The Old Joel on Software Forum: Part 3 (of 5)

Next generation OSes

What would be the next step in OS design? From holes on paper to text terminals to pictures on screen? Three dimensional interface?

Indian Developer in India
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

You tell us, I'm sure someone is farming out the work to india...

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

LOL. Ain't in that business. Ours is a "local" shop. Sorry!

Indian Developer in India
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Whatever Microsoft decides they can sell, I'd think.

Sum Dum Gai
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

http://www.google.com/search?q=windows+longhorn

www.MarkTAW.com
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

More of a desktop mod than anything, but I saw something over on the Sun site called Project Looking Glass.

http://wwws.sun.com/software/looking_glass/

There's a demo in there somewhere.

Pretty interesting stuff; every window has a front and a back. For example, you could be looking at a website in Mozilla, and then spin around to the back to make a note about it.

Don't know how useful it is, but kinda cool.

Nigel
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

3d is probably a usability nightmare because enough of the population would become sick if motion is portrayed. Even some topnotch Quake players quit because of terrible headaches. (Kenn of Death Row is one.)

I'd like a bunch of things you can read about in old papers from the 80s and before. The Connection Machine, really useful file systems, etc. It's kind of funny all the things they implemented which are crystalclear in retrospect, but we're blind to because of the systems we're used to. It was very important for me to read about them, because today's computing systems just seem soo bad...

Many seemed to ultimately fail for being ahead of their time. The economics weren't there yet, perhaps boneheads owned the patents and botched their startups, etc. There are all sorts of things one can mine and put in a new package, like XML.

Tayssir John Gabbour
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

"Longhorn" is just a _refinement_ of the current *design*. A welcome, good, needed, justified, viable, albeit controversial one.

Or am I way of the mark on LH? Extended FS attributes, Enhanced graphics, etc. Anything _new_?

Regards

KayJay

Indian Developer in India
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

http://www.winsupersite.com/faq/longhorn.asp

if you didn't follow that google link above.

www.MarkTAW.com
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

I did follow the links, Mark. I still feel it's a difference in scale and size and not a difference in kind, President Truman notwithstanding.

Indian Developer in India
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

"2D is Better Than 3D"
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/981115.html

Matthew Lock
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

I think the next big step in OSes will be speech interface. What everybody really wants to do is talk to there machine, just like on all those science fiction films.

Ged Byrne
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

There won't be one, at least not one that you can see.
There'll be zillions of gadgets with cpu's in them, but they
won't be anything like a "traditional" PC. There'll be
file-systems and various low-level miscellany done by
something resembling an OS, but it will neither be seen nor
heard, unless it croaks :)

x
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

OpenCroquet:
http://www.opencroquet.org

Giovanni Corriga
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

" Whatever Microsoft decides they can sell, I'd think. "

C'mon, Mickeysoft is not a fatality

Astrobe
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

maybe not a fatality, but they sure have done a DARN good job on stomping out any real competition in any field they want to move into.

Will be interesting to watch them fight it out with Nintendo and Sony over the console market....

Much as I hate some of their business practices, I won't cut off my nose to spite my face. (I use windows, not linux, etc).

Of course their monopoly makes it virtually impossible for anything truely revolutionary to happen that they don't do themselves.

Fred M. Napier
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Are you asking about UI or OS? The two can exist separate, you know :)

Vaidhy Mayilrangam
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Talking to the computer? That would not be good for us deaf folks.

T.J.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

This may just be the wrong forum for this question, since the answers you're likely to get are:

1. The next version of Windows
2. The next version of Linux

There are some interesting OSes out there, for example:

http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ErosOs

But you're not likely to see them used commercially, and on this board that's all that matters.

Portabella
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Eros?? Used to run porn sites I guess? :)

sgf
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

No OS at all.

( Too stupid to be really stupid :)

Astrobe
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

TinyOS?

Andrew Burton
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

LookingGlass is a cool indeed UI concept but Sun did not invent it - they copied it from either Marcus or one of Marcus' coworkers. Since he lurks here occasionally maybe he'll let us know who invented it.

Fan of the Zeitster
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

Plan 9 http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/
TinyOS http://webs.cs.berkeley.edu/tos/
TRON http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/homepage.html

Doug Withau
Tuesday, January 27, 2004

I think Be took the next step in building an OS. The damn thing could thread like nobodies business. I am thinking the key was genius engineers and not worrying about compatibility issues (though it was posix compliant).

Be Fanatic
Tuesday, January 27, 2004