After linux
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| alneo5527 Apr 05, 2010 8:59 PM EDT |
My guess would be it will be some fork of Linux, or BSD. ~Alneo5527 |
| caitlyn Apr 05, 2010 9:02 PM EDT |
My guess is that it will be something unexpected. In the meanwhile I don't agree with the author: Windows is neither dead nor dying. That is wishful thinking at this point. It's a wish I share but it's not reality. |
| gus3 Apr 05, 2010 9:50 PM EDT |
Thanks to the Vista release, the Windows brand will never get back its good reputation (earned or otherwise) while Steve Ballmer is at the helm of Microsoft. Even if 7 has repaired the objective deficiencies of Vista, enough people are thinking "fool me once..." to get them to consider their options. The fanboi base, un-rabid as it's always been, isn't growing. And don't get me started on Ballmer's pathetic PR department. Seinfeld and Gates wiggling their tushies? Tupperware™ parties for Windows 7? How nauseating. Redmond is an ever more fetid swamp thanks to Ballmer. |
| Scott_Ruecker Apr 05, 2010 10:13 PM EDT |
I would say BSD, because what is good for Apple is good for FOSS whether FOSS activists like it or not. If after the bomb that was Vista someone would now consider switching to a Mac, even with the steep prices they are, they inherently become more open something other than MS period as a result. My litmus test is my Sister and her family. She has had very good luck in her Apple purchases with both the MacBook and MacBook Pro she bought years ago are still cruising along unscathed even after two daughters and a husband. What kills me is that she doesn't seem to mind that they are atrociously expensive..;-) |
| gus3 Apr 05, 2010 10:59 PM EDT |
Further amplifying my "fanboi" comment: Apple fanbois go "Wow!" when a new Mac OS comes out. The typical reaction to new Windows releases is, "Did they get it right this time?" |
| hkwint Apr 05, 2010 11:08 PM EDT |
What's interesting to note is that Linux, BSD, GNU/FSF, KDE and Gnome and some distro's brought modularity to the 'Free Software / Open Desktop'. You can substitute the Linux kernel for a BSD one (Gentoo, Debian), you can run GNU utilities on Hurd (L4 kernel I believe), and you can compile all sorts of free software to run on a MINIX kernel, using (Minix) cc instead of gcc. FreeBSD provides Linux compatibility. You can run a windowing environment on top of Xorg that was programmed in C, one that was programmed in C++ or even one that was programmed in Haskell. They all communicate using FreeDesktop standards it seems. And because of the advance of OOXML (which is probably easier to transform back and forth to ODF than the older binary formats) and Open GIS standards old proprietary office software may also be slowly phased out or at least it can be exchanged for alternatives, just like MS Exchange faces competition. We saw it with LAMP: The P was for PHP but could also be Perl or Python, some people are dissatisfied with MySQL, so they went the NoSQL road, while still using Apache and Linux. Stuff like Javascript and WebGL / OpenGL ES 2 take all this a level further: You can write hardware-accelerated 3D code which runs on 4 different browsers on 4 different OS'es on 3 different CPU-architectures - without rewriting / porting the program. You can also write XUL and have it translated to JavaScript (AmpleSDK) to bring Firefox-like GUI's to your webpages. Another fancy 'modularity' example is how Apple started to use KDE's KHTML, later they added 'Nitro', the JavaScript engine, and Nitro will find its way back into JaegerMonkey, Firefox' Javascript engine. I think this new 'modularity' - enabled by free standards or glue code to adapt proprietary stuff to the free standards - will make it unnecessary for one 'implementation' of browser / OS / architecture to rule the world by means of a monopoly, more of these can coexist rather nicely. Just like Ubuntu doesn't hinder Mandriva or Fedora, those other technologies / kernels won't hinder each other that much, at least not on purpose. So, what will come after Linux: Probably some hybrid crossroad chaos, after which the flock chooses which way to go. But in contrary to the past, 'the way to go' can be easily be abandoned in favour of an even better way to go. It took 'old' industry (steel and such) probably over a century to understand why standards and abandoning secrecy about your products is good. It took them some while to understand vendor lock-in and monopolies. It seems it will also take a while for the computing industry and its customers to reach the same conclusion. Nonetheless, that day is coming, which is the day Apple will have to change their business model or go bankrupt. |
| hkwint Apr 05, 2010 11:11 PM EDT |
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| golem Apr 06, 2010 4:19 AM EDT |
I don't disagree with anything said so far. Under "unexpected" one might list: some variant of the microkernel idea that turns out to be superior in a world of multicore processors; something completely different for a quantum computer, or for hordes of nanobots etc |
| jacog Apr 06, 2010 4:53 AM EDT |
Amiga revival? :D |
| bigg Apr 06, 2010 9:03 AM EDT |
> The typical reaction to new Windows releases is, "Did they get it right this time?" It used to be "Wow!" for Windows too. Think Win 95, Win 98, Win XP. Then Vista came out and it was more like, "!@#$%!! What a miserable POS!!!" |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 06, 2010 9:55 AM EDT |
In my opinion, Linux will complete the UNIX cycle. I don't think another UNIX style system will emerge. Linux is not the "end all be all" of Operating Systems, because new OSs will be invented as people have different tastes and hardware. What I don't see is the "re-invent the wheel" attitude gaining enough foot-hold to want to make another OS that merely re-invents UNIX, so long as Linux remains as open to new hardware, new processes and new developers as it is. I was giving my wife a quick history lesson over the weekend, telling her how different hardware had different OSs made especially for them. But that was when things were all proprietary. UNIX is something I could not have imagined without having used it, or read about it, etc. It's like imagining "red" without having seen it. With the open development model, new hardware doesn't mean writing an entire OS from scratch. The separation inside the Linux code so that hardware specific elements can be swapped out easily means comparatively little work needed in order to run on new hardware. People will take the easy way out, generally speaking. So there it is. If people want something like UNIX going forward, they will use Linux. What will come after Linux is going to be so different I can't know what it will be until it has already happened. The reason that Win95 was not WOW to me was because I had already used Win1,2,3, MacOS 6 and 7 and SunOS with Xwindows, so a GUI was not so amazing. But it was more "seamless" than I had seen before, that's what made it interesting. |
| Alterax Apr 06, 2010 10:04 AM EDT |
> It used to be "Wow!" for Windows too. Think Win 95, Win 98, Win XP. Then Vista came out and it was more like, > "!@#$%!! What a miserable POS!!!" I assume that the emotional scars from Millenium Edition are still severe enough that we don't talk about it? |
| bigg Apr 06, 2010 10:20 AM EDT |
> I assume that the emotional scars from Millenium Edition are still severe enough that we don't talk about it? Microsoft still had credibility at that time. Vista was the release where the ordinary user scratched her head and said that a competent software company wouldn't do things like that. BTW, I never used Millenium Edition, and didn't know very many people who did. |
| gus3 Apr 06, 2010 10:44 AM EDT |
Quoting:Linux is not the "end all be all" of Operating SystemsHERETIC! |
| techiem2 Apr 06, 2010 12:26 PM EDT |
Quoting:Linux is not the "end all be all" of Operating Systems ...yet. :P |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 06, 2010 3:12 PM EDT |
> HERETIC! When the singularity occurs, and the OS writes itself, then maybe heretic will take on an whole new meaning. |
| TxtEdMacs Apr 06, 2010 4:51 PM EDT |
B._R., Ever the optimist, Bob. Just wondering how many times this entity will be hitting the delete key(s), button(s), widget(s) or other functional equivalent(s). Wondering if anyone is working on a defense. Beside sledge hammers. YBT |
| ComputerBob Apr 06, 2010 5:08 PM EDT |
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool my twice, shame on me. Fool me three, four or five times, I must be a Windows user. |
| Steven_Rosenber Apr 06, 2010 5:56 PM EDT |
I wonder if Microsoft will ever dump the current Windows codebase and go to something like the Midori OS they're working on. If they get rid of the "legacy" code and go to something completely different, with "legacy" apps in a VM, that could change the game in MS's favor going forward. |
| phsolide Apr 06, 2010 8:30 PM EDT |
Will Linux start moving in the direction that Thompson and Ritchie took Unix, i.e. down the path that led them to Plan 9? Plan 9's original functional multi-processing isn't really worth it these days, but the whole passing-file-descriptors, and concocting your own namespaces ideas have a lot of merit. Microsoft will never dump the current Windows code base, even though it's clearly decrepit and decroded. No commercial entity can do that sort of thing. Look at Sun, holding on to Solaris until the end, Apple holding on to OS9 until Jobs came back and forced them onto Mach/Next OS, and DEC hanging on to VMS. Heck, they even wrote a Macro-32 compiler for the Alpha CPU: http://www.linux-mips.org/pub/linux/mips/people/macro/DEC/DT... |
| helios Apr 07, 2010 10:21 AM EDT |
I assume that the emotional scars from Millenium Edition are still severe enough that we don't talk about it? I still can't feel my feet. |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 07, 2010 1:48 PM EDT |
> No commercial entity can do that sort of thing. I suggest that they could, but won't, because they have been selling product on the "backwards compatible" meme. They know they would have to support two parallel systems for an unknown time, and that more than doubles their costs. Personally, I think Microsoft could write a "WINE that works", sell it for $25 or $40 per license, and make just as much money or more than they do now and never have to worry about legacy code base again. > Will Linux start moving in the direction that Thompson and Ritchie took Unix, i.e. down the path that led them to Plan 9? Fork you! (ahem) I mean, go for it! Would it require a kernel module to do this, or a new shell? |
| TxtEdMacs Apr 07, 2010 2:16 PM EDT |
Bob,Quoting:Fork [Y]ou!Your Alma mater? Odd I thought I knew of most of the big tech schools. What state? YBT |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 07, 2010 2:29 PM EDT |
> What state? Confusion, mostly. It's an affiliate of the School of Hard Knocks. But really, if the Plan 9 developments are a Good Thing(tm), then put them in! |
| gus3 Apr 07, 2010 2:56 PM EDT |
helios,Quoting:I still can't feel my feet.But that was the case long before WinME, n'est-ce pas? |
| jacog Apr 08, 2010 3:05 AM EDT |
Quoting:I still can't feel my feet. I recommend 50 sit-ups a day. |
| ComputerBob Apr 08, 2010 11:31 AM EDT |
Quoting:I recommend 50 sit-ups a day.That will help you see your feet, not feel them. |
| Bob_Robertson Apr 08, 2010 7:47 PM EDT |
> That will help you see your feet, not feel them. Stretching will help, then you can feel them with your fingers. |
| TxtEdMacs Apr 08, 2010 8:25 PM EDT |
Quoting:> What state?We're neighbors, we should get together sometime soon. Quoting:It's an affiliate of the School of Hard Knocks.Been there too, still licking my wounds. Forget Plan 9, it will never fly or get approved by the FAA. YBT |
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