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What would your ideal Operating System be like?

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Darwin:
Nice post, nontroppo  :Thmbsup: A significant problem moving between OSX and Windows (2k, XP and Vista) is the need to adjust how you think about folder structure, programme installation, etc. The funny thing, as I've come to realise, is that I've gotten so used to the (relative) complexity of the program files folder, common files folder, registry and  various user settings folders in Windows that I get frustrated by OSX - I guess I don't trust its simplicity!

As an extension of the above point, I also find that with OSX it's more a case of the philosophy behind the decisions made about where to locate settings than a case of the settings being hidden or unavailable - I've gotten so used to MS' way of doing things that it's become fixed in my thinking and when I encounter alternatives, they grate. I still get very irritated using OSX, but I am coming to appreciate that it is simply a learning process. Anyway, I wouldn't have agreed with you about the UI on OSX a year ago, but I think you're right now... it's uniform and inobtrusive. I'm getting my iBook back this week (it shuttles back and forth between me and my father and has been gone for about three months) and am looking forward to re-acquainting myself with it - I've spent the last two weeks with Vista (and have been surprised at how much I've enjoyed it -although the UAC, even in Sp-1, is annoying) and XP Pro. I've been trying to give Ubuntu 8.1 and whirl but neither of the ISO's I've burned to disk will run "live" on any of my three machines, so I'll have to install it...

Darwin:
PS +1 to point number 8 in nontroppo's post:

Hardware agnostic. Yes, I'm looking at you OS X! Though I don't want Apple to get mired in the driver hell of Windows and Linux, I want to be able to run it where I want. Apple should keep making drivers only for its hardware, and let the hackers do the rest as has sustained Linux for many years.
-nontroppo (August 20, 2008, 06:26 AM)
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nontroppo:
The funny thing, as I've come to realise, is that I've gotten so used to the (relative) complexity of the program files folder, common files folder, registry and  various user settings folders in Windows that I get frustrated by OSX - I guess I don't trust its simplicity!
-Darwin (August 20, 2008, 09:25 AM)
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Indeed I think that was my first response too, but then as I've geekified myself, I found plenty of liitle nooks to tinker with. An example is Lingon, a launchd manager. Launchd is a heady mix of startup items, cron, daemons and agents (I have quicksilver started via launchd, tweaks to auto-recover if it crashes). And instead of the registry, one can tinker with plist files (much more flexible and less fragile than the monolithic registry). And having a full *nix subsystem gives you months of fiddle factor if you're so inclined. I think Windows is one big complicated knot, whereas OS X is several fractal-like layers. Personally I sometimes miss the GUI tweaking I enjoyed on Windows (I was a litestep user for several years ;-) ), certainly miss process explorer (though Instruments rocks!) but otherwise the geek in me is fully satisfied (most recently with the Ruby>Cocoa events bridge -- I can control any OS X app via ruby easily, super super cool); the smooth surface has many hidden draws (in different places to Windows) to rummage through :)

Darwin:
I think Windows is one big complicated knot, whereas OS X is several fractal-like layers.
-nontroppo (August 20, 2008, 10:31 AM)
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 ;D Great analogy!

f0dder:
1 ) Pervasive metadata — the OS should provide not only solid metadata handling per file, but support *extensible* metadata mechanisms for any file. Tagging, file usage and history and discoverable information has to be a core OS feature, not something tacked on by 3rd-parties. The OS should provide a core search facility built robustly on this metadata, again not some proprietary 3rd-party. And this data should be accessible to the cloud through design.-nontroppo
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NTFS sorta has this, through alternate data streams... but it's in no means integrated or usable (well, there's a few standard things like "comments" and such, but meh).

2 ) As a consequence, folder hierarchies should lose predominance and smart folders should pervade. No OS is where I want it to be (r.e. metadata and smart folders) on this.-nontroppo
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I'm not sure if I agree on this... I find well-structured folder hierarchies easy to navigate, and they're fast and efficient. For metadata based navigation, you either need very smart indexing, very smart caching, or you will suffer abysmal speed and/or bloat. And you need to be very good at tagging your files for something like this to be useful, imho... (yeah, there's content-based search, but then you do need those huge index files).

3 ) Delta versioned file system. Again, this should be core OS territory (even as much as I love Filehamster!), configurable per file. The interface should allow simple searching for a file through time, and apps should allow version comparisons easily (i.e. the OS API should enforce this). Time Machine is the closest so far (great UI), but I want underlying filesystem support which HFS+ doesn't have.-nontroppo
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ZFS has this, iirc, and it's a good idea. But I see problems with it - people would feel that it's a substitute for backups. And while versioning is cool, you still need those pesky backups :)

5) Core support for the coming GPU revolution. I do a bunch of DV editing, and harnessing the GPU as a general purpose device would rock. I don't want a proprietary 3rd-party to do this, I want it pervasive and universally offered by the OS. Better support from multiple CPUs goes without saying, but it is depressing to see high-core machines having cores sitting idle.-nontroppo
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Get NVidia to allow people to use the CUDA interface for free, and get the other companies to use it. CUDA doesn't even need to be opensourced to do this, it's "just" the API specs (and perhaps a few internals-style things) that needs to be fully documented.

I agree more or less with other of your points, though :)

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