The IDEAL OS

Cov

Cov

Gawd
Joined
Dec 3, 2007
Messages
917
Hi

I invite everybody who tell me what's still missing on an IDEAL OS.

This is a general discussion.

Windows 7 seems to be closer than any previous version, but I suspect for the sake of something called "compatibility", it contains still lots of burdens from the past.

Are we restricted in how sleak it could be, because of that ?

Makes me think about, what if we get a brandnew OS programmed from scratch.
Being able to neglect any compatibility question.
How much performance gain could we squeeze out the most, from a modern PC ?

All those fan bois and knowledgeable people, please comment ...
 
I always wonder if there's another way to "compute" besides 1s and 0s. Some radical, crazy new concept.
 
There can't be an ideal os because there is too much variability in hardware, users, and in the future.

Some will complain that the OS is too large, others will say it does not include enough drivers, etc.
Some will say it's restrictive, others will fubar their computer and complain there wasn't any protection in place.
etc, etc, etc.

The closes I can figure is that the ideal OS would be one customized to you. I guess you could tweak your own windows/osx/linux distro for that purpose, but then again another ideal is that you don't HAVE to do that.

I'm sure if you supported only one file system, no legacy hardware, optimized for SSDs etc. you could squeeze out more performance easily in a limited number of cases, but it would alienate the majority.


GJSNeptune said:
I always wonder if there's another way to "compute" besides 1s and 0s. Some radical, crazy new concept.
Click to expand...

Look some more into quantum computing, apparently there is the ability for something to be 1 AND 0, something like superposition and qubits. Sorry I don't have a good link handy, but google should turn up something.
 
There are just as many Windows 98 applications that didn't work on XP as there are ones that didn't work on Vista/7. It's just the way it is. The one thing though that caused a lot of issues, compatibility wise, was UAC. Applications should be compatible with it now.
 
The ideal OS would probably be modular. You pop in the disc or whatever the medium is, and you get a seventeen-page checklist of things you want and don't want. :D
 
The OS you're looking for is linux. If you don't like something, then fix it yourself.

In regards to compatibility, that is what is killing the OS. You can't make HUGE steps forward becuase you have to keep this layer in to support the old crap. If we didn't have to worry about supporting that old crap, then they could rewrite whatever they wanted to work however they wanted.
 
There is certainly plenty of code in Windows which is for legacy support; I was just reading the first bonus chapter (available online free) from this book, which goes through some of the compatibility changes which have been made in the past:
http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=0321440307

The obvious response might be that they should forget about fixing developers' bad code by accounting for it in the OS, but Microsoft get the blame if someone buys Windows 7 and badly-programmed application X doesn't run any more, even if it was using incorrect API calls or strange ways of doing things which the OS no longer tolerates. Since Microsoft have some interest in selling their operating system, it makes more sense for them to focus on making sure as many programs as possible work with it immediately.

I would expect the performance impact to not be huge, but when everything's added up it's probably present. However, attempting to establish a new OS (even if that is a new version of Windows without any backwards compatibility) would be pretty difficult, since no-one is going to care about an operating system which doesn't have much software or work with what they already have. Compatibility is the top selling point of Windows, really.

OS X did pull off moving to a new architecture, but not without having an emulation layer in place to ensure that older programs worked. Apple's smaller ecosystem which they have tighter control over will probably allow them to drop Rosetta at some later point, but for Microsoft, losing the compatibility layer would no doubt prove as difficult as finally dropping 16-bit support.
 
Last edited:
GJSNeptune said:
I always wonder if there's another way to "compute" besides 1s and 0s. Some radical, crazy new concept.
Click to expand...
It's not radical, it's just expensive. It's been done in the past with Ternary computers and higher-order, it's just more expensive and tougher to build the components and it doesn't offer any real improvement.
 
Arainach said:
It's not radical, it's just expensive. It's been done in the past with Ternary computers and higher-order, it's just more expensive and tougher to build the components and it doesn't offer any real improvement.
Click to expand...

I just figure there has to be something completely different from how we compute today. I think it's time to figure out how to best utilize the technology we have today instead of continuing to build upon what started decades ago.
 
Clean and simple, with not too much clutter on the surface. XP has been pretty good to me, and I liked 98 before that (despite some crashing and lockups). Vista seems a bit bloated for my taste, but I've only played around a little. Windows 7 is sounding good to me, hopefully compatibility isn't a issue. I put a win98 system together just to play Grim Fandango with AA. 640x480 is a bit rough on the eyes these day without it. I don't want to have to run a few different systems for all my games and apps, but it is kinda fun messing around with retro hardware :D
 
IMHO, for any modern computer (Core 2 Duo 3.0Ghz or higher) with a real video card, and any modern OS, the OS simply doesn't take enough resources to warrent the discussion. If your trying to run Windows Vista with Aero turned on, with a 486 and onboard video then you deserve what you get.
 
GJSNeptune said:
The ideal OS would probably be modular. You pop in the disc ... and you get a ... checklist of things you want and don't want.
Click to expand...
I think that's a pretty amazing idea. Has anyone told MS about it yet ?
 
Windows 7 was rumored to be somewhat modular. I'm not sure if it's panned out (yet?). We're supposed to be able to uninstall Internet Explorer and MSN Chat and such.
 
Cov said:
I think that's a pretty amazing idea. Has anyone told MS about it yet ?
Click to expand...

Windows 7 was being internally developed with that in mind, and even retained some of that for services-- this is also what Windows Live Essentials (photo gallery, browser, media player, dvd maker, mail, etc.) will become.

You can also get something very similar with Windows Server, via roles, and I beleive the current, and next(with the updated kernel), Windows Server has an edition called "Core" which is essentialy only the kernel-required services; although, it's not meant for modular-addons at this time.
 
GJSNeptune said:
I always wonder if there's another way to "compute" besides 1s and 0s. Some radical, crazy new concept.
Click to expand...

Plenty of them.

Ever see an abacus, a slide rule or a mechanical adding machine? No 0s or 1s there. Getting a little more interesting, in the pre-digital era there were many sorts of analog computers used in large engineering projects to handle the computation of complex formulas ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_computer might be a good start ) by ways of -large- chains of gears and whatnot.

Back in grad school, I knew some people working on a DNA Computer that played tic-tac-toe. Not really useful but an interesting exploration of alternate methods of computing.

But, really, unless you can radically change what you mean by 'compute', the theorists have shown that all methods of computing are equivalent (with the posibility of the P=NP question). Since everything is equivalent, -how- we compute isn't really interesting, the interesting questions are about what we compute & how we get answers.
 
I'd say the modular thing worked out pretty well for Windows 7. Maybe 10 gigs seems like a lot of space for an OS, but harddrive space is so cheap now, I'm not sure why you would care about 10 gigs vs. 6 gigs or whatever. Other than that, I haven't really noticed anything unnecessary at all. You can take out IE and WMP and all that, and the Windows Live services you have to get yourself. There isn't really much left. Linux might take up less space, but my Ubuntu install is cluttered with programs I'll probably never use. Removing them isn't terribly simple either, since there are all sorts of cross-dependencies and packages and stuff. The last time I tried to clean it up and get rid of all the programs I didn't need, which was most of them, I somehow accidentally uninstalled my desktop and Nautilus file manager, which confused the hell out of me until I realized it was for some reason dependant on bluetooth or some other random thing I had taken out.
 
OS is an antiquated concept. Cloud computing, virtualization, and thin clients are the future. You'll see the computer and the OS as we know it start to dissapear in the next 10 years. In the future the OS won't matter, you'll be able to use any software you chose, on any hardware you want, anywhere in the world.
 
othellomcbane said:
I'd say the modular thing worked out pretty well for Windows 7. Maybe 10 gigs seems like a lot of space for an OS, but harddrive space is so cheap now, I'm not sure why you would care about 10 gigs vs. 6 gigs or whatever.
Click to expand...

CPU power is cheaper than dirt, but people still whine because "zomg vista uses 1% of my resources!"
 
bonsai said:
OS is an antiquated concept. Cloud computing, virtualization, and thin clients are the future....
Click to expand...
I remember that the discussion about abolishing the conventional PC system was predicted with the same confidence.
Many years ago, I heard that any kind of data won't be stored onto HDD anymore, but rather being accessed via a network system.

Meaning, the PC of the "future" would be kind of a little blackbox, and that's all.
Until today, our hardware components haven't changed except performance wise, so ...
 
bonsai said:
OS is an antiquated concept. Cloud computing, virtualization, and thin clients are the future. You'll see the computer and the OS as we know it start to dissapear in the next 10 years. In the future the OS won't matter, you'll be able to use any software you chose, on any hardware you want, anywhere in the world.
Click to expand...
Do you have any idea what you're talking about or are you just throwing out buzzwords? I'm leaning towards the latter. Specifically, do you have any idea what an Operating System does?
 
bonsai said:
OS is an antiquated concept. Cloud computing, virtualization, and thin clients are the future. You'll see the computer and the OS as we know it start to dissapear in the next 10 years. In the future the OS won't matter, you'll be able to use any software you chose, on any hardware you want, anywhere in the world.
Click to expand...


In the Server, Data Center, Workstation, Rendering Farms, Financial sectors, Oil Engineering/Geology, Medical Research et al industries, I'd agree -- but cloud computing for consumers, for a long while, will remian mostly untouched.

Google Docs or Folding (and others) have been around for how long? But they're barely scratching the surface. Real Distributed/Cloud Computing is comiong, but we've got a ways to go before it penetrates.

Look how long it's taking to switch to IPv6..
 
Arainach said:
Do you have any idea what you're talking about or are you just throwing out buzzwords? I'm leaning towards the latter. Specifically, do you have any idea what an Operating System does?
Click to expand...

Do you have any idea of how Cloud or Distributed computing works?

His point is apt. Just pre-mature, IMHO.
 
Arainach said:
Do you have any idea what you're talking about or are you just throwing out buzzwords? I'm leaning towards the latter. Specifically, do you have any idea what an Operating System does?
Click to expand...

Actually much of what he's saying is considered to be the tend in computing. Google definitely is promoting this model.

That said, I think there is a ying and yang that naturally occurs with centralized/decentralized computing. Right now there is fever pitched promotion of the cloud, the centralized model. But we are all stating to here more and more about metered bandwidth and that starts to swing the pendulum the other way. These types are constant in the computing world with regard to the centralized/decentralized issue.

At the end of the day, decentralized computing power is simply too powerful and convenient to ignore. The cloud and potable applications will complement the client and fixed applications I believe. Something like the OnLive gaming service my prove to be a formidable challenge but bandwidth limits will put a damper on streaming cloud technologies.

But in an era of every increasing network and local bandwidth power could come what I call the microweb. Essential full featured and powerful web based cloud serving applications that people can run at home. Think of it like a P2P type of technology where one or thousands of client could become the next YouTube. Totally decentralized and distributed web/cloud applications that form what we consider a traditional web site. The cloud and the client become essentially the same thing at both the hardware and software level. No need for hosting.

We really are just scratching the surface of networked computing.
 
heatlesssun said:
But in an era of every increasing network and local bandwidth power could come what I call the microweb. Essential full featured and powerful web based cloud serving applications that people can run at home. Think of it like a P2P type of technology where one or thousands of client could become the next YouTube. Totally decentralized and distributed web/cloud applications that form what we consider a traditional web site. The cloud and the client become essentially the same thing at both the hardware and software level. No need for hosting.

We really are just scratching the surface of networked computing.
Click to expand...

I was just about to start discussing this: multicasting, anycasting, and unicasting.

And the tech you call microweb, more closely resembles Grid-computing, rather it's concept. But you definetly give a good primer, if more people new about this tech, the computing world would be a very different place-- think "Did you know" video, on youtube.
 
bonsai said:
OS is an antiquated concept. Cloud computing, virtualization, and thin clients are the future. You'll see the computer and the OS as we know it start to dissapear in the next 10 years. In the future the OS won't matter, you'll be able to use any software you chose, on any hardware you want, anywhere in the world.
Click to expand...

Problem : I want to own my data. I don't want my data living in somebody else's machine, leaving me dependent upon them to keep the systems running, connected to the 'net, keeping my data private, staying in business & having terms of service that allow me to keep working with it.

Even at that, you're still going to need an OS to run your thin client & the cloud servers. Sure, maybe everyday end-users won't be concerned with the specifics of their OS but they've just shifted their dependence onto some 'universal' piece of client software (please don't let it be a web browser). Ignoring that this has been done several times before (dumb terminals/mainframes, X-terms/unix servers, windows terminal services...), you haven't really solved any problems beyond "users don't liek to change things".
 
ameoba said:
... I don't want my data living in somebody else's machine, leaving me dependent upon them to keep the systems running ... they've just shifted their dependence onto some 'universal' piece of client software ...
Click to expand...
That was just my thinking when I heard about it many years ago.
The people introducing it weren't getting tired to claim how very safe and fool proof it was.

If I have learned one thing in my life, then to not trust anyone except myself.
And even there I'd be very careful.
 
"Experts" are always concerned about the cost of backwards compatibility, and how it's affecting your computer speed. The truth of the matter is that most of the backwards compatibility is just designing smarter.

Modular OS's are great for embedded markets, and terrible for the average computer user. The reason? Testing is expensive, and companies don't like testing their product with the logic of, "Did the user disable all web browsers? Then what do I do? Do I bundle a web browser as well as everything else I need for online help?" The test matrix just explodes!

Even with Cloud Computing etc, there has to be an Operating System, otherwise, what's running on your device? ;)

I don't believe there will ever be a perfect Operating System. It all comes down to use cases, and designing an Operating System with the most use cases covered.


This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.
 
You all realize that hypervisors are just another sort of operating system, right? And that a thin client attached to the cloud needs an operating system as well?

Personally, I think the ideal OS today is one that is scalable across a wide variety of technology stacks. A good example would be how well MacOS made the jump to the iPhone, or how well Linux moves from five figure server farms to $50 routers at Best Buy. But, the ideal OS also maintains compatibility and hardware support to the degree that Windows long has. I'm not certain which will come first - a Linux or MacOS distribution that runs on any hardware and supports any common API, or a Windows distribution that can run well on mobile or embedded devices. I was betting on Linux, until I saw Windows 7, now I'm not so sure.
 
<thread re-open>

I have installed Ubuntu recently and absolutely could not get used to it.
Everything seemed so different and I started missing my good old Windows so much.

I'm back to my trusted Windows 7 now.
 
dot_Zen said:
Do you have any idea of how Cloud or Distributed computing works?

His point is apt. Just pre-mature, IMHO.
Click to expand...
You can't even connect to the cloud unless you have a solid OPERATING SYSTEM to handle your hardware. Saying the Operating System is going out-of-date is nonsense.

Not to mention that with the trend of bandwidth caps (and small ones at that), this whole "cloud" concept will never get out of the datacenter (if it ever gets in place there).
 
The "IDEAL OS" is the one that hasn't been invented yet, that takes the coolest aspects, concepts, and features of every computer system we've ever seen in a TV show, a movie, or read about in some book, that more than likely gives up access to any data we could ever dream that we'd want to know, and best of all...

We get to plug our brains directly into it, so we're not hamstrung by our pathetically slow "Human BIOS" which is the biggest contributing factor to our development. Our brains can absorb and process data faster than any computer will ever be capable of, our eyes pull in more data in 1 second of time than has ever been processed in the history of computing in our reality, and many other things as well.

If our "Human BIOS" wasn't so ridiculously slow and cumbersome... we could really get some cool shit happening. :D

Demon10000 said:
The OS you're looking for is linux. If you don't like something, then fix it yourself.
Click to expand...

Yeah, right. It's not quite as oversimplified as that...
 
I wonder why nobody still mentioned RISC architecture among one of the features of the Ideal OS... that sure would be awesome...
 
Probably because the BRAIN OS is superior to all comers, now and forever more... ;)
 
Demon10000 said:
The OS you're looking for is linux. If you don't like something, then fix it yourself.
Click to expand...

The problem with that ideology is that it only works if you're a Computer Science/Computer Engineering drop-out living in your mom's basement and have nothing better to do. Most users don't have the design/programming/engineering skills and/or time necessary to just 'fix it' to their liking. People are too busy actually trying to get stuff done to fuss with re-engineering an operating system to meet their needs. That's why people are able to make a living off of making software; They do it, so other people don't have to and can spend time actually getting other things accomplished.

Computers are only what they are because we've moved away from the days of big iron. Computers are no longer complicated room-filling machines that require you to be an expert capable of making software from the ground to do what you want. Computers are in our homes, and somebody's already made operating systems and applications for you, so you can focus on doing your stuff, instead of inventing something that will allow you to do your stuff.

Pretiacruento said:
I wonder why nobody still mentioned RISC architecture among one of the features of the Ideal OS... that sure would be awesome...
Click to expand...

Probably because most home users don't have access to high end RISC hardware. All the recent desktop hardware is x86, which is CISC.
 
Last edited:
I don't understand what's so great about the cloud computing idea. I hear a lot of talk about it, but I fail to see its greatness, or at least, in an obvious way. Could someone give me the run-down?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top