn will lead to political extremism, as in Hitler's Germany; the Turner diaries; the Murrah Federal Building; the far Christian right; yadda yadda yadda. Which will lead to World War III. Being nuclear, there will be little left. Small villages living thru a brief Ice Age. But technology will redevelope. Rapidly. Then at some point always-semi-incompetent hairless apes will build an atom smashing machine with enough power to trigger the creation of a black hole. This is what happens thruout the universe wherever intelligent life evolves, life being inextricably wedded with death. So all humanity will end as our first black hole grows. But we will launch at least a few extremely intellignet robotic spacecraft before we perish. And they will have Operating Systems.
Well, there's the small problem that bodies tend to float a certain amount of time after death...