Heck yeah. I just for example bought Omni Focus a few months ago. I've pretty much bought everything they make. I also buy information managers.
I'm not a gamer myself but I think PC games are still more complex than the the gaming system games. The gaming systems are very good for arcade style but $300 worth of excellent hardware still loses to $2000 worth of so/so hardware.
there is simply nothing left to improve in a typical OS for the vast majority of users
I don't see that at all. Just looking at stuff that's been in the OS pipeline:
1) Database filesystems (like the systems on most mini computers) and a OS provided RDMS. Allowing for search, metadata, system services provided for apps.... Replace flat files all together.
2) Better security management for mobile systems.
3) Seamless backup and portability of data and applications to allow people have different computers for different needs easily (so one person might have 2 desktops a notebook and a cell phone that can all access common data).
4) Suites of integrated apps. Essentially what Apple does. But also for all sorts of other areas that are common like Quickbooks,
I wouldn't call OSX a variant of Linux. The kernel architecture is different, the initializations are completely different, Linux has a bunch of Unixy features that OSX lacks.
Macports has a huge range of the Linux software market but the Linux stuff tends to be more integrated. OSX's XWindows is very different than the X.org distribution.
They are both "Unixes" (Linux not officially but in practice) but they don't have the same parents so they are cousins. That's how I would describe it.
Call me a crotchity old unix head but I'm very happy that Apple is using/var for cache information and not/Users/username/Library/Caches.... in fact i think that whole directory should point to/var.
I'd love to be able to partition my/var stuff off like I do in Linux. So if Apple is moving in this direction and keeps it up, good.
Good point. One of the reasons I was so excited about Linux on netbook last year was if Linux took the 5% from the bottom plus Mac built up to 15% at the top that's 20% combined non windows....
Some pay a fee. That's an additional complexity which I didn't think was worth getting into for a metaphor. Paying for space is essentially a very high advertising / distribution cost.
I think we already have those, but the windows integration is where they kick butt. And frankly it is going to be hard to beat Microsoft in windows integration
I was in the Linux community 15 years ago. The general belief was that Linux would be a niche Unix with a small percentage of the Unix market for people who couldn't afford "the real thing", a Unix for the "I wish I could afford a Sun for home" users.
10 years ago is a different story. Linux was coming off a huge victory in the server marketplace. LAMP had proven to be a killer app and Linux percentages were high and rising quickly. The idea that Microsoft was going to take over the server space the same way they had taken over the desktop space was starting to be seriously questioned and Linux was a major alternative.
The feeling was the desktop would fall the same way. The latest Netbook disaster proves that is just not the case. On the other hand OpenOffice is gaining ground nicely. Firefox has kept up in the browser wars so maybe the app stack gains keep happening.
I'm still waiting for the mainstream windows manufacturers to just bundle 10 gigs of open source software with every system.
80s people running mostly commercial software on commercial OSes 90s people running mostly open software on commercial OSes 00s people running open software on open OSes
The apps come first. Right now Firefox, OpenOffice, etc... made companies and governments capable of handling non vendor apps. That's a good first step. The next step is to replace more and more of the app stack. The OS probably comes almost last.
Having been with Mac when it hit 2% no. 1% is not going to do it. At 2% people were dropping mac support quickly. At the current levels (around 9%) it gets moderate support. When Mac was around 15% was when support was seen as extremely important.
Market share matters a great deal in all large markets. The reason is secondary support. Think about grocery stores. Market share for a food item determines if it is going to get shelved guaranteed which leads to higher market share. For a niche product every grocery store has to continually evaluate based on how much room it takes, how it is likely to do with niche customers they are trying to attract.... Heintz, Coke, Cambells just get shelf space.
For example, some recent versions of Mac OS were developed on top of a variant of BSD, which for all practical purposes is itself a variant of Unix (even if the BSD people would disagree).
You don't have to go through that tortured argument. OSX is SUS03 and Posix 1003.1 certified.
For one thing the.NET compiler is at this point the technology leader in compilers. MSIL/CIL is a very sophisticated system. I don't get to use it but I sure wish I did. Moreover the sort of work with LINQ, Software transactional memory... that's coming out for.NET is very very advanced comparatively.
The Linux community had a huge head start with Java, but is blowing it big time, too.
What are you talking about? The early Java implementations that were used were Sun and Windows for years. The browser was the focus and Netscape and IE successively were the leaders on browser Java. Sun has hostile to Linux (for good reason). Java has always lagged on Linux, it lags less today because the Linux community did consider Java important.
I was a Mandrake fan for years as well. Though I wouldn't say it was ever "just worked" simply that a much higher percentage of stuff worked well enough. I still like it quite a bit. BTW Mandrake has beenMandriva for years.
As one of the geeks who ran Linux from '95-01 I used it for quality access to Unix software. Essentially a cheaper and easier to maintain version of Solaris. I'm not sure that wasn't what most of the people who used Linux in the 90s were doing. They wanted a Sun but couldn't afford it.
It isn't true with macs and really never was. My guess is something like 30% or so for every hardware manufacturer to consider it mandatory. But the likelihood does get better as you move from 1 to 30.
In terms of XWindows it is the windowing system on Unix. 2X means two times.
Well I define fork more broadly than that. In terms of functionality and user base not just code base.
TeX and Latex are a good example. At the time LaTeX "forked" from TeX there were differences in how the system would operate in terms of things like higher order structure. Lets of TeX commands aren't supported (at least not safely) and the basic structures changed. Yes the Web source code between TeX remained unchanged but there were two users communities and they products developed independently of one another for years features migrated from TeX to LateX.... A classic fork, a collaborative one. PDFTeX is also a fork in the same way.
As for your description of LaTeX it is not quite true. LaTeX is a version of TeX environment that is heavily modified via. macros. There is no "compiler" step that translates the LaTeX code into TeX code (unless you are including the entire LaTeX code base in the translation) because things like counters are introduced.
Most open source tools I use on a regular basis have never been (successfully) forked.
I doubt that;
GCC which is a compiler for C which is a fork of B XWindows 2x LaTeX (from TeX) all the shells are forks Perl is a fork of Sed/Awk Python and Ruby are forms of Perl Oracle itself is a fork System R etc... etc
Slashdot Mirror
Heck yeah. I just for example bought Omni Focus a few months ago. I've pretty much bought everything they make. I also buy information managers.
I'm not a gamer myself but I think PC games are still more complex than the the gaming system games. The gaming systems are very good for arcade style but $300 worth of excellent hardware still loses to $2000 worth of so/so hardware.
The brand identity is going to be in things that are not desirable to the general windows customer. Examples:
1) Easy scriptability is key to the system admin market which is why Linux is doing well on the server
2) Free even if annoying was key to the web market hence LAMP's success
3) Customizability is what worked for the embedded market
etc...
1) Task managers are getting popular
2) Information managers are picking up
3) All sorts of webform autocompletion systems would be useful
4) Automated backup and system to system data migration tools
5) Quickbooks continues to sell very well.
6) The game market continues to grow
There is still a lot of money in software
I don't see that at all. Just looking at stuff that's been in the OS pipeline:
1) Database filesystems (like the systems on most mini computers) and a OS provided RDMS. Allowing for search, metadata, system services provided for apps.... Replace flat files all together.
2) Better security management for mobile systems.
3) Seamless backup and portability of data and applications to allow people have different computers for different needs easily (so one person might have 2 desktops a notebook and a cell phone that can all access common data).
4) Suites of integrated apps. Essentially what Apple does. But also for all sorts of other areas that are common like Quickbooks,
5) Full naturally speaking integration.
I wouldn't call OSX a variant of Linux. The kernel architecture is different, the initializations are completely different, Linux has a bunch of Unixy features that OSX lacks.
Macports has a huge range of the Linux software market but the Linux stuff tends to be more integrated. OSX's XWindows is very different than the X.org distribution.
They are both "Unixes" (Linux not officially but in practice) but they don't have the same parents so they are cousins. That's how I would describe it.
Call me a crotchity old unix head but I'm very happy that Apple is using /var for cache information and not /Users/username/Library/Caches.... in fact i think that whole directory should point to /var.
I'd love to be able to partition my /var stuff off like I do in Linux. So if Apple is moving in this direction and keeps it up, good.
Good point. One of the reasons I was so excited about Linux on netbook last year was if Linux took the 5% from the bottom plus Mac built up to 15% at the top that's 20% combined non windows....
I agree they do help each other
Agreed. And actually BSD quite often was more difficult with weaker support back then. I couldn't get it to work in '95.
Some pay a fee. That's an additional complexity which I didn't think was worth getting into for a metaphor. Paying for space is essentially a very high advertising / distribution cost.
You are addressing a different issue than the gp. He's discussing quality you are discussing portability.
I think we already have those, but the windows integration is where they kick butt. And frankly it is going to be hard to beat Microsoft in windows integration
Well first off employees who commit criminal acts are liable. If this is manslaughter you do prosecute the individuals.
I was in the Linux community 15 years ago. The general belief was that Linux would be a niche Unix with a small percentage of the Unix market for people who couldn't afford "the real thing", a Unix for the "I wish I could afford a Sun for home" users.
10 years ago is a different story. Linux was coming off a huge victory in the server marketplace. LAMP had proven to be a killer app and Linux percentages were high and rising quickly. The idea that Microsoft was going to take over the server space the same way they had taken over the desktop space was starting to be seriously questioned and Linux was a major alternative.
The feeling was the desktop would fall the same way. The latest Netbook disaster proves that is just not the case. On the other hand OpenOffice is gaining ground nicely. Firefox has kept up in the browser wars so maybe the app stack gains keep happening.
I'm still waiting for the mainstream windows manufacturers to just bundle 10 gigs of open source software with every system.
Think how Linux beat the proprietary Unixes.
80s people running mostly commercial software on commercial OSes
90s people running mostly open software on commercial OSes
00s people running open software on open OSes
The apps come first. Right now Firefox, OpenOffice, etc... made companies and governments capable of handling non vendor apps. That's a good first step. The next step is to replace more and more of the app stack. The OS probably comes almost last.
Having been with Mac when it hit 2% no. 1% is not going to do it. At 2% people were dropping mac support quickly. At the current levels (around 9%) it gets moderate support. When Mac was around 15% was when support was seen as extremely important.
Market share matters a great deal in all large markets. The reason is secondary support. Think about grocery stores. Market share for a food item determines if it is going to get shelved guaranteed which leads to higher market share. For a niche product every grocery store has to continually evaluate based on how much room it takes, how it is likely to do with niche customers they are trying to attract.... Heintz, Coke, Cambells just get shelf space.
You don't have to go through that tortured argument. OSX is SUS03 and Posix 1003.1 certified.
For one thing the .NET compiler is at this point the technology leader in compilers. MSIL/CIL is a very sophisticated system. I don't get to use it but I sure wish I did. Moreover the sort of work with LINQ, Software transactional memory... that's coming out for .NET is very very advanced comparatively.
What are you talking about? The early Java implementations that were used were Sun and Windows for years. The browser was the focus and Netscape and IE successively were the leaders on browser Java. Sun has hostile to Linux (for good reason). Java has always lagged on Linux, it lags less today because the Linux community did consider Java important.
I was a Mandrake fan for years as well. Though I wouldn't say it was ever "just worked" simply that a much higher percentage of stuff worked well enough. I still like it quite a bit. BTW Mandrake has beenMandriva for years.
As one of the geeks who ran Linux from '95-01 I used it for quality access to Unix software. Essentially a cheaper and easier to maintain version of Solaris. I'm not sure that wasn't what most of the people who used Linux in the 90s were doing. They wanted a Sun but couldn't afford it.
It isn't true with macs and really never was. My guess is something like 30% or so for every hardware manufacturer to consider it mandatory. But the likelihood does get better as you move from 1 to 30.
In terms of XWindows it is the windowing system on Unix. 2X means two times.
Well I define fork more broadly than that. In terms of functionality and user base not just code base.
TeX and Latex are a good example. At the time LaTeX "forked" from TeX there were differences in how the system would operate in terms of things like higher order structure. Lets of TeX commands aren't supported (at least not safely) and the basic structures changed. Yes the Web source code between TeX remained unchanged but there were two users communities and they products developed independently of one another for years features migrated from TeX to LateX.... A classic fork, a collaborative one. PDFTeX is also a fork in the same way.
As for your description of LaTeX it is not quite true. LaTeX is a version of TeX environment that is heavily modified via. macros. There is no "compiler" step that translates the LaTeX code into TeX code (unless you are including the entire LaTeX code base in the translation) because things like counters are introduced.
Interesting where do you see the comparative area of strength.
I'm assuming something other than mainframe intergration / COBOL integration where DB2 is really really strong.
I doubt that;
GCC
which is a compiler for C which is a fork of B
XWindows 2x
LaTeX (from TeX)
all the shells are forks
Perl is a fork of Sed/Awk
Python and Ruby are forms of Perl
Oracle itself is a fork System R
etc... etc