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Operating Systems Software Linux

The Role of the Operating System In the Future 245

Posted by Hemos from the yeah-we'll-still-care dept.
liteswap writes "Linux geeks love Linux and Windows mavens won't quit Microsoft -- but will we really care that much whether a machine is running Linux or Windows in future? As Sun announces Solaris support for Red Hat Linux applications, the need to specify the OS for a particular application will fade away, and the application and the x86 platform become the critical things -- at least that's what this Techworld feature argues..." Maybe a long time from now this will happen - but I don't see it happening RSN.
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The Role of the Operating System In the Future More

The Role of the Operating System In the Future

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  • Standard emulation/abstraction platform? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:16PM (#14082793) Homepage Journal
    I've been contemplating the OS situation for years (ever since I first tried to run a multinode BBS under DOS' DesqView) and only recently has a possible endgame become visible to me: emulation.

    Software needs an OS layer, the OS layer needs an abstraction layer to hardware, and the hardware needs a communication layer to all the various mechanisms (drivers, BIOS, interface protocols, whatever). It isn't just a simple 16-bit .SYS driver like we had in the DOS days that basically handled everything.

    We've seen so many emulators (Macs running Windows emulators running Mac emulators) on so many platforms, but what has allowed so many to come to the market in such a short period of time? Processor speed, I'd say.

    Now that processors are incredibly fast, we're likely to see little performance increases in the tasks that 90% of the world uses PCs for: displaying text on a screen, inputting text into a form, and sending that text to a printer. Sure, Vista will incorporate a new video structure and 3D-gaming and heavy-use databases will always need faster processors, but MOST users are still just text viewers.

    The next step, I believe, is creating a more realistic "standard" emulation structure for software. I think the F/OSS market is awesome because you can generally cross-compile a lot of code on various operating systems, but they still need modifications to the specifics of the OS or the hardware you're running on. What I really think will be the next big thing will be a TRUE hardware abstraction layer in the OSes (H.A.L.I.T.O.S.es?). Is it possible? I'm not sure, but it makes me wonder.

    Why do people bust their asses constantly updating WINE when the OSS community can work towards a more amazing result: a standardized implementation structure that lets you write software once, and have it run on any OS that has a HAL to translate that implementation structure to what the hardware requires.

    I know -- that's what the OS is supposed to do, but it fails. Yet do MOST applications really need the extreme features we have in customization (different video cards, hard drive controllers, network interfaces, etc)? Or would MOST applications run just fine (on high end processors) if they can say "Write pixel at X,Y" or "send data chunk to IP address" or "Write this data to this store" etc?

    Maybe I'm talking out of my ass (I haven't programmed anything significant since MajorBBS mods in C over 15 years ago), but it seems like that is where software has to head. A completely transparent "mini-OS" that offers all software written for it a very standard set of instructions for the most popular functions. You're not going to write 3D games in it, but that's not the target market. 3D games will always push the envelope and come BEFORE the hardware can handle it. We're talking about basic implementation of basic software, yet it is this basic software that we waste billions of man-hours of labor on trying to get working on various OSes and hardware combos.

    Now that I think about it, wasn't NT supposed to be the magic system? What exactly happened there? (Don't just say "Microsoft.")

    • Re:Standard emulation/abstraction platform? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:24PM (#14082876) Journal
      You are right that the speed of processors has changed things. With fast processors emulating hardware in a reasonably responsive fashion becomes possible. I view emulation, however, to be to platform indpendence as NAT is IPv4 address exhaustion. They both paper over the fundemental problem rather than dealing with it.

    • Java? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jbolden ( 176878 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:28PM (#14082916) Homepage
      How is what you are describing not the Java -- bytecode, JVM model?

    • The next step, I believe, is creating a more realistic "standard" emulation structure for software. /i>

      Like Java? It's standard, it's cross platform, and it's already in widespread use. Plus performance has already been tuned to extremes, not to mention the sheer number of Desktop and non-desktop libraries available for it. Thanks to its popularity, you can use Swing, SWT, wxWindows, GTK, QT, or any of your other favorite crossplatform front-ends for your Java apps.


      Now that processors are incredibly fast
      • Like Java? It's standard, it's cross platform, and it's already in widespread use. Plus performance has already been tuned to extremes

        Uhh, they tuned it to the wrong extremes. Small size and fast speed is what they should have tuned for not huge swapping and slow response.
        • Small size and fast speed is what they should have tuned for not huge swapping and slow response.

          Small size and minimal swapping *is* what they've been tuning it for. Anyone who's used Java 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and the latest 1.5 can easily see the massive improvements in each version. However, it is important to realize that Windows is not very well optimized for OOP programming. It's far too aggressive about swapping (even on a machine with gigs of RAM!) making all kinds of problems for users. Linux, FreeBSD, a
      • Java isn't standardized.

        Let that sink in for a moment. Java isn't standardized. Sun would love for you to think Java is standardized, because it adds an extra layer of fuzzy comfort. That layer is, however, an illusion. Can you find a Java standard anywhere? A JVM standard? Nothing in ECMA, ISO, ANSI, et al? That's because they don't exist. Java is proprietary. Now, you have a fairly solid measure of assurance that you won't be sued for implementing it...although if you're MS and you implement it badly,
        • Can you find a Java standard anywhere? A JVM standard?

          Yes indeedy, do. Mr. PsychicX, I would like to introduce you to the Java Community Process [jcp.org], a full up standards committee encompassing pretty much all the major technology companies in the industry. Java and its extensions all go through this process before being considered final.

          Whether you as a developer want to acknowledge the JCP or not is irrelevant. It has been acknowledged by pretty much everyone who does matter, making it a true force in the industry.

          Even if you don't like MS, you've gotta admit that from a freedom point of view, .NET beats the crap out of Java.

          I admit no such thing. Microsoft has released only the core of the system into the standards committee, and has made no real promise not to enforce patents that would allow them to crush an actual implementation of the .Net system. (As opposed to a "feel good", minimalist implementation that's mostly incompatible with Microsoft's version.)

          Under the JCP, ALL APIs in the Java library, ALL bytecode requirements, and ALL Language requirements are published for anyone to implement. The only real power Sun weilds over anyone's head is the ability to deny the use of the "Java" name if they can't live up to the specs.

          Sorry dude, but you've been seriously duped.

          I think it's pretty damn obvious which runtime system I'm a fan of.

          Yes, you're a fan of Microsoft. aka "The Bad Guys". Simply because you fell for a "feel-good" trick of theirs. Nice going.

          P.S. Here's the spec for 1.4 [jcp.org], the spec for 1.5 [jcp.org], and the working group for 1.6 [jcp.org]. You can join the committee and have your say in the design of 1.6, if you'd like. Now that's a real standard!
          • JCP isn't a standard. It's merely a consortium. That's better than unilateral control, but it's not the same as a standard-proper, like what you get when working with ANSI. As for your calling Mono a "minimalist" implementation, that's bullshit. With the exception of the Windows/MS specific libraries, Mono is almost completely compatible with .NET, to the point that several major applications done in ASP.NET can be run under a Linux/Apache setup. And the CLR is an open standard, MS cannot sue anyone for doi

            • Re:Standard emulation/abstraction platform? (Score:4, Interesting)

              by bogado ( 25959 ) <bogado.bogado@net> on Monday November 21, 2005 @03:50PM (#14084223) Homepage Journal
              I don't feel good about either. I would rather have a true open bytecode, started from 0 open and free (parrot?). Both sun and MS have their ace under their sleeves waiting to played and bot have been some what open and third party implementations friendly, but I don't trut either to keep like that when their system get's the majority of people working with them.
            • JCP isn't a standard. It's merely a consortium.

              I'm sorry, what are most Standards Committees again? Someone had better tell the "World Wide Web Consortium" that they're no longer allowed to dictate standards. And we'd better revoke all those Internic RFCs. Ooo, not to mention Unicode. Disbanding that Consortium is gonna hurt.

              But none of those are the almighty ISO, are they? So, we had better change the following paragraph on Wikipedia, before someone gets the (correct) idea that ISO acts as a Consortium in
    • What you're talking about sounds a lot like the POSIX standard, which is what has enabled the easy cross-compiling of FOSS.

    • inferno? (Score:3, Informative)

      by diegocgteleline.es ( 653730 )
      Thats exactly what Inferno (a plan 9 derived OS) does already.

      Limbo code is compiled into architecture independent byte code which is then interpreted (or compiled on the fly) on the target processor. This means that any Inferno application will run identically on all Inferno platforms.
    • I believe the solution is simple: distribute software in a form that can easily be transformed into native code.

      What I have in mind is something like parse trees in some standardized format, which would then be compiled to native machine code before the program is run. Couple that with a standardized API (shouldn't be too difficult for most stuff), and you've got machine-independent code that will run at full native speed once a simple compilation step is taken (simple, because lots of analysis and optimiza

  • I really, really, really don't care what OS I'm running on any of my machines. What I care about is:

    • the running infrastructure has to be very reliable.
    • it has to run programs I need to do my work
    • it has to have reasonable support
    • it has to be reasonably priced
    • it has to interoperate nicely with the rest of the world
    • it has to be configurable (in an easy to do, easy to understand way)
    • it has to be FLEXIBLE

    Right now, for me, the only OS that fits that bill is linux. I seriously don't care that it's linux

    • For me that list is the following.

      Xandros

      OpenOffice.org 2.0

      FireFox

      Thunderbird

      hotsink my PDA

      Right now I do have a few software programs I use for research that sadly only work in windows(ok, and CivII), but other than that I can do everything I need in Linux. It's stable, it's fun to work with, and it 'just works'.

      If an accounting troll do it, any one can!

    • Sarcasm? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by umbrellasd ( 876984 )
      You just listed 7 reasons why you really do care what OS you run. It is impossible to separate the OS from the factors that you listed. As impossible as separating Internet Explorer from Windows.
      • But Firefox does come for a wide variety of OSes, so surely it's not impossible to create a web browser that runs on almost all OSes.
    • These are the requirement of any basic tool.

      There is a task that needs to be done, and it needs to do it. Just like a hammer is supposed to drive a nail into a piece of wood.

      If the hammer can be aquired for less money and works better than a more expensive hammer, why would you buy the more expensive hammer?
    • I agree. If you look at the big 3 - Microsoft, Macintosh, and Linux - they all have different strengths and weaknesses. Don't lock yourself into one platform, because you think it's the only "good" one. You need to be willing to look at all three, and then pick the best one for the job. In our case that looks like this:

      Windows: Standard office PC, with the largest selection of business software. Everyone knows how to use it, easy to manage, e.g. group policy objects.
      Macintosh: Some developers, art pe
    • Agreed. I do however, have a very different requirement:

      I think it's important that I be allowed to fix my servers and workstations, and that I be allowed to redistribute my fixes as I see fit.

      Microsoft however, doesn't think I should be allowed to fix my servers and workstations. They have even gone so far as to convince a very large number of people that it's illegal for me to do so.

      Right now, it may not matter so much, but in the future, it's not going to be x86 and some APIs that matter, it's going to b
  • And then work on the LSB. I'd like it if I could even just use generic "linux" applications on Debian as opposed to only ancient versions of RedHat.

  • A Nice Dream (Score:4, Informative)

    by MightyMartian ( 840721 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:21PM (#14082855) Journal
    The idea of removing the operating system as a major stumbling block to software development and distribution is nearly four decades old. I mean, the whole purpose behind Unix was to create a consistent platform that would make porting easy, and while the various distaff Unix and Unix-like operating systems certainly are more friendly towards porting than the older systems, for complex software it's still a difficult and time-consuming process.

    The only development software that has come close to giving us platform independence are interpretative languages like Perl and Java, but that promise is still elusive. Java still seems to have stalled, and with projects like Mono, it almost seems like Microsoft may ultimately, though possibly unwillingly, get the upper hand.

    • Java still seems to have stalled, and with projects like Mono, it almost seems like Microsoft may ultimately, though possibly unwillingly, get the upper hand.

      Huh?
      Java is going strong as ever on the server side.

      Mono is making progress for desktop applications, but I haven't seen any stats indicative of microsoft getting the upper hand in cross platform development.

      • I have to second that. Right now, Java can be considered the next-gen COBOL, it runs a LOT of the heavy duty back-end stuff. Where is .Net taking hold? In VB developers that write desktop apps, Microsoft's captive market, anyway. But for a large scale infrastructure, J2EE is way ahead of anything MS has right now. And on .Net being cross-platform, no way. Mono is going to always be far behind, because MS will keep .Net as a moving target. Meanwhile, Java gets released for Windows, Linux, Solaris, offic

    • Re:A Nice Dream (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 )
      ``Microsoft may ultimately, though possibly unwillingly, get the upper hand.''

      Unlikely. They have a vested interest in keeping people locked into their platform. It's easy enough for them to change .NET so as to prevent things from working on competitors' platforms. I really think the purpose of .NET is more to kill Java than to make a better platform. Besides, .NET has its shortcomings, too, so there's always room for competing platforms. It just won't work, just like it didn't work with Unix, it didn't wo

  • Of course the OS matters (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gothmolly ( 148874 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:23PM (#14082864)
    Leaving abstractions aside, of course the choice of Windows or *nix matters. Because of Windows' layout and the way that certain applications are built into it (IE, Windows Help, etc) there are reliability issues that cause many more maintenance-related reboots than on Unix. When was the last time you rebooted a Linux machine because the Help system in KDE needed updating?

    Also, there are certain OS-specific things which usually cannot be solved in hardware (assuming you're running on the best you can afford). Need an FS that handles massive sparse files correctly? Maybe that means you need Reiser on Linux, or ZFS on Sun... (I have no idea if this is true). Maybe Windows just CANT do this well, regardless of CPU power. Do you need to hot-swap NICs, CPUs, and add/remove memory and CPU power on the fly? You probably have to go to AIX then. Didn't we just read an article about how Windows takes 5x the number of CPU cycles to start a process?

    If you consider the OS tightly coupled to the app, or the app requires specific capabilities from its OS, then app concerns will dictate the OS.

    • Re:Of course the OS matters (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:53PM (#14083123) Journal
      THe article misses something very important. Solaris and Linux are both the same fundamental design, so emulating one with the other is easy. Now throw in something like QNX. Where Linux/Solaris/J Random UNIX is based on a synchronous function call model, QNX is based on an asynchronous message passing model - very different. You can emulate one on the other, but you take a huge performance hit. Now, at the moment most people use the synchonous model, but in the future the asynchronous one is going to be more important for two reasons:
      1. It handles latency much better - send a message, do something else for a bit, wait for reply - and so is better in a high-latency (read: network) environment.
      2. It scales better. On an n-core system, you are going to be able to have one core for every busy thread you have. You are not going to want to do two context switches every time you do a system call. Instead, you will write some data to a shared memory segment and carry on - signalling the OS if you have run out of things to do. The OS will periodically (or when kicked) read the waiting messages and send them to other processes. On a system that supports SMT you will probably have one OS message-dispatcing thread per core.
      Emulating a well designed, scalable, message passing OS on UNIX is a lot more complicated than just providing a different set of system call vectors.

      P.S. QNX can run POSIX apps if they are recompiled, but they are much slower than asynchronous apps doing the same thing.

      • EXACTLY my point. I'm glad you brought this up too. If you have an app that needs these sorts of response characteristics, you WONT GET THEM FROM AN OS THAT DOESN'T DO THINGS THIS WAY. No amount of CPU power on a different type of system will give you the responsiveness you need.
    • Didn't we just read an article about how Windows takes 5x the number of CPU cycles to start a process?

      And to only strengthen your point, threads are much less efficient than Windows on Linux, I believe.

  • Market (Score:3, Insightful)

    by umbrellasd ( 876984 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:23PM (#14082871)
    Just because an OS has market share and it is lucrative to port to it, does not mean that it is preferable or enjoyable or even in the long-term best interest of the world to support that OS. What if one of your target OS alternatives is proprietary, controlled by a monopolistic company, and is very expensive to license (nevermind support)?

    Yes, I really think it does matter which operating system is used, and it should matter to everyone: developers, purchasers, and--unless they are very short-sighted--end users.

  • Is this new? (Score:4, Informative)

    by hackstraw ( 262471 ) * on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:25PM (#14082892)
    I've heard about Solaris to Linux ABI for years. I dug this up from 2 years ago: http://developers.sun.com/solaris/articles/support _for_x86.html [sun.com].

    So is this something new or something that now works now that the Linux ABI has stabilized? Or is this easier now that Sun is shipping x86 systems or what?

    Inquiring geeks want to know the point of running Linux apps on their Sun boxes.
    • So is this something new or something that now works now that the Linux ABI has stabilized?

      Stable Linux ABI? That's an oxymoron, if I've ever heard one.

    • It's completely different. The article you pointed at was all about
      porting applications between platforms. The project refered to in the
      original artical was about running an existing Linux binary inside
      a zone on top of Solaris, with no recompilation.
      • The article you pointed at was all about
        porting applications between platforms. The project refered to in the
        original artical was about running an existing Linux binary inside
        a zone on top of Solaris, with no recompilation.

        OK, maybe I prematurely linked. I've heard of this before for at least a few years, maybe more than 5.

        Here is lxrun from Sun that does direct running of linux binaries:

        http://www.sun.com/software/linux/compatibility/lx run/ [sun.com]

        Here is another offering, maybe the original, don't know:

        http://w [caltech.edu]

  • Platform independent software (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kevin_conaway ( 585204 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:25PM (#14082894) Homepage
    I think the role of languages that don't rely on a specific platform will become much more important in the future. I write my software [sf.net] in Python and it works wherever Python works (well, not really thanks to GTK+, but its getting there!). As these languages and toolkits mature, I think we'll start to see less of a dependence on the OS

  • OS Schmo-S!!! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Alex P Keaton in da ( 882660 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:26PM (#14082897) Homepage
    but will we really care that much whether a machine is running Linux or Windows in future in future?
    I dont care what OS is running now, as long as I can read slashdot and look at pr0n!!!!

  • Linux Torvalds on x86 (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Teckla ( 630646 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:27PM (#14082903)

    Right around the time Linus Torvalds announced his employment with Transmeta, he said something to the effect that the world already had a portable byte code, and that byte code was x86.

    • Yes, but just because Linus says it doesn't make it true. Plenty of desktop machines use PowerPC, and when you go out of the desktop sphere, you'll be seeing a lot of ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, 68K, Sparc, and the _original_ x86, which is presumably not what he was referring to. Not to mention that, probably, x86-64 will soon take over in the desktop sphere and reduce IA32 to a secondary role, and let's not consider at all that even x86 bytecode on Windows means something utterly different from x86 bytecode on Lin
      • Plenty of desktop machines use PowerPC, and when you go out of the desktop sphere, you'll be seeing a lot of ARM, MIPS, PowerPC, 68K, Sparc, and the _original_ x86, which is presumably not what he was referring to. Not to mention that, probably, x86-64 will soon take over in the desktop sphere and reduce IA32 to a secondary role, and let's not consider at all that even x86 bytecode on Windows means something utterly different from x86 bytecode on Linux.

        Its also worth noting that Linux runs on PowerPC, ARM,
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • In the future... (Score:3, Funny)

    by pmike_bauer ( 763028 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:27PM (#14082905)
    ...will we really care about proof-reading?

    ...will we really care that much whether a machine is running Linux or Windows in future in future?*

    *'in future' repeated for emphasis

  • performance (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Chr0nik ( 928538 )
    Even if every operating system could run any application written on any developement platform, there would still be operating system preferences.

    Performance, dependability, Security, Hardware requirements, and even things like boot time will still drive people to prefer certain operating systems over others.

    What software an OS runs is generally second in consideration to me, as there are usually equivalent packages to perform the same tasks on other platforms.

  • It'd be great... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Austerity Empowers ( 669817 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:32PM (#14082947)
    but the programming world has a serious lack of portability. Programmers refuse to attempt to write portable code, and they cite (with justification) the lack of any libraries which allow them to do so with ease. Microsoft, Apple and Unix have three very different programming APIs, and Microsoft + Apple continue to try to make sure their APIs diverge from each other. MS being the worst...they "invent" a new language all their own and encourage the use of it by mob force.

    The nuts and bolts of the world are still in C/C++, and will be for the foreseeable future. C/C++ still lack any standardized support for GUIs and threads. C/C++ are still the most flexible languages (in a non-CS professor approved sort of way).(This is not a "my language is better than yours post")

    For a long time we're going to care about our OS because our programs will only run on one certain one, even if we don't really care what OS we use.

    • For a long time we're going to care about our OS because our programs will only run on one certain one, even if we don't really care what OS we use.

      You seem to have missed the entire point of the article. Sun is providing the ability to run your Linux apps on top of Solaris, so it will no longer be true that "our programs will only run on one certain one."

  • Noooo.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LWATCDR ( 28044 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:34PM (#14082973) Homepage Journal
    "x86 platform become the critical things"
    Why? If you are going to abstract the OS why not the ISA?
    IBM actually has been doing this for years with the System38/AS400.
    The came up with a "prefect" ISA. When a program is installed it is converted to the actual ISA of the machine it is running on. IBM went from a CISC to the Power ISA without a hiccup.
    I have wondered why Linux hasn't come up with a similar system. When you install and RPM or some other style of package the system could "translate" from a perfect ISA to the native ISA of the system you are running on.
    Sort of like Transmeta did but do it at install instead of runtime.
    Think of it as a just at install compiler vs a just at runtime compiler.

    • Re:Noooo.... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Jerry Coffin ( 824726 )

      I have wondered why Linux hasn't come up with a similar system. When you install and RPM or some other style of package the system could "translate" from a perfect ISA to the native ISA of the system you are running on.

      If you were feeling really corporate, you could call this an "Architecture Neutral Binary Distribution" format. Then with a little looking, you could even find an old copy of DEC OSF/1 that implemented it!

      Seriously, 10 or 15 years ago (or so) the UNIX vendors saw this as a way they co

  • RSN - Red Sox Nation? (Score:5, Informative)

    by truckaxle ( 883149 ) * on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:37PM (#14082997) Homepage
    For the those clueless people, like myself, RSN [wikipedia.org] does not stand for the "Royal Singapore Navy" or the Religious Science of Nashville [rsn.org] but for "Real, Soon now" which to the initiate could alternately mean "Real Soon, Possibly Never".

    I guess you need to be a science fiction fanzine fanboy or a regular reader of "Chaos Manor" to know this. Tribal Knowledge...

  • If every application runs on any OS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:39PM (#14083011) Homepage
    They will most likely suffer all from the same (protocol) bugs, be vulnerable for the same attacks and ultimately be virus compatible. Diversity is good. Lets just have two or three major operating systems in the future, probably running the same applications, but not on exactly the same code base on a nice interactivity layer.
  • I have to wonder what Sun is thinking just ignoring the conflict between their CDDL and the GPL.

    http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html [gnu.org]

    Does RedHat has some kind of magic wand that makes all of the license problems go away? Is there a way around the issue I'm not aware of?

    I'm interested in knowing how this would be feasible.
    • What is the issue? An ABI compatibility layer isn't that novel. Besides, you can run a binary with any license. Are you suggesting that if I run a GPL'd binary under Solaris, that will somehow force Sun to GPL their whole OS? That makes about as much sense as running a non-gpl binary under Linux, and forcing Linus to close the kernel source. WTF?
      • That makes about as much sense as running a non-gpl binary under Linux, and forcing Linus to close the kernel source. WTF?

        But this is the case. You're allowed to run proprietary software on Linux because the glibc is not GPL'ed. It is GPL+exception.
      • Besides, you can run a binary with any license.
        I believe this is not about running a binary. I believe the issues are related to linking and possibly distributing the binary.

        Are you suggesting that if I run a GPL'd binary under Solaris, that will somehow force Sun to GPL their whole OS?
        I'm not suggesting anything. I'm asking if anyone has any more information regarding the CDDL and GPL imcompatibility and HOW that plays out with Sun & RedHat.

        I'm not making this up. Here's an edited summary from distr

  • Of course we care (Score:3, Insightful)

    by external400kdiskette ( 930221 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:40PM (#14083019)
    Our primary concern is to use software and not all software is going to run on all platforms so we choose the platform that runs the software we want, very redundant. Until this changes the status quo wont change. And a lot of people aren't going to move stuff to linux because it's not worth the expenditure, remember the nightmare ID software wrote about supporting a huge number of unstandardized distros/configurations and how problematic it was for them. Similarly a lot of stuff isn't going to be ported to windows for whatever the reasons. But you cant just use *any* OS and for the forseeable future that aint changing.

  • Wishful thinking (Score:3, Insightful)

    by FridayBob ( 619244 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:47PM (#14083078)
    Whoever wrote this was obviously hallucinating. As long as Microsoft continues to make applications for Windows only, the OS will matter. It's called a monopoly: it's the key to Microsoft's success and they'll do almost anything to keep it that way.
    • Microsoft don't make their software for Windows only though. Their largest cash cow outside of Windows itself is on 2 platforms, Windows and Mac OS X.

  • I've thought this for years... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by grasshoppa ( 657393 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:54PM (#14083136) Homepage
    ...which is why you will soon see MS doing things to intentionally break packages like Qt. MS knows it's coming too, and they will have no real way to fight linux then.

    Right now, the only thing keeping most people with MS is software selection. Most industry applications are written for windows, non-cross compatible. As more and more companies start using portable windowing libs, we will see a take off in linux usage. It's really a no brainer: You need an os on 100 computers to run your application. Do you choose the OS with a price tag of 100 bucks, or the one with a price tag of 0, that's easier to maintain than the one with the 100 price tag?

  • Hmmm, it certainly suggests something... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Hosiah ( 849792 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @01:57PM (#14083159)
    Let's see, we have Linux, BSD, Solaris, OS X, BeOS...all good little operating systems that play nice together...Come to that, I really don't see where there's that much difference between them all that if I went from one to the other, I would experience problems. Correct me if I'm wrong (like I have to ask for THAT on Slashdot!), but won't most of the programs from one run on another, with little to no modification? I know I can use BSD and Unix utilities on Linux with darn near impunity. Do they not all share their toys (source code) and happily borrow from each other?

    Then over here, we have the one bad, sulky operating system. Who is this making these horrible noises and faces at everybody else over here in this dark corner? Why, my goodness, it's Microsoft! What's the matter, Softie, don't you want to play nice with the other systems? Oh, I see, you want all the other systems to *DIE* so you can be all by yourself. OK, I guess that's a "no". Well we're going to go on having our little party together and maybe you'll get the hint and just go away...

    But I still don't see it real soon, even if MS suddenly does a Grinch and grows it's heart three sizes bigger and decides it's going to play nice after all. Witness the fragmentation even within an OS's community (distro vs distro, desktop vs desktop, editor vs editor), and I don't think you'll get the vi/Gnome/Debian bigot and the Emacs/Fluxbox/Slackware bigot to say "Eeeeeh...what's the difference?" But then again, my crystal ball *is* due for a polishing...

    • You are wrong. While basic console applications may run with little or no modification on one or the other (those same applications, incidentally, should run fine on Windows, either using MS's Services for Unix or Cygwin--NT has POSIX-standard syscalls, I believe) but anything more complex (threads, GUI applications, etc) may not.

      Namely, a lot of obscure syscalls on Solaris, BSD, and Linux are OS-specific and incompatible, and at least OSX uses an entirely different (and almost entirely incompatible) GUI (C
  • The operating system will continue to become less and less important as modern operating systems become closer and closer to being mere variants on the underlying Unix design that has taken over the market.

    When an OS is made with some feature that Unix can't duplicate, while retaining security and stability, operating systems will again matter.

  • Walk, then run (Score:4, Interesting)

    by LaughingCoder ( 914424 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @02:04PM (#14083223)
    It seems to me that, until we can make document file formats (think MSOffice versus OpenDoc) not matter, talking about the whole OS not mattering is a bit premature. We live in a time when we discuss at great length file formats and the future readability of Word documents. Solving *that* problem (any word processor can figure out any other word processor's file format) would appear to be a much simpler problem than abstracting the OS. Walk, then run.
  • So far, with very few exceptions, Microsoft has a way of tainting anything that might be considered a standard for information interchange on the data side. On the app side? I have yet to see an implementation of anything but stuff that works on a Microsoft platform save a few MacOSX apps... anything "universal" quickly becomes "universal only if you're on a Microsoft platform." And as long as an OS is considered a marketable product, they will do everything they can to keep you locked in with their apps
  • We can now run Solaris 10, running Linux compatibility, running WINE, on a single machine, and thereby run most software - only MacOS apps remain to be included. Each compatibility layer eats some performance, but we can run it on a Niagara T1, for a hefty price. When these apps have simple IPC, across the OS divide (like local socket messages), there will be huge demand for multiprocessor workstations that can run any app. I expect Intel will have the demand for their customers first, and are positioned wi
  • I'd go a step further (higher). As more and more things are moving to the Web, and as web application are getting richer [dojotoolkit.org] and richer [masswerk.at], I'd guess that in the next 5 or so years the OS will become quite irrelevant to the end user, who will access a lot more "desktop" applications through a web interface [mozilla.org].
  • you may not care which OS you are running if the apps you like run everywhere, but someday,somehow, for some reason, you will want to be able to get to the source code - you will want to not be locked into choices that some corporation makes for you, or at least to be able to read over that code to make sure its doing what its supposed to and not too much more.

    if you really hate some choice Linus makes, go fork off your own branch -- if you don't like a choice Bill makes, or Steve makes, well, you're sort
  • Back in V7, before Bell, Berkely and eventually every tin-pot company created their own flavor, programs on Unix merely needed recompilation when you moved them to a new machine architecture.

    This used to be a major selling point, as all the mainframes and minis were wildly different, and IBM minis need porting even when moving from system 3 to 34 to 38 to AS400. You could write your code once for Unix, instead of porting it every eight months as the vendors messed around with you.

    --dave

  • Don't Be Ridicilous (Score:3, Insightful)

    by RAMMS+EIN ( 578166 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @02:30PM (#14083491) Homepage Journal
    ``As Sun announces Solaris support for Red Hat Linux applications, the need to specify the OS for a particular application will fade away''

    Oh, come on, don't be ridiculous. Don't pretend you don't know that GNU/Linux and Solaris are _very_ similar to each other, compared to Windows.

    The BSDs have been able to run Linux (and SCO, and HP-UX, and SunOS, and ...) binaries for ages. Has that taken away the need to specify the OS for applications? Java promises to run the same binary on all major platforms. Has that caused applications to not be bound to any particular platform?

  • OS Matters, and MS is in the lead. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by CDPatten ( 907182 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @02:31PM (#14083497) Homepage
    The OS matters and MS is making big headway in that front. They are doing it right in the face of all their naysayer's, and the irony is those self-proclaimed geniuses are missing what's happening right in front of their face.

    For example, the Apple crew touts being first to market with features like indexed searching as reasons why they will beat MS. All the while MS is quietly getting XP Embedded in ATMs and Cars. MS can ad a search in an update (e.g. Vista), but Apple isn't going to power any BMWs with OSX 10.5, but MS already does with XP Embedded.

    MS is diligently working with GE (one of the worlds largest companies, 1st or 2nd place) to advance home automation, and integrate with household appliances. Home automation is the FUTURE of computing, period. MS is working hard to penetrate the Home Media market (media center, Xbox, IPTV, etc.), the phone market, and many other fronts. You can say they won't make it, but they are doing a hell of a job to date. Look at the next generation of television, IPTV. MS is starting to get so far ahead of everyone else it's getting sad. Take some time and watch the demos, they are very impressive. The zealots keep saying it isn't true, but they have been saying this since Windows 95. They were wrong then, and are wrong now. Apple and RedHat don't have any big exclusive deals with Verizon or SBC to power IPTV, but MS does. Those deals are getting fiber brought to everyone's doorstep. IPods are cool, but they are a novelty device and they aren't going to power the home of the future, but at the current rate, MS will.

    Phones: Mobile 5 blows the doors off of all business class phones today with the exception of RIM's. With the exchange integration, RIM won't be able to compete... MS phones will support Push with more then a 100,000,000 people overnight. RIM is struggling to top 5,000,000. Linux phones are a nice idea, but they don't offer push, and the ones at present can't hold a candle to Mobile 5. Then there are PDAs. MS has crushed Palm, and Nokia's hail marry is neat, but won't beat Mobile 5.

    The bottom line is if you like MS or not, they are growing in many areas that aren't being publicized. The naysayers are a sleep at the wheel. The platform of the future isn't going to come from Google, Sun, and certainly not Apple. MS is getting in at the ground floor of these industries and they have far more money to fight off the others.

    The platform matters. I know so many of you are out of your mind pissed at me for writing this. I'm sure some of you will have some wiki-pedia posts to try and make your case, or some blog of an anti-ms zealot. And to you I say; it doesn't matter if you use a Windows computer for surfing the web or not, you aren't going to be escaping MS powered operating systems anytime soon. History will prove me right.
  • Think of it as mobo vs Java.

    Or Microsoft vs Bluetooth.

    Or any number of different battles where hardware vendors are ideologically divorced from software vendors. Until there's another bridge OTHER than operating systems, there'll be a need for OS makers and OS characteristics and architecture will continue to be very much relevant.

    We make flexible hardware designs so as to sell to as many audiences as possible, rather than make monolithic, single purpose machines. Software, on the other hand, seems to want

  • Ooohh... Ahhh... Yawn. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nuntius ( 92696 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @02:38PM (#14083566)
    Its hard to express how little enthusiasm I have for this. I mean, the various BSD's have had Linux binary compatibility layers for what, 5 years or more?

    So Sun's mightly Solaris is finally catching up to a dying OS? Ouch. ;-)
  • Folks are going to think this comment is rather blue sky, but the only thing which matters is your Information and *Access to your Information*.

    A catchy term for this could be called "Info Spaces". (I didn't invent that.)

    Imagine you have a computer tucked away in your basement which only exists to hold any and all information you have ever referenced or created. (Or you could use a public utility.)

    Computers in your house let you access your Information, as do wireless laptops, networked screens, and PDA's..
  • It's easy to abstract across operating systems as far as file access, networking access, and so on.

    But a modern OS draws windows, dialog boxes, buttons,... and each program interacts with a host of other programs via any of a number of methods. Getting the same program to do DDE and OLE on Windows and the equivalents on Mac can mean radically different architectures.

  • Already happening (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @03:49PM (#14084210)
    Slashdot is clearly behind the curve on this one.

    Point #1: Embedded devices

    Do you know what "OS" is running in your digital camera? Your DVD player? Your MP3 player? Your GPS system? In the majority of cases, the answer is no.

    Point #2: Web applications

    Google search, Google reader, gmail, Flickr, etc. They look the same to me whether I'm running Linux, Unix, OS X, BSD, etc.

    Point #3: Cross platform apps

    Python coding and development feels the same on Windows, Linux, and OS X. Makes no difference to me. Ditto for editing with vim. Quite a few other languages and applications are identical, too: Inkscape, The Gimp, etc.

  • The Utopians Are Out in Force (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Arandir ( 19206 ) on Monday November 21, 2005 @05:22PM (#14085076) Homepage Journal
    This is a pipe dream. The OS will continue to matter as long as there is money to be had by locking customers into a specific platform. As odd as it sounds, many customers WANT to be locked in to a specific vendor.

    Platforms will matter because your applications will remain platform specific. The big push in corporations right now is to migrate everything to .NET. Despite the propaganda from Mono, .NET is a Windows-only platform, and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Mono is merely the Wine of the .NET world: you'll hear stories about .NET apps that will run on it, but try as you might you can't get any of the ones you need to run under it. What good is a crossplatform backend when the front end GUI is still inextricably tied to one OS?

    If major web sites and applications are still coding for specific browsers, my hopes for a cross-platform world where OS doesn't matter are very very slim.

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