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What would your ideal Operating System be like?
Lashiec:
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).
-f0dder (August 21, 2008, 09:20 PM)
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Well, the idea would be to have the two schemes coexisting together. While a folder hierarchy is a must at least do dissipate that general feeling of "where are my files?" that permeate pure tag-based systems, for files deep nested in the file system, be able to find and classify them would be a plus. Of course, the main problem here is cross-compatibility between different filesystems... and I don't see any reunion to kick start the process any soon.
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.
-f0dder (August 21, 2008, 09:20 PM)
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CUDA time is ticking. While nVidia offered a helping hand to all those other vendors who wish to implement it (there was this guy porting CUDA to ATI hardware with nVidia backing). The problem is that CUDA is singlely handed by nVidia, and there's no sign they're going to let other major players mess with the specification.
What's more, Apple announced the Grand Central technology in Snow Leopard that harness multicore (GPU or CPU) computing power independently of the hardware the system is using, Microsoft said DX 11 has support for GPGPU, and Khronos is working on OpenCL, which I suppose it will be used on Linux (as well as on OS X). ATI already ditched its CUDA-esque Close to Metal framework in favour of OpenCL and DX11, so it's a matter of time nVidia does the same. All the better for everyone in theory, because we seem to be in the DirectX-OpenGL dichotomy all again.
nontroppo:
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).-f0dder (August 21, 2008, 09:20 PM)
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Yes, sadly ADS got unfairly stigmatised because of security fears AFAIU. HFS+ (though it has used resource forks for ages) gained flexibly extensible MD support with Tiger. There is an extensive list of metadata attributes which can be extended, and the system uses them in a unified manner (the core search APIs all apps subscribe to). All of these metadata attributes are available from the finder via the GUI or search syntax in spotlight.
The main steps lacking is a framework to allow arbitrary user extensions to metadata fields easily, and allowing mappings across applications (i.e. allowing application Y's keywords to be logically linked to application X's keywords). And the biggest bane of a MD system, cross-platform availability appears a tough nut to crack when no other OS offers a consistent API for this. This all still limits the MD system for my use. I wonder what Linux is doing here, but I hope they are trying to build something consistent and unified, I find the gnome/KDE duplicity sometimes disappointing; I'd want them both to work on a metadata core, then they can slap different UI's over the top. However, when I last looked, it appeared each had several alternative indexers and methods.
For those who are interested, Ars technica has some nice discussion about the long slog to get better MD support in OS X; smart people were pushing since its inception (and Apple hired the designer of BeOS file system which was apparently the best MD filesystem made at the time), but it still took 4 iterations of the OS to really get anywhere:
http://arstechnica.com/reviews/os/macosx-10-4.ars/6 - there are 7 pages dedicated to discussing MD support :o
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).
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As lashiec says, I don't expect a smart-folder only OS anytime soon, mixed mode is fine. I think for system folders it's fine, and I don't want to impose a user who wants to store photos /2008/05/04/Birthday party/Sophia/Blowing candles/. But system indexes work transparently and quickly and don't take up too much space (my 1/4million files use 300mb index and works transparently). I don't think there should be a technical reason. As far as tagging, smart metadata importers do most of the work for you. I have smartfolders for photos taken with a wide aperture at night with high ISO, because my metadata system transparently captures the F value, ISO and time of capture which I can use as criteria for my folder (and is accesible to any app that cares). It's then a quick step to focus noise ninja on cleaning them up. I never needed to sort any files or tag them, the OS did it for me.
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 :)
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Yes indeed! :D I'm no expert on ZFS, but I read somewhere it allows cloning across its virtual disk space so I wonder if it would allow i.e. remote online backup to a cloned drive on-the-fly?
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.
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Well, the OpenGL guys are pushing OpenCL (and OS X and Linux are sat in that camp). I don't ideally want a single vendor solution, especially not a proprietary one (which CUDA still is unless, as lashiec says they get ATI support to the same level). I'd love for it to be cross-platform (won't lock me into a single platform technology wise). Obviously MS has a vested interest in pushing this into DirectX (I wonder if they'll push it then to application programmers not just game devs). Anyway, my ideal OS would have something that was cross-platform and non-proprietary hardware-wise, but I've heard negative things said about Khronos, so I don't know where that leaves my choice.
Paul Keith:
I'm not a programmer so I'm quick to please.
Just give me the Opera equivalent of an OS. Customizeable, lightweight, secure and disposable.
Give me compendium's functionality without all the menus. Just a big blank screen that functions exactly like it and because it's part of the OS, I don't need to worry about indexing reference files to it and worry about losing them during the backup phase.
Dual panels that on one side covers all the help documentations and another side contains all the mini-features like RSS and PIMs.
Right panel contains the Incollector interface and left panel contains special temporary folders for copy pasting and storing with 4 categories. Personal, Important, Someday and Pending.
Upper area contains a mini-menu bar that can be hidden and functions like bblean's look.
Lower area contains a Yeah Write like interface with multiple tabs that act like ticklers that can be added at will.
Ex.
Entry 1: MS Word, Entry 2: MS Excel, Entry 3: MS OneNotes
so on and so forth. Basically a simplified panel docklet with an advanced button on the right side.
When advanced is clicked on, the bar rises revealling all the advanced equivalents of those tools.
Ex.
Entry 1: Notepad with autosave
Sub Entry 1: emacs or notepad++ or whatever advanced users might need
Add in a simplified launcher like Launchy for advanced searching, a Taboo Firefox extension interface for quick bookmarking of RSS Feeds within the Operating System and a virtual desktop with set jobs (i.e. a virtual desktop specified to open the browser and a notetaker when a user goes to that space which then automatically reverts to a normal virtual desktop space once that functionality has been set so as to avoid accidentally re-opening the browser)
Finally, a lighter native copy of ThinkingRock, an offline Diigo service and a Export mode level that when pressed outputs a compendium export file that can be transferred to the main application for other browsers, an incollector export file, a ThinkingRock export file and a YeahWrite file with all the highlights and annotations extracted to it in separate sections.
I guess for me, the perfect OS is one where it isn't the perfect OS but the perfect complimentary OS just as how Opera is the perfect complimentary browser for other browsers. I know, so far two of my posts are Opera related but really I'm not that die hard of a fanboy but when thinking about the perfect OS, there's just something I love about an app that can handle lots of stuff assigned to it but remains fast enough that you can just close and forget.
housetier:
if only opera supported encryption of emails I would agree to label it "secure".
But I know what you mean :)
Carol Haynes:
Just give me the Opera equivalent of an OS. Customizeable, lightweight, secure and disposable.
-Paul Keith (September 02, 2008, 11:49 PM)
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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.
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