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Ask Slashdot: Innovative Operating Systems/Distros In 2015?
iamacat writes: Back in 90s, we used Linux not only because of open source, but also for innovative features not found in commercial operating systems — better multitasking, network power features like slirp and masquerading, free developer tools for many languages. Nowadays OSX and Windows caught up in these areas and mainstream distros like Ubuntu dumbed down in default configuration. So where to go for active innovation like 3D/VR desktop, artificial intelligence, drag and drop ability to mash up UI of multiple apps or just drastically better performance? Something maybe rough around the edges but usable and exciting enough to use as daily desktop?
Back in the 1990's, you had to roll your own kernel and modules. If you were lucky, all the hardware worked. Most of the time it didn't. Nothing worked out of the box. Today's kids have it too easy. Now get off my lawn!
Just because Ubuntu dumbed down doesn't mean you need to use it. Slakware is still out there. Arch, Gentoo, Debian, Fedora, etc. are all a bit rougher and all have a bit more "exciting stuff". Still, the submittor's main problem is that he needs to go into a StarTrek movie. Truly innovative ideas in operating systems, like Plan9 and Eros, end up with less "drag and drop ability to mash up UI of multiple apps" (whatever that means) than the mainstream. Most of the innovation is now best done on the level of the application anyway.
So you are saying that OS X is "innovative" because it consists largely of 1980's technology (NextStep, BSD, Smalltalk, OO dev tools)? Seems to me that that makes it about three decades behind the times.
Yeah, I don't know why it has been such slow going... back in the naughties I was working with distributed applications... We'd be setting up MOSIX clusters with transparent process migration (it's often faster to migrate the process to the data rather than get the data to the process) and distributed filesystems like CODA (which still aren't much of a commodity, they've just sorta migrated to "the cloud" with crap like Dropbox and Google Drive and MS OneDrive or whatever). I could walk up to any computer or device and access my desktop via VNC and keep working on whatever I was doing just as I had left it.
In the mean time, it seems like everything was set back 10 years as everything got reinvented for mobile devices. Network speeds for mobile phones were roughly about 10 years behind desktop computing. Screen size and resolution was closer to about 20 years behind, which might explain why phone interfaces today look more like Windows 3.11 than ever.
Perhaps the biggest difference is in price. Now that smartphones and computers are practically disposable, we've shifted from building highly reliable distributed systems to highly replaceable throwaway systems. Don't get too attached to the idea of a persistent remotely accessible virtual workspace, all your programs (I mean "apps") and interfaces you're accustomed to using will be thrown away during the next release cycle next week anyways.
Speaking for myself, I use Linux distros at home for these reasons:
1. They're not Microsoft, Apple or Google.
2. There is less "telemetry" from my Linux boxes to OS megacorps(see #1)
3. Linux desktops have become reasonably reliable and stable, and yes, I've been using Unix/Linux since late 90s.
4. I enjoy trying out different distros/software, configuring the software, seeing the different ways things work in different distros, etc
5. Linux is fun!
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
i agree with the first sentence and partially agree with the second.
i feel like the excitement of linux desktop is disappearing. i.e. gnome looks amateurish but has well integrated apps. kde looks more professional, but feels like mess where barely anything works as it should. enlightenment is like going a decade back in time - what the hell is samsung doing with it? unity is too simplistic, cinnamon is the definition of "nothing exciting".
in gnu/linux in general, package manager is nothing special anymore, win/mac have it too. stuff like cgroups, containers, fs snapshots are nothing to be excited about as an ordinary desktop user. there are no linux only killer apps.
and stuff is complicated and buggy. i have yet to meet a fedora/centos person who has selinux/firewalld enabled and is able to get work done. also, good luck debugging your setup with systemctl and journald. in ubuntu, it's almost impossible to get a bug fixed. you either fix it youself or go upstream, then open bug report in debian and then in ubuntu. then you create fake accounts (to say it affects me too) to get some attention to the bug report and hope that in a year+ a new ubuntu version will have it fixed. and they're not stupid ui issues, but big stuff like server installer not working with usb keyboards, nfs not mounting with exec,dev,suid if -o users is present, etc..
windows/mac still suck a lot more (believe me i've tried switching to osx), but they have a lot more 'killer' apps.