Thought Experiment: The Ultimate Creative Content OS

Dave Girard has written a lengthy description of how to design the best possible operating system for creative pursuits (video editing, photo manipulation, and sound editing, in particular) — at least the the best possible one he can imagine by selecting from the best tools and behaviors that he finds in Mac OS X, Windows, and (mostly Ubuntu) Linux. He makes a compelling case for the OS (or at least a GUI on top of it) having baked-in support for a wide range of image formats and codecs, and makes some pointed jabs along the way at what each of these three big players do wrong.

Comments

Solution: Window Blinds theme

[SplatMan_DK]

Most of what he proposes could be done with a Blinds theme (a GUI tweaking utility for Windows made by StarDock).

It hacks the Windows GUI though the WPF and Win32 APIs and changes pretty much whatever you like.

Stuff like inserting an OS-wide search field in file dialogues or using an alternate image preview library is within the capabilities of a Blinds Theme.

StarDock even has a tweak called "Modern Mix" which forces single-screen Metro apps to work in a regular (and realizable) desktop window.

There are a lot of ugly things to say about Windows, but the architecture allows what the author is proposing. Virtually every OS component in Windows is available for tweaking or replacement.

- Jesper