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Where Are Operating Systems Headed?

Posted by Zonk on from the oses-in-spaaaace dept.

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?"

4 of 278 comments (clear)

  1. Linux is headed to the landfill by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    Linux on the desktop is a pipe dream. Even today it can't touch Windows 95.
    Linux in the server room is already being overtaken by (open)solaris x86.

    In two years, Linux will be finished.

    On a personal note, I don't mind *BSD for instance, but Linux is a POS. Good riddance.

    1. Re:Linux is headed to the landfill by teknopurge · · Score: -1, Flamebait

      Agreed, and I'll post non-AC.

      Linux is a hobbyists OS, regardless of how much marketing capital the likes of RedHat and IBM put behind it. IMO, the Kernel is turning to crap when script-kiddies from Turkey are using 0-days weekly and the subjugated server count increases by the thousands daily.

      For serious deployments:

      Solaris (TrustedSolaris is nice too)
      HP-UX
      AIX
      Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition (be kind!)
      FreeBSD/OpenBSD (Hurry with that complete SMP support!)

      Yes - Theo can be an ass, but his code is clean, elegant and robust, as are his development mantras. From the above list, the only fair comparison to Linux are the BSDs, and let's be blunt: they trounce Linux in terms of reliability. We have not had a Kernel panic on our OpenBSD cluster in over 5 years, and a buffer overflow? Not in my OpenBSD-world.......which brings this little rant full-circle: the Linux development process is headed for the landfill, and that is the cause of the now inferior Linux Kernel.

      --
      Website Hosting
  2. Monolithic Forever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Flamebait

    If Linus has his way, the monolithic kernel will be with us forever.
    I say go microkernel or go home.

  3. Re:Consumer devices by chrismgtis · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    Steve Jobs is a tool with a few good ideas and an over sized ego, that just happens to know how to bullshit the public into thinking his products are something special.