Where Are Operating Systems Headed?

An anonymous reader writes "Dr. Dobb's Michael Swaine breaks down the question of where operating systems are headed. Among his teasers: Is Vista the last version of desktop Windows? (Counterintuitively, he says no.); Did Linux miss its window on the desktop? (Maybe.) And, most interestingly, are OSes at this point no longer necessary? He calls out the Symbian smartphone OS as something to keep an eye on, and reassures us that Hollywood-style OSes are not in our short-term future. Where do you weigh in on the future of operating systems? In ten years will we all be running applications via the internet?"

When I first heard about the Java OS

[complexmath]

I envisioned a modular OS where the core provided essential features and all the trappings were completely pluggable. Don't like the UI framework? Use a different one. Same for the filesystem, etc. At the heart of the OS I expected to see a sort of object database where all these features were installed and managed, with some sort of OpenDOC layer on top to retrieve modules as needed. Of course, I was way off the mark, but this is the kind of OS I would like to see in the future.

Unix has this to some degree, partially by virtue of it being old, but there exists no structured management system for the packages at this basic level (that I'm aware of). And while I grant that one isn't necessary (the shell/filesystem combination is fine for package management), the lack of one tends to complicate things from a user perspective. Linux has made great progress over the years in achieving high-level usability, but many low-level tasks still require a good bit of domain knowledge and thought, largely because of the filesystem/shell nature of how these tasks are typically performed. If this process could be simplified and in turn made more reliable (it's a bad example, but compare installing an application on MacOS compared to any other operating system), then I think things would be moving in the right direction. This isn't to say that being able to mess with the core of things is bad, but it should be an option, not a requirement.

They are a new platform

[davidwr]

Think of a computer as a layer of platforms. Applications can target any platform unless some part of the platform stack restricts such access.

A typical PC:
CPU and other hardware, BIOS, OS kernel including kernel-level library routines and virtual-machine subsystems, OS-supplied and 3rd-party library routines including OpenGL and non-kernel virtual machines, and applications. For the sake of simplicity I'm ignoring complex scenarios like OSes running in a VM that's running in an OS that's running in a VM.

In principle, applications can "call" functions at any level in the stack, although in modern OSes the kernel blocks direct access to the BIOS and some other hardware and the chip itself blocks access to privileged instructions by unprivileged applications.

Re:Linux is headed to the landfill

[stratjakt]

I decided to give linux on the desktop another go, I've been trying it about every other year for about 12 years now. During that time I've seen windows progress from 3.1, to Vista. Sure, there's a lot to hate about microsoft, but if you cant look at that evolution and tell me they've significantly improved the product, you're just being a zealot.

During the same time, I've seen the linux desktop evolve - well none. OpenOffice works, but it just feels clunky - it feels like the versino of word I used on win 3.1 so long ago. MPlayer will start and randomly not play sound. Sound is still a big kludgy wtf-is-goin-on type thing. Should I be using ALSA, or ESD or /dev/dsp or what? What the fuck? I think ESD is what I want to use, but now all sound is delayed by a half second. What about all the piles of graphics libraries, what's a game developer supposed to work with? DirectX may be kludgy in a lot of ways, but it's a HUGE asset for Windows.

Bon Echo feels bloaty and slow - but firefox under windows XP on the same hardware is snappy and responsive. I'm using nvidias latest drivers, and glx.

I dunno, it's usable, but it was usable in the early 90s. I know that things have improved, but it still feels like the same experience I had back then - right down to fucking around with monitor frequencies by hand?. The big difference is that file is called xorg.conf now. What the fuck is up with that? Are people still using monitors without EDID? Even if a handful are, why are we still designing for that outside case? Why cant I just have " Section Montior / EDID True / End Section" or something like that?

The one thing that's gotten me excited is NX, and when I can migrate a session from windows to unix and back, and hijack the local desktop, then maybe I'll be a bit happier and find a little more use for my linux machine. Of course, Windows already does all of this.

Linux, in my home, is still just a big thing that runs samba so I can store all my porn on a computer built out of spare parts.

Freedom and Technology

[argoff]

People still can't wake up and smell the Hummis. The debate never has been about the direction of technology, but about the direction of freedom and liberty. The saying "the stone rejected by the builders has become the corner stone" has never been more true. People go on and on about how this feature matters, or that GUI, or such and such technology, ease of immediate use, or this and that driver/optimisation, consumer/corporate adoption, or DRM - and they still gon't get it. When people have the freedom to copy and modify without being punished and fenced off, those things will come naturally and more, when they don't then it does not matter how nice it is - it will eventually be overtaken and become obsolete. Free markets are not about technology or markets, but about freedom and people using it to create wealth and opportunity where it hasn't existed before. If that doesn't define the free software movement, then I don't know what does.

Re:Linux is headed to the landfill

[mhall119]

About 6 months ago I installed Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) on a spare PC, that was about at the same level as my Dell which came pre-installed with Windows XP. I only have monitor, so Ubuntu loads vncserver at startup (3 sessions actually, running gnome, KDE and XFCE respectively), and I connect to it either from my Dell or an old Gateway laptop using a vnc viewer. Now because of VNC, I can't comment on sound issues, but I will comment from experience on some of your other complaints:

OpenOffice works, but it just feels clunky - it feels like the versino of word I used on win 3.1 so long ago.

On windows I have Office 97, which also feels like the win3.1 version. Infact, office 2007 is the only real change in MS Office since then.

The big difference is that file is called xorg.conf now. What the fuck is up with that? Are people still using monitors without EDID? Even if a handful are, why are we still designing for that outside case? Why cant I just have " Section Montior / EDID True / End Section" or something like that?

I actually had the exact opposite problem with Ubuntu. It expected EDID from a monitor, but as mentioned above I did not have one connected, so it defaulted to 640x480 when vncserver started X. Easy enough to fix, and again the default expects EDID info from the monitor.

The one thing that's gotten me excited is NX, and when I can migrate a session from windows to unix and back, and hijack the local desktop, then maybe I'll be a bit happier and find a little more use for my linux machine. Of course, Windows already does all of this.

I'm not sure what exactly NX does, or how it differs from X11. Like I said, I can connect from any computer with a vncviewer client (or I can use the java applet that comes with vncserver with just a browser on the client). I can connect to 3 different desktop sessions that are all constantly running (and running different desktop environments), I can even share display 0 if I enable the VNC module for X. Windows does not do all that.

Now, for my own personal experience, I prefer Ubuntu and hardly ever use my windows desktop. Even over VNC, my Ubuntu desktop is more responsive than Windows XP on the Dell, and much better than Windows 2k on the laptop. Infact, the only thing that runs on the laptop anymore is vncviewer, so it's essentially a dumb terminal. Since installing Dapper, I upgraded to Edgy with no problems, and plan on upgrading to Feisty as soon as the upgrade path gets tested. Edgy performs better on the same hardware than Dapper did, and Feisty looks to accomplish the same thing. When was the last time a Windows upgrade resulted in better performance on the same hardware?

Re:"Operating system" is a pretty old paradigm...

[a.d.trick]

Want to hide the fact that your graphical shell could run on a competitor's operating system? Easy, just say Windows is part of--no, wait, IS--the operating system.

As appalling as it might seem, this is actually quite true with MS Windows. The GUI code is actually in the kernel itself.

Re:What's the point?

[iceruam]

My thoughts exactly, I second you on this. This is what I have been telling everybody we are headed to. And yet I have people touting the wonderfulness of using apps on the net. I do not like the idea of having to be connected to the net just use an app or even listen to a song I tried to listen to a moby cd last year not whilst not on the net and it laughed at me, just an example. Cheers

Re:The last OS that won't install direct to our BR

[Dunbal]

Just because you know big words doesn't make you any more of an expert than he is.

      No, but my doctorate does make me more of an expert than him, especially when we talk about something in my field - the human body.

Wouldn't they fill with water rather than gas at the bottom of a pool

      I was imagining someone holding their breath for 4 hours - theoretically possible if someone is balancing the CO2 and O2 levels in the blood, since changes in these concentrations are what stimulate the breathing reflex. If you propose to have someone actually BREATHE that water - especially FRESH water like you'd find in a pool - that person is dead.

      Fresh water will be absorbed through the alveoli in the lungs. This will dilute the solutes in the blood, which will cause red blood cells to lyse in this hypotonic medium, which will release a whole lot of potassium into the bloodstream, which will kill the person from a cardiac dysrythmia in about oh, 5 minutes after they "breathe" water. This is the usual cause of death when someone drowns in fresh water.

      You get once chance at breathing fluid - and that's when you're in your mother's belly. What you "breathe" isn't water but amniotic fluid, which has pretty much the same solute concentration as blood. Also note that any differences are almost immediately nullified by the placenta, because mommy can buffer a much bigger difference than baby can.

      If you ever get your lungs filled with water, you are dead - despite everything you see in films or on CSI. No amount of jumping up and down on your chest - or oxygen in your blood - will save you.

But that'd make sense and be obvious to most people...

      If the universe ran strictly on common sense: we wouldn't have any need for experts now, would we? Feel free to breathe all the oxygenated water you want, but as a physician I don't recommend it.