Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Ask Slashdot: Innovative Operating Systems/Distros In 2015?

Posted by Soulskill on from the whatever-runs-your-toaster dept.

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?

27 of 206 comments (clear)

  1. Do what? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    None of what you mention was a unique feature of Linux or even pioneered by it. All of what you talk about were already part of Unix systems that existed prior or was software that existed before Linux even existed and was already cross-platform.

    1. Re:Do what? by pla · · Score: 2

      All of what you talk about were already part of Unix systems that existed prior

      Absolutely true. Now name a desktop OS that had those features at the time.

      Yes, technically I had a $15k HP-UX system sitting on my desk at work back then (though amusingly, my Windows PC sitting next to it had about 10x the horsepower for 1/10th the cost), but that doesn't really have much relevance to your average home power-user.

      I find it odd that almost every post so far has slammed the OP for romanticizing the dawn of Linux, but it did count as that much of a radical departure from the standard fare of the day. Even if it did nothing more (and it did a lot more) than bring some of the same tools to the desktop that Big Iron had had for decades, that alone completely changed the home PC landscape forever.

    2. Re:Do what? by squiggleslash · · Score: 2

      True, but he said innovative, not inventive. These are not synonyms. Innovative frequently involves invention, but literally all it means is bringing a technology to people as if for the first time. The iPod would be a very major example of innovation, for example, despite every feature (except ease of use) it had being bettered by contemporary Nomads.

      The early distributions did make useful Unix-like systems available to a mass audience. MINIX didn't do that. Coherent didn't do that. And SysV certainly never even tried to do that. RedHat et al deserve enormous credit for that. As does whatsisname, that guy who wrote the Linux kernel... Richard Stallman, right? ;-)

      --
      You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
    3. Re:Do what? by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

      I believe you can read the OP as meaning "commercial CONSUMER operating systems", which UNIX was not.

      Yes it was. BSD was available, for free, on desktop systems, before Linux. The only difference was that BSD required a floating point co-processor, while Linux did not. But plenty of desktops had 387s.

    4. Re:Do what? by jeremyp · · Score: 3, Informative

      If we are talking about the early 90's there was Windows NT 3.1 and OS/2 as well as BSD, SCO Unix and Xenix. Plus there were still Unixes available for several higher end work stations like Sun and Silicon Graphics.

      In technical terms the Windows NT kernel compares very favourably with Linux which was pretty agricultural by the standards of the times. Taking just the example of the thread support, Linux threads were a fiasco for many years.

      --
      All I want is a secure system where it's easy to do anything I want. Is that too much to ask ~~ Randall Munroe
    5. Re:Do what? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, technically I had a $15k HP-UX system sitting on my desk at work back then (though amusingly, my Windows PC sitting next to it had about 10x the horsepower for 1/10th the cost), but that doesn't really have much relevance to your average home power-user.

      Also, who the shit wants to run HP-SUX? I got paid to figure out how to set up IPSEC on it once, holy crap. The documentation was literally backwards.

      Didn't Linux do a lot of those fancy networking tricks before most commercial Unixes? Stuff like packet mangling and IP masquerading? And the free dev tools may have been available for other platforms, but there's a big difference. Most of the time, the official compiler would shit all over gcc. I worked for a company that had the sunspro compiler suite, and of course I got gcc, and anything that would build with sun's compiler would just crap all over a gcc build. Since a lot of the early work on gcc aimed at x86, you didn't get as much benefit from using some vendor's compiler on a PC Unix as you did on those more expensive platforms. So yeah, I had the GNU suite on my Sun machines, but the PC running Linux really changed the industry.

      To be fair, BSD had new stuff, too. But the community was less friendly, the documentation less penetrable (use the source? I wasn't there yet) and the license apparently attracted less contributions.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
    6. Re:Do what? by lister+king+of+smeg · · Score: 3, Informative

      But BSD was locked in a court battle with AT&T at the time over UNIX code copyright.

      --
      ---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
    7. Re:Do what? by Mondragon · · Score: 2

      Absolutely true. Now name a desktop OS that had those features at the time.

      Linux is barely even a desktop OS *now*, the idea that you would compare it to desktop OSes in the 90s is amusing at best.

  2. Is this a joke? by __aaclcg7560 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:Is this a joke? by Defenestrar · · Score: 2

      And 3D UIs existed back then too - just watch a copy of Jurassic Park ;)

    2. Re:Is this a joke? by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 2

      Yes, it did. It's always funny when nerds think that was some sort of invention of the movie when it was a real thing.

    3. Re:Is this a joke? by UnknowingFool · · Score: 2

      It's also funny when people post things that directly refute them: "File System Navigator (fsn; pronounced "fusion") is an experimental application to view a file system in 3D, made by SGI for IRIX systems. Even though it was never developed to a fully functional file manager. . ." Most anyone who worked with Unix back in those days would know that the 3D UI in the film was definitely not Unix. Most people were lucky to get a terminal when dealing with Unix.

      --
      Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
  3. different linux? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  4. What sort of hardware are you using? by Rei · · Score: 3, Funny

    They say that P-P-P-PowerOS is rather nice, but it only runs on specific laptops.

    --
    "Oh, goodness. Look at my wrist, I have to go." "But what about your clothes?" "I don't love these."
  5. You have to pick an area and focus by TheModelEskimo · · Score: 2

    There is so much innovation these days that it has transcended the separation-by-OS that used to handily signal where and what kind of changes you could expect. As an example, if you're looking for an experimental graphical terminal emulator it turns out you can use it in Windows and OS X, but not in Linux. But the point is, it's not available on one OS in particular and it's even a virtue now to be cross-platform. There's so much new tech out there and it all happens on a huge variety of platforms. So trying out new tech is just a matter of focusing (for example: system software, graphics software, hardware support, kernel-level new stuff, software in embedded systems, hardware sensors, etc.) and then deciding what the required resources are to dive in on that specific level. What OS or OSes would be best, what packages should you install, and so on.

    Going back to your examples, 3D/VR desktop work has been going on since the 80s at least, and AI before that, and "drastically better performance" has always been on peoples' minds. The GUI mashups even ring a bell, though everything is so scriptable these days that anyone who's doing a GUI mashup would probably be less frustrated just typing it into a reusable script. These aren't new topics, they change over time incrementally, and the only advice I can give is to make sure you are _really_ looking at the high-end tech that you think you are. If you are frustrated with a slow system, did it cost less than $10K? Because that's commodity-level pricing. If you are frustrated with the 3D effects you just enabled on your desktop, did you really research the state of the art? And so on.

    Also, just to nitpick--you say Ubuntu is dumbed-down in "default configuration" but Windows and OS X are dumbed down by default too, aren't they? That's why you have package managers, Ninite, the App Store, etc. Restore your purchases or download a set of things and you're out of the dumbzone.

  6. Re:OS X caught up??? by danbob999 · · Score: 2

    Stronger heritage of what? The OP was referring to innovative features.

  7. The future is in the past! by TheCount22 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Take a look at Squeak ( http://squeak.org/ ). As it turns out most things in the future will have their roots in the discarded ideas of the past. As far as programming languages take a look at Erlang and Elixir (computer languages are the operating systems of the future). I expect the capability model and the actor model will get a lot more popular in the future. In the future computers will be networks, applications will be distributed applications.

    1. Re:The future is in the past! by rwa2 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

  8. Random bullshit generator by Hognoxious · · Score: 3, Funny

    drag and drop ability to mash up UI of multiple apps

    Iif you want one with a random bullshit generator, just choose whatever the OP runs.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  9. Re:OS X caught up??? by NostalgiaForInfinity · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  10. Windows 8! by postmortem · · Score: 3, Funny

    It is very exciting to use! You'd want to destroy keyboard, screen, or the computer itself after you use it for a bit.

  11. Other Reasons by Sir_Eptishous · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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
  12. Funtoo Linux by corychristison · · Score: 2

    For anyone looking to get their hands dirty, I always recommend to try out Funtoo Linux.

    Try out various kernels (even BSD kernels), choice between 3 init systems, and all the customization you want.

    Seriously. Try it. www.funtoo.org

  13. Re:Uh huh... by shaitand · · Score: 4, Interesting

    BSD is not a commercial OS and isn't in competition with Linux.

    Linux brought those things to the consumer desktop. In the 2000's it not only continued to gain functionality but actually gained polish. Today, Linux is at least as polished and pretty as Windows or OSX.

    The only people still using BSD (and honestly most of the "hardcore" distributions of Linux) are people who appreciate difficulty for it's own sake. Unlike windows and OSX you trade no functionality for the polished experience. You simply fall back to manual effort when you need more flexibility than the polished tools provide and most of the time the polished tools break none of it.

    If you have trouble with rpmbuild; yum -y local vs make; make install and therefore choose the old way and break package management thus finding yourself in a dependency hell a year later... that's because you are ignorant, perhaps willfully, and your outdated and unpolished system that gives you no added functionality is what you deserve.

    For myself... I used desktop linux in 98 and have used linux in the server rack since that time. It has taken many forms and flavors for me including LFS for awhile. That was great for learning how everything works under the hood. If you are using anything but a modern user friendly linux on even a 5 yr old desktop and spending more than 2-4 hours configuring and customizing the OS itself on setup (less than windows or OS X) then I have to question your life choices. Unless are learning, why waste time manually doing things the hard way when you can point and click your way to a solid and well configured launch platform for working on the new thing you are learning now? If there is some detail that matters which you can't point and click you way to, why not help improve the polish so you can move on? The point really extends to experienced users of windows and OS X (by which I really mean the latest and greatest edition of OS X in the same way windows is nothing but the latest and greatest NT) as well.

    The OS wars are over. You could make a very good argument that Linux won since it is by far the most heavily deployed OS overall. But really it's more that the war itself become obsolete because open software stacks won. Even if you are using windows outside of certain niche environments most of the software you are using is cross platform OSS and most of your experience takes place in the browser or at least the network. It really makes very little difference what OS you use because no OS actually won and therefore everything has to work everywhere.

    I switched from a linux desktop back to windows for years because working on third party systems constantly meant needing windows only apps and because windows got me from scratch to a working platform more quickly. Meanwhile I continued using linux as my first choice for... everything else. Now I've switched back to find Linux Mint actually provides a smoother, easier, and prettier experience these days on my brand new high end laptop supporting all the recently released hardware out of the box. It was so quick and easy I actually did spent a little time customizing frivolous things like window behavior, desktop effects, and widgets. I'm not sure I want any new innovation on my desktop. Just keep pace and let things grow more stable. Maybe fix the odd clipboard behavior and inconsistency? Middle click paste is a cool concept but not worth the hassle. Finally fix the quirks of kmixer?

    The only thing left was support for the vsphere client. The virtual F5 in my lab ties me to this and the lack of functionality in the web equivalent in newer versions also hampers me here requiring me to virtualize windows. The solution is I'll simply remove both vmware and F5 from my lab. Many enterprises still have these things but that isn't the direction of the future. The future is about the open equivalents that have caught up now on the core functionality you need from these things are easily deployed on any cloud stack giving greater flexibility and automatabil

  14. nixos and urbit by drewm19801927 · · Score: 2

    NixOS has a package manager that I think has a real shot at achieving scalability and repeatability in package management. Once something works in NixOS it will keep working on it's own, since specific versions of dependencies are tracked and can coexist, whereas in mainstream distros shit breaks all the time. The current model of freezing everything once in a while and patching up some of the most obviously broken stuff simply isn't keeping up with the pace of software development IMHO. http://nixos.org/ For a real moonshot OS/language/decentralize_all_the_things project, check out Urbit: http://urbit.org/

  15. Re:-ENOENT by greenfruitsalad · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

  16. Innovative OSes in 2015 by finchd · · Score: 2

    Nothing as far as a distro (or desktop environment) with 3D VR or AI comes to mind but there is innovation in OS going on. Not many have attempted to answer the OP, so here's my list. Others mentioned Qubes, Urbit, and Mirage.io, which reminded me of Nix OS and HaLVM.

    Both innovative and seems daily-driver ready:
    1. Qubes OS - https://www.qubes-os.org/ - Linux distro that runs a Xen hypervisor to contain every app (including Windows ones) away from the desktop environment
    2. Haiku OS - https://www.haiku-os.org/ - Tiny (under 200MB installed), Non-Linux that is binary-compatible with BeOS, nice understated GUI that is bland but usable
    3. ReactOS - http://reactos.org/ - Win32 compatible open source OS, very active development scene working toward full NT kernel ABI compatibility. Seems stable enough to be a daily driver but hardware support is lacking
    4. PC-BSD & freeBSD 10 - http://www.pcbsd.org/ http://www.freebsd.org/ - PC-BSD is a desktop distro of freeBSD 10 built for user-friendliness with automatic ZFS snapshoting and a nice graphical package manager, freeBSD 10 has a completely new package manager (pkg-ng replaces the 'pkg' binary)
    5. Nix OS - https://nixos.org/ - Linux distro with innovative package manager promising atomic upgrades & rollback.

    Innovative server-exclusive (ie no GUI):
    5. SmartOS - https://smartos.org/ - Solaris + KVM + Docker w/ full Dtrace support. Claims ZFS as an innovation? Joyent is running a cloud of it
    6. CoreOS - https://coreos.com/ - Linux distro exclusively for large Docker deployments. developing a suite of Go tools for datacenter management.

    Innovative, but not ready for desktop use:
    7. Redox OS - http://www.redox-os.org/ - OS written in Rust (rust-lang), which guarantees a lot of memory-safety, screenshots of desktop in 'News' section
    8. Contiki OS - http://www.contiki-os.org/ - Linux distro for IoT embedded devices that claims an innovative network stack
    9. Urbit - http://urbit.org/docs/user/int... - *nix distro with exclusively web-based userland, invite-only at the moment, doesn't seem like it will have a UI but that each user is the dev of their own interface
    10. Mirage.io - http://mirage.io/ - Develop each app and compile into a single-purpose kernel to be run on some hypervisor
    11. HaLVM - https://github.com/GaloisInc/H... - The Haskell Ligthweight Virtual Machine - which runs just the GHC on Xen, another 'build uni-purpose VMs' system