What would you like to see in an OS?
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Our 'front side' is basically the user interface, while the 'back side' consists of the services that actually manage the process being controlled. I can see us using web-style user interfaces for some things, since it's a fair bet that most users will know how to navigate them. Our basic operator controls still resemble the control panel for a machine, however. I'm not sure the web technologies are up to the task for the kinds of things we render for the user. The back side stuff really doesn't care what it's running under. Our architecture doesn't even require that it run on the same box as the front side, so that fits your scenario fairly well. My point was that folks have been predicting the demise of the desktop application for some time now, and yet there are still lots of them out there. Contrary to what Microsoft and Google would like you to believe, the only thing that's clouded is their thinking in this regard.
Software Zen:
delete this;
Fold With Us![^]Gary R. Wheeler wrote:
I'm not sure the web technologies are up to the task for the kinds of things we render for the user.
Perhaps not at this time, but soon I think it will get there. While I do not think the desktop OS will "Completely" go away, I think its focus will change to be a host, more like a VM Host, to a web OS. Although I use the term web OS, it really will just be a VM that provideds a given rich ability that has in the past been equated to a desktop OS, but one that is network centric in deployment of apps. Maybe on the surface it will look like a desktop OS. Bringing control to a central is are will be the focus where machines are nothing more than that. You simple plug one in, hit a button and everything is brought in by the central server and they machine is all ready for you just like the old one. Drop in replacements because important settings, data and configurations are all on the central systems along with all the applications.
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Netflix coming straight to HDTV! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
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I agree, you cannot count on a connection, but much of the web OS is moving to allow a disconnected state where you have the ability to work and then sync upon reconnecting. This will probably be a major component in a base of a web OS.
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Netflix coming straight to HDTV! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
Rocky Moore wrote:
allow a disconnected state where you have the ability to work
And the "thing" that allows you to work effectively while disconnected will look like.... ...a regular PC.
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Those are some of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Honestly. People talk about the 80s and early 90s as the glory days of computing. I remember those days too; they friggin' sucked. We take for granted that we don't have to fiddle with hardware IRQ resources before installing software or playing games. X|
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit. The apostle Paul, modernly speaking: Epistles of Paul Judah Himango
I said "updated"; if I wanted it the way it was I'd still be running it.
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A free version...
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.(John 3:16) :badger:
An Express version?
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Yes! Bring back the VMS file system with user settable versioning. It wasn't on a file by file basis, as I recall, but you could set the number of versions to keep, and could always manually purge old versions. No fancy version tree required, just file.ext;version.
Yes, it can be file-by-file:
File attributes: Allocation: 9, Extend: 0, Global buffer count: 0, **Version limit: 4** -
OpenVMS's ODS-5[^] is your friend - checkout the versioning system it's had for almost 20 years!
¡El diablo está en mis pantalones! ¡Mire, mire! Real Mentats use only 100% pure, unfooled around with Sapho Juice(tm)! SELECT * FROM User WHERE Clue > 0 0 rows returned Save an Orange - Use the VCF! VCF Blog
I use ODS-2 on my Alphas, apparently that goes back to 1977.
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An Express version?
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With all the Lemmings that follow whatever the current mood is, I am sure we will hear a lot of anti Windows 7 stuff here soon since so many people on this Microsoft side of CP are anti-Microsoft (in what galaxy does that make sense?). Before that flood of dibble really gets going, for those that have any serious desires out of an OS, let me ask you all a question: Being developers, what would you like to see in an OS that is currently not there? With many things moving to a web world and the expansion of Web OSes, are there still things that would really make a major difference in a desktop OS? Maybe I have just been looked on the web world too long, but the desktop arena seems to be dying at a fast rate and they only thing that is really needed anymore is a host for a web OS. I am thinking that within the next 5-7 years the desktop OS will no longer exist. Thoughts?
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Netflix coming straight to HDTV! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
Just one like, or similar to, XP that works reliably. I have had to debug Windows Update issues on two separate PCs in the last 24 hours. That should never happen. That is pure MS stuff and should fix itself if broken. There are at least a few thousand other similar examples... Ed
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With all the Lemmings that follow whatever the current mood is, I am sure we will hear a lot of anti Windows 7 stuff here soon since so many people on this Microsoft side of CP are anti-Microsoft (in what galaxy does that make sense?). Before that flood of dibble really gets going, for those that have any serious desires out of an OS, let me ask you all a question: Being developers, what would you like to see in an OS that is currently not there? With many things moving to a web world and the expansion of Web OSes, are there still things that would really make a major difference in a desktop OS? Maybe I have just been looked on the web world too long, but the desktop arena seems to be dying at a fast rate and they only thing that is really needed anymore is a host for a web OS. I am thinking that within the next 5-7 years the desktop OS will no longer exist. Thoughts?
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: Netflix coming straight to HDTV! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com
I think the web OS, if you want to call it that, I wouldn't, and the desktop OS will be side by side. Used for completetly different things. On the server side we will always need a good OS, this is bascally the same OS as the desktop OS. Many people prefer (and should rightfully prefer) to run their apps locally, with only the services in the "cloud". This can be done nicely today, what is lacking is a good way to distribute processing when needed and make that easy and secure. I don't think the desktop OS will go anywhere in a long time, and I really despise using web applications today, they are slow, usually with a very bad UI and are totally dependent on having a connection. I mean just a simple data management UI on the web where you want drag and drop really looks like something from the 80:ies UI experience wise. (Yes you can make it looks nicer through silverlight/flash/javafx/javascript, but guess what, that's local computation..) Even the new mesh technology uses a "local" only story for development. That is you have your web runtime locally in your desktop OS, which handles all the fuzz with the "cloud" for you (well, that is the idea at least, it is still in tech preview so I hope they will get it right). I really hope the trend will turn towards rich local applications that can use cloud based states and data through synchronization. That way all processing is done locally but the data and state is manage centrally. To centralize things is usually a really bad idea and mostly only appeals to IT admins because of the ease of maintanance. It is also a hard problem to solve instead of distributing the computation power to where it makes sense. Also running a web host is not such a simple thing. An OS's main responsibility is to abstract and provide access to the hardware, may it be a camera, harddrive or a graphics card and any other peripheral device. That's the IO part, the other important responsibility is to schedule tasks and provide a way to switch between them. Today we have also added a networking responsibility to it compared to 10 years ago. What in this abstraction could the web OS do without? As I see it none, thus a desktop OS will be there, but the apps might work more fluently and hopefully will migrate its state (in a user controlled fashion) between the machines the user wants to use. Cheers, Niclas
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A "source-safe-filesystem"! It'd be real sweet if I could 'mark' files to be saved with version-history. Meaning, the FS won't actually delete the file, but make a new one (transparent). Tortoise-SVN as an integral part of the OS, so to speak :)
I are troll :)
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I think the web OS, if you want to call it that, I wouldn't, and the desktop OS will be side by side. Used for completetly different things. On the server side we will always need a good OS, this is bascally the same OS as the desktop OS. Many people prefer (and should rightfully prefer) to run their apps locally, with only the services in the "cloud". This can be done nicely today, what is lacking is a good way to distribute processing when needed and make that easy and secure. I don't think the desktop OS will go anywhere in a long time, and I really despise using web applications today, they are slow, usually with a very bad UI and are totally dependent on having a connection. I mean just a simple data management UI on the web where you want drag and drop really looks like something from the 80:ies UI experience wise. (Yes you can make it looks nicer through silverlight/flash/javafx/javascript, but guess what, that's local computation..) Even the new mesh technology uses a "local" only story for development. That is you have your web runtime locally in your desktop OS, which handles all the fuzz with the "cloud" for you (well, that is the idea at least, it is still in tech preview so I hope they will get it right). I really hope the trend will turn towards rich local applications that can use cloud based states and data through synchronization. That way all processing is done locally but the data and state is manage centrally. To centralize things is usually a really bad idea and mostly only appeals to IT admins because of the ease of maintanance. It is also a hard problem to solve instead of distributing the computation power to where it makes sense. Also running a web host is not such a simple thing. An OS's main responsibility is to abstract and provide access to the hardware, may it be a camera, harddrive or a graphics card and any other peripheral device. That's the IO part, the other important responsibility is to schedule tasks and provide a way to switch between them. Today we have also added a networking responsibility to it compared to 10 years ago. What in this abstraction could the web OS do without? As I see it none, thus a desktop OS will be there, but the apps might work more fluently and hopefully will migrate its state (in a user controlled fashion) between the machines the user wants to use. Cheers, Niclas
xtravagan wrote:
I really hope the trend will turn towards rich local applications that can use cloud based states and data through synchronization. That way all processing is done locally but the data and state is manage centrally.
Basically what I would term a web OS. You have an underlying virtual machine or OS if you will, that does not rely on applications to be installed locally like we would have in Windows, but rather automatically shuffled from central servers and cached locally to execute locally, client side, but using primary data stores in a centralized center. Of course this Web OS (or even virtual machine) would be completely independant of the native OS if one is even required, would probably be more like a VM Host. While at the guts, it is basically a form of universal desktop OS with applications available over the net which work on local data stores that are synced with central stores as are the applications.
Rocky <>< Recent Blog Post: A real stimulus package that would work! Thinking about Silverlight? www.SilverlightCity.com