Desktop Operating System Musings

pseudonomous · 2009-11-17 08:16:56

I think I want to partially rescind my remark about Xorg, there's the video I watched over at Phoronix:

Kristian Høgsberg talking about Wayland.

and I think it's just possible that Wayland's actually gonna reach a state where it's starts to get deployed, since it seems to be completely capable of running a full Xorg instance as a client of the Wayland server or standalone Xorg client applications; given total backwards compatibility, it's concievable that this could actually gain widespread adoption.

On the other hand, I still think Xorg, even if it's mainly Xorg instances running on top of Wayland, will still be around for a very long time.

This is a really interesting project and it sounds like a good idea; I hope it enjoys some success.

Editted to correct BBCcode

Last edited by pseudonomous (2009-11-17 08:19:18)

Hide · 2009-12-24 23:44:07

I'm not that old, and certainly not long in the IT turf, but I'll allow myself to guess that Windows isn't going anywhere for some time. That 1% Linux marketshare someone mentioned is too trivial to skyrocket in the next 5-10 years. We have a lot of learning to do. There is a lot of ironing out that has to be done (I'm talking drivers, audio systems, etc. Something really ephemeral). I *have* taken into account the exponential growth of technology lately. Even if all the aforementioned gets fixed, some word of mouth has to take place. Ubuntu has had a fair share of hype lately, but we're talking equalling Windows here

And as Ranguvar mentioned, who knows what Linux will turn into with all that proprietary software. Maybe I'm blind but I don't see Adobe releasing Photoshop or Flash anytime soon. Proprietary model has worked for them for a long time and that's what brings buck to the table.

Now what I *hope* for: Haiku grows into a serious OS, makes a non-trivial dent in the marketshare and doesn't get deviated by the ways of the mainstream OSs.

skottish · 2009-12-25 00:14:10

Hide wrote:

And as Ranguvar mentioned, who knows what Linux will turn into with all that proprietary software. Maybe I'm blind but I don't see Adobe releasing Photoshop or Flash anytime soon. Proprietary model has worked for them for a long time and that's what brings buck to the table.

I post this every now and then: Flash is almost completely open source now. It has been since before the 64 bit client came out. In fact, it's the reason why the 64 bit client came out. See mozilla tamarin.

Photoshop is going Flash based so it can be deployed over the cloud. Whether it runs on today's desktop Linux or not is irrelevant to the future; Whether it runs on the virtual machines that will be the desktop computer replacement is what's important. And it seems that Flash is far ahead of the competition at the moment in terms of deployment. Well, except Java which is close to irrelevant now for this kind of thing.

It's strange to me just how few people have a handle on what the cloud is and where things are heading. Over twenty years of VM development waiting for today's widespread high speed Internet, and yet people keep talking like twenty years from now they'll be using a desktop operating system. There's going to be workstations that'll have a dedicated OS for a while of course. Then there will be the cloud -- subscription based computing -- for almost everything else. The race isn't about desktop market share anymore, it's about deployment of content.

Meyithi · 2009-12-25 00:27:41

I want to an Intel conference in 1999 which stated that 80% of laptops produced in 2002 would be thin clients Can't see it happening by 2012 either!

gogi-goji · 2009-12-25 00:31:06

"The cloud" may be the future of mainstream computing, but it will never become the only way of computing. People like us will ensure that there is always a thriving community outside of the mainstream trends, who tend to mistrust putting all of our data in the hans of others, are wary of being over-reliant on an internet connection, and are able to set things up for ourselves. Mainstream computing may move to "The cloud", but linux will always be here for those that want it.

Hide · 2009-12-25 00:34:23

@skottish
I did not know that bit of info about Flash. Thanks for enlightening me
How far do you think the cloud will go (and how quick will it get there), considering the percent of people (not) having a reliable internet connection? Not ironic, honestly asking

tomd123 · 2009-12-25 00:56:42

"The Cloud"

IMO, this is another fad term like BFS. I keep hearing about it but I have only seen one person actually use anything that relates to it (google docs).

skottish · 2009-12-25 03:19:45

tomd123 wrote:

"The Cloud"
IMO, this is another fad term like BFS. I keep hearing about it but I have only seen one person actually use anything that relates to it (google docs).

Google Docs is a microscopic fraction of what users do. Mail, calenders, cell phones and related apps, news, weather, shopping, and streaming media are just some of things that people use in ever increasing numbers. This is all part of "The Cloud".

"The Cloud" is a marketing term, you're right about that. It's a term that's coming up more and more because the big players are starting to sell people on off-site storage. They're convinced that the general public is going to be willing to store almost all of their personal information on off-site machines. You know what? They're right.

gogi-goji wrote:

"The cloud" may be the future of mainstream computing, but it will never become the only way of computing. People like us will ensure that there is always a thriving community outside of the mainstream trends, who tend to mistrust putting all of our data in the hans of others, are wary of being over-reliant on an internet connection, and are able to set things up for ourselves. Mainstream computing may move to "The cloud", but linux will always be here for those that want it.

It depends on the availability of hardware, doesn't it? As more people move towards network-centric computing, high performance workstations will slowly become more of a business class product and less accessible to people without the money. Games are the one and only thing driving the "consumer" market in terms of processor performance (in part because of GPU video decoding, an area that Windows makes Linux look stupid in). There are a bazillion people now with netbooks that have the power of desktops 10 years ago. They love them because they're convenient. With the added convenience of having personal docs accessible from anywhere...

Hide wrote:

I did not know that bit of info about Flash. Thanks for enlightening me
How far do you think the cloud will go (and how quick will it get there), considering the percent of people (not) having a reliable internet connection? Not ironic, honestly asking

My favorite post! What? The network isn't reliable? No!

Creepy isn't it? The infrastructure as it is is not only unreliable, but it's insanely vulnerable to malicious intent. It's been demonstrated recently a few different times that it's possible to nearly bring down a entire country's communication (and electric) grid in less than 24 hours. This was in countries that were prepared for war. Imagine the chaos for countries that aren't. 9/11 crippled the cell phone network in this country, as well put a huge burden on the Internet.

ammon · 2009-12-25 16:00:24

You are far too optimistic. Be real, we will soon live in totalitarian superstate and everything will be controlled. Maybe we will use linux but all our data will be in "THE cloud" and everything will be monitored, filtered and triple checked.

skottish · 2009-12-25 16:18:30

ammon wrote:

You are far too optimistic. Be real, we will soon live in totalitarian superstate and everything will be controlled. Maybe we will use linux but all our data will be in "THE cloud" and everything will be monitored, filtered and triple checked.

Don't forget that Windubuntu will be the dominate distro for the soon to come head-chip.

Arch Linux

#26 2009-11-17 08:16:56

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

#27 2009-12-24 23:44:07

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

#28 2009-12-25 00:14:10

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

#29 2009-12-25 00:27:41

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

#30 2009-12-25 00:31:06

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

#31 2009-12-25 00:34:23

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

#32 2009-12-25 00:56:42

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

#33 2009-12-25 03:19:45

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

#34 2009-12-25 16:00:24

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

#35 2009-12-25 16:18:30

Re: Desktop Operating System Musings

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