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What would your ideal Operating System be like?

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tranglos:
What we need is an OS that doesn't include anything except for the absolute bare bones and is lightening fast.
-Carol Haynes (September 04, 2008, 01:47 AM)
--- End quote ---

Speaking of duck and cover... while going head-on against the entire thread...

My ideal OS is much more than the bare-bones kernel and abstraction layers. I can't say I care about the kernel one way or another, as long as it is rock-stable, except to say that from a user's point of view the Windows way (install driver, reboot) is preferable to the Linux way (to install driver, recompile kernel). Maybe Linux doesn't do it this way anymore; I only have un-fond memories of playing with RedHat a long time ago. But this isn't what's bothering me.

What's bothering me is the humongous proliferation of redundant, incompatible solutions to the same common tasks, repeated over and over. Quick check: how many applications do you have installed that carry their own independent spellchecker?

It's a waste of developers' efforts, since each vendor reinvents the wheel; it's waste of disk and RAM, since each implementation takes up some; it's a waste of my money, since I end up paying for that whenever I buy software; and it's a waste of my time, since each solution is subtly different, with its own shortcuts, features, etc. How many "user glossaries" do you have on your machine?

Examples abound. There's no shortage of good email clients, newsreaders, PIMs, password managers, notetakers, addressbooks... the choice is awesome, and the quality of these apps is steadily growing. The problem is that once you choose a product, you're pretty much stuck with it, or face painful and often lossy conversion process. That's wrong.

It's not just the spellcheckers, of course. Every mature ftp-capable application is going to have some kind of a uswer-defined server directory, with hosts, usernames, passwords and associated options. I have a number of such definitions in TotalCommander. Now why must I re-enter them all in FileZilla, and then again in every html editor with an ftp publishing feature? *And* in my backup application? Give me a nice clean, extensible database of my ftp connections, which applications could read and write (with my permission - there are security implications here).

Now for a counter-example. Windows has a single clipboard. All apps can use it and all apps do. Consistent features, consistent shortcuts, works everywhere in the same way, and it may well be Windows' single best usability feature ever. Developers can still extend the clipboard, hence all the, well, clipboard extenders, or apps that add their own multiple clipboards - but these are optional, and they come on top of the system functionality rather than replace it.

A counter-counter example of how to do things the wrong way: skinning. Instead of the consistent, well-tested UI that the OS provides, you have Winamp, which doesn't work well with window enhancement programs, and doesn't even change the color of the titlebar depending on whether it's active or not. So just by looking at Winamp I cannot tell if it's ready for keyboard input - to be certain, I must click it first. This is a major WTF.

Come to think of it, each application having its own spell-checker and its own addressbook built in is not unlike the skinning scenario, except that they have no choice, since the OS doesn't provide those.

So for my ideal OS, I want a well-defined database backend and a set of standard APIs for all, yes *all* these common tasks. One spellchecker. One database for addresses. One for bookmarks, one for to-dos, one for multimedia metadata, one for my email archive, and so on. No matter what email program I use, it should store the email and the addresses in the same one place, so that I can swap clients easily without affecting the data. And all browsers shouls share the same database of bookmarks. And each applications should be able to easily look up phone numbers in a system-wide database. And each application could spellcheck each and every little textbox by hooking up to the integrated spellchecker.

Now, developers would still have a choice: use the built-in database layer of build your own. But when building their own, they would have to ensure they're providing some truly exceptional, unhead-of functionality to make up for the loss of integration. Most apps would probably use the built-ins, so that developers could concentrate on stability, features and UI instead.

And oh yes, metadata for absolutely everything.

(I've typed it in EmEditor and only now noticed it doesn't have a spellchecker. Been using it for two years. How much did I pay for it again? Check the help - ah, I need to download a plugin. See what I mean?)

Armando:
So for my ideal OS, I want a well-defined database backend and a set of standard APIs for all, yes *all* these common tasks. One spellchecker. One database for addresses. One for bookmarks, one for to-dos, one for multimedia metadata, one for my email archive, and so on. No matter what email program I use, it should store the email and the addresses in the same one place, so that I can swap clients easily without affecting the data. And all browsers shouls share the same database of bookmarks. And each applications should be able to easily look up phone numbers in a system-wide database. And each application could spellcheck each and every little textbox by hooking up to the integrated spellchecker.
-tranglos (September 04, 2008, 08:15 AM)
--- End quote ---
And oh yes, metadata for absolutely everything.
-tranglos (September 04, 2008, 08:15 AM)
--- End quote ---

But compatible, portable, backupable, etc.
The file system should probably be rebuilt from scratch, allowing easier 1- file cloning, 2- taging (metadata), 3- Smart folders, 4- Wiki type links between files, 5 - hard/soft links creation, etc. etc.

mouser:
What's bothering me is the humongous proliferation of redundant, incompatible solutions to the same common tasks, repeated over and over. Quick check: how many applications do you have installed that carry their own independent spellchecker?
--- End quote ---

tranglos i am on the same page as you.

basically my view is that the OS (and the OS company) should focus their ENTIRE effort into providing a good API for all of these common things, and stay the hell out of anything else.

this is exactly the kind of thing that is most important for the OS to get right -- a common interface/api for all of these things that should be sharead/common throughout all applications.

40hz:
this is exactly the kind of thing that is most important for the OS to get right -- a common interface/api for all of these things that should be sharead/common throughout all applications.
-mouser (September 04, 2008, 12:03 PM)
--- End quote ---

And above all, it needs to enforce it's use. No backdoors or cheats to favor certain products. That's why it's so important for the OS provider not to be involved in application development beyond furnishing the tools to code them.

Paul Keith:
Just give me the Opera equivalent of an OS. Customizeable, lightweight, secure and disposable.
-Paul Keith (September 02, 2008, 11:49 PM)
--- End quote ---

Ah ... so you want an OS that doesn't work properly a lot of the time [runs and ducks for cover ....]

What we need is an OS that doesn't include anything except for the absolute bare bones and is lightening fast. It should be possible of new 64-bit multicore technology so why does my system feel the same speed as it always has back to PIII days ?

Opera would be a bad model to use as the one thing such an operating system would need is a way to write extensions.-Carol Haynes (September 04, 2008, 01:47 AM)
--- End quote ---

Ahh...fire in the hole  :-*

Time to be the contrarian. The Opera situation would be alleviated because in this case an OS unlike a browser is not subject to not functioning because developers won't support it and also unlike a browser, a OS system's worst problem would be security and stability rather than being supported by developers because additional external programs are not the main core for a functioning Operating System so an Operating System equivalent to Opera if we are to use the analogy that Opera plays ball by following web standards and it is in fact outside interference that causes most of it to not work then this would be a case where it's not a problem because this is already an infrastructural problem within an Operating System meaning the worst case scenario in such a situation will be that ALL installable programs for it won't work but since Opera is considered one of the lightest, fastest, featureful browsers, an Operating System with such similar build would not be so bothered by that. In fact it's a blessing because that means it holds up well out of the box instead of needing to customize it but it is also customizeable to an extent without risking breaking it or exposing it to a pesky buggy program that isn't necessarily a virus.

And Opera being a bad model for extensions is also for me one of the things that it would make a perfect model for a perfect OS. Think about it. No matter how perfect an OS, if there are less than perfect programmers working on it than don't you risk breaking it now and again?

This isn't much a problem when you want to break an OS but for most users what they want is just a working Operating System that isn't as complicated as Linux but works as well and would introduce them to advanced features as things go along. Again, something not lacking from Opera. At best, the official documentation would be shoddy but that is something that anyone including someone with no programming knowledge could contribute to.

Like I said, disposable. One of the problems with Firefox or extensions in general is that you have to work with the extension creator and it's manageable but are you really having the time of your life scouring for programs and programs and seeing when they're updated? For most casual users, the answer is no. That's why many of them don't even ever get used to the habit of changing or updating their antivirus.

But what about those who want these features and consider them a must have for a perfect Operating System? Well, that's where being light and disposable works in Opera's favor because light and disposable also means portable and take less memory which means an Opera-like Operating System is suitable for dual booting, livecd/livedvd, usb stick, etc. kind of like what Puppy Linux is now only even better and less extensible. For me, the main important thing about an OS is you want it to be as secure and stable and quick to export as your brain when important files, data and a whole other thing comes around. Let others try to break your other OS while you play games, test programs by installing them and do a whole load on that stuff and go through user forums asking how to fix this error in that Operating System that mysteriously appeared and now you have to make a list of what you did that the Operating System didn't come by default with and as long as you keep the things you value most in that other perfect side dish Opera-like OS, from the software side of things, you have the perfect backup OS that functions even better than an OS for non-backup use with the exception of installable programs that's not only suitable for usage by a casual user but excels at that usage because of the focus on productivity with the Compendium, Incollector, ThinkingRock, YeahWrite based lay-out which is derived from the fact that one of the necessary qualities of a great productivity software is that it must function as a filesystem for your brain that you can trust.

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