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The IDEAL OS

GJSNeptune said:
I always wonder if there's another way to "compute" besides 1s and 0s. Some radical, crazy new concept.
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Always has been. You know, that age old concept of hiring other humans to do the number crunching for you and give you results. :p
The speed and accuracy of that system though...

And don't forget: even a stick + dirt + a brain can compute things. :D
 
GJSNeptune said:
The ideal OS would probably be modular. You pop in the disc or whatever the medium is, and you get a seventeen-page checklist of things you want and don't want. :D
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You mean Linux? I remember some of the older versions of Slackware, back when Slackware was more-or-less the most popular distro. Probably there have been reported cases of people dying during those installations simply because there too many prompts asking you about this or that. Odds are many died of malnourishment or dehydration.

As for what would make for the ideal OS, we already know the answer to that question: OS X.

...I'm kidding. Don't get mad!
 
What's ideal depends on the user. Thus, to assume there is one overarching all-ending "ideal" operating system is kind of silly, IMO. Sure, some OSes are better than others (7 > Vista > XP for my use) but just like cars, political parties or religions there's no single "right" version for every single person.

I like 7. I remember discussing the "modular" OS concept with some people. Personally, I believe consumers in general are lazy and if you strip out too much of what they expect, they will get annoyed. Leave the ability to remove things for those with the knowledge (like how Windows 7 lets you remove a ton of things now) but don't do that by default!
 
Uhu, and what (tons of things) does Windows 7 let me remove in particular ?
 
openbsd with Izfs and a firefox based gui
With a local copy of google apps 2.0
Would be the perfect office machine.
 
The longer you live, the more things repeat.

With Win7, I see at least a double-repetition, since Win7 is really Vista (SP3) on a diet, and it now sports the same resident memory footprint, kernel design and modular options found in OS/2, which released over 15 years ago.

Indeed, I must congratulate (sarcasm) Microsoft in this tremendous achievement-- no other vendor hath churned so little, so much and for so long!

For my work, I prefer an OS that's reliable as it efficiently, preemptively executes in a smaller memory footprint, leaving most hardware resources available for me and my applications. These requirements have been well satisfied for many years by various flavors of very modular Linux.

However, I must admit Microsoft is finally getting its act at least partially together with Win7, since the Beta consumes just over 500MB right after boot/log-in, which is far better than the near 1GB Vista originally gobbled up, and better than the 800GB the latest Vista SP can manage, and Win7 is actually within 100MB or so of the XP SP3 footprint.

Microsoft can soon churn a billion accounts for what seems like the billionth time, so get your wallets out, suckers!
 
SonataSys said:
However, I must admit Microsoft is finally getting its act at least partially together with Win7, since the Beta consumes just over 500MB right after boot/log-in, which is far better than the near 1GB Vista originally gobbled up, and better than the 800GB the latest Vista SP can manage, and Win7 is actually within 100MB or so of the XP SP3 footprint.
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It's not gobbling up your memory. Yes, Vista does use more memory than Windows XP on it's own, however most of the memory being used by Windows Vista isn't being use by the operating system itself. Most of Vista's memory consumption is due to a service called Superfetch, which caches files and libraries in your free memory to allow for better performance. When your applications actually need that memory, superfetch will release some of the memory from it's cache and allow the program to use that memory. Having 2-3 gigs of free memory is completely wasteful, when that memory can be used as a cache to improve your system's performance until it's actually needed by a program.

My Windows Vista install uses about 600mb of Memory on it's own, compared to roughly 400mb, which Windows XP uses. Considering the fact that I have 2 gigs of system memory, that 200mb of memory isn't something to really miss, especially since despite the slightly larger footprint, Vista still greatly outperforms Windows XP in real world use. The 200mb larger memory foot seems really insignificant, when another 1.2 gigs of memory is being used as a cache to significantly improve system performance.
 
AbJ32 said:
My Windows Vista install uses about 600mb of Memory on it's own...
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Wow. I'd like to know how you have Vista loaded in a 600MB footprint-- I've tried everything including installing the latest SP2 (build 6002), and after stripping it down I can only reach 780MB.

I just completed a quick and dirty round of testing; I will await both the final Vista SP2 and Win7 RC before passing judgement.

My test machine is a 3GHz Xeon workstation with 2GB of RAM, and I used the same WD Raptor boot disks with a fresh install of Win XP SP3, Vista SP2 Build 6002 and Windows 7 Beta.

My boot times were 44 seconds for XP SP3, 1:45 for Vista and 56 seconds for Win7 Beta; yes, the boot time for Win7 Beta is a nice improvement over Vista's watch-the-paint-dry boot marathon.

As for used physical memory right after boot/login memory (no running programs, no start-up programs, no sidebar applets, etc.), this is the consumed memory footprint (using the task manager) I see reported before I start any actual work:

XP SP3: 389MB
Vista SP2: 780MB
Win7 Beta: 500MB

Based on this simple yet very practical comparison, it looks like Win7 is heading in the right direction, unlike the original Vista install that consumed over 1GB after a clean install.
 
SonataSys said:
Wow. I'd like to know how you have Vista loaded in a 600MB footprint-- I've tried everything including installing the latest SP2 (build 6002), and after stripping it down I can only reach 780MB.

I just completed a quick and dirty round of testing; I will await both the final Vista SP2 and Win7 RC before passing judgement.

My test machine is a 3GHz Xeon workstation with 2GB of RAM, and I used the same WD Raptor boot disks with a fresh install of Win XP SP3, Vista SP2 Build 6002 and Windows 7 Beta.

My boot times were 44 seconds for XP SP3, 1:45 for Vista and 56 seconds for Win7 Beta; yes, the boot time for Win7 Beta is a nice improvement over Vista's watch-the-paint-dry boot marathon.

As for used physical memory right after boot/login memory (no running programs, no start-up programs, no sidebar applets, etc.), this is the consumed memory footprint (using the task manager) I see reported before I start any actual work:

XP SP3: 389MB
Vista SP2: 780MB
Win7 Beta: 500MB

Based on this simple yet very practical comparison, it looks like Win7 is heading in the right direction, unlike the original Vista install that consumed over 1GB after a clean install.
Click to expand...

Why does it matter? Really, I boot up and instantly see 2GB of memory usage, I have a few programs at start up, but the moment I am logged in and ready, I hit a few shortcut keys and programs just start popping up at me, no delay. Please get off of this nonsense about Vista.

The ideal OS is something that will never be created, why? What does the end user need? If we saw a specific OS built for each user, corporate, home, power-user, etc., then it might happen, but companies would lose to much money testing, researching, and creating these. Thus we are left we a single OS (of a few different tastes) which can be slightly manipulated to are liking.

The best or ideal OS will be the one we, the individual, spend the time tweaking just a little to make it our own. That is why third party software exists to make an OS run differently, look different, etc.
 
Indeed. Since every user is different--or, at least, there are many different kinds of users, but still spread across a wide range--it's pretty much agreed that anything ideal has to be modular and highly customizable. But not in the way Linux is, because it's too complicated. It's got to be that modular and easy enough for the average person to customize. Which creates a contradiction, and will probably never happen, but the obvious solution is not one OS, but many, with slightly more catered userlands. Perhaps if some individual or benevolent company threw a HUGE amount of money and churned out some Linux distros with better software and much, much better marketing (not that Linux even has marketing right now).

I had a conversation about this with my friend the other day. She was yelling at me because I asked her housemate if he knew how to use a torrent client to download something, and she was like, "Why would anyone know that? You just assume, because you know so much about computers." I told her that I thought torrents were commonly used by people to download things now... I'm not even aware of many other options, I thought P2P was dead. But after more conversation, her housemates didn't even know how to bookmark a webpage. She didn't know what version of Windows her computer at work ran, even though she sits there every day and stares at the loading screen for a minute. Granted, they're all Mac users, so take that as you will. But most people lack curiosity and know only exactly what they need to know, the same way I lack curiosity with cars. People just want a tool to work, and if computers are not exciting to them, no way in hell will they sit there for three days customizing Arch Linux. My grandma doesn't understand how to turn her computer off because the Shut Down button is in the part of the screen that says "Start", and to her, that doesn't make sense, so she can't even wrap her head around it.

So anything like Linux in its current state, as modular as it is, will never, ever catch on. If people have to make ANY effort to do what they need to do, 95% of users will get confused and annoyed and find something easier... or pay Apple or whoever else promises to make things easier for them.
 
The only time I've had a problem with Vista boot was I believe that my OS was corrupted from OCing. Otherwise it boots in about 45 seconds from system powered off.
 
SonataSys said:
Wow. I'd like to know how you have Vista loaded in a 600MB footprint-- I've tried everything including installing the latest SP2 (build 6002), and after stripping it down I can only reach 780MB.
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I haven't done anything to it. It uses 600mb of memory, and superfetch uses about 1200mb of memory.

Maybe you're just doing something wrong, because I haven't done anything aside from disabling tablet features.(My PC doesn't have a
touch screen, so I see no point in having them cluttering up my start menu.)

Edit:
Here's a screenshot. I have 2045mb of 'total' memory. Of that, 1426mb are being used by superfetch, as shown in the cache, and 61mb are free. If you subtract the cached and free memory from the total, what you're left with is how much memory Windows Vista uses by itself. 2045 - 1426 - 61 = 558mb, so it's using even less memory than when I looked earlier.

2z8xg9e.png
 
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We're still going on about RAM usage with Vista, even on tangents? Ugh... when will it end...
 
Vista is a lot like your car. The most fuel-efficient non-hybrid car on the road is an old (forgot model year) Honda Civic. Why? Because it has virtually no safety features compared to today's cars! It's lightweight, but feature-bereft. Same goes with XP vs. Vista. Sure, Vista's "heavier" (just like the modern Civic) but its "engine" has gotten a lot more powerful compared to the base hardware available when XP was released. Heavier cars = more powerful engines. More OS features = more hardware.
 
I'd say a Geo Metro with 55 MPG highway and roughly 40 in the city would be/was the most mainstream fuel efficient vehicles ever made. Damned things were great for pizza deliveries... ;)
 
The ideal OS will have deterministic processing time, and fit in 128KB of memory.

Was there supposed some sort of context for this question? Operating systems are a pretty big field.
 
AbJ32 said:
Probably because most home users don't have access to high end RISC hardware. All the recent desktop hardware is x86, which is CISC.
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This is an interesting topic; most recent x86 processors are actually RISC internally. They have a decoder which translates the absolutely ridiculous legacy variable length x86 CISC instructions into RISC microcode sequences which perform the same tasks.

Given the enormity of cache sizes on the die, the decoding logic from CISC x86 to whatever internal ISA is used, is relatively speaking quite small these days. Furthermore, I'd guess it only adds on a couple pipeline stages.

Not that I'm advocating CISC, but the bandaid solution developed is actually quite effective.
 
jimmyb said:
The ideal OS will have deterministic processing time, and fit in 128KB of memory.
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128KB ? Are we still talking about an complete OS ?

Was there supposed some sort of context for this question? Operating systems are a pretty big field.
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I was trying to find what else could be optimized on an "ideal" OS, leaving behind what is considered as burden from the past generations of OS'.

Another thing coming to my mind which I fancy since the days of the Atari 2600.
Would it be possible to have the OS of your choice, burned onto a cartridge kind of module which could be plugged into a motherboard, same like with RAM modules.
So any additional modification / update could be done via software, reducing the boot up time to maybe 5 seconds I guess.

Considering MS being the major OS supplier in the world, and how much time is being spent for booting PCs in key positions, why hasn't this been introduced yet ?
I'm sure there is a market demand if it was only offered.
People trying to optimize their system to the max in order to get the boot-up time as small as possible, but actually nothing is only remotely as quick as an OS on ROM.

What do you think ?
 
I'd also want to add (to my previous post that an ideal OS be extremely scalable from mobile devices to large server farms) that my ideal OS also should have very strong redirection capabilities. This is something that IMO no current OS does well.

Windows sort of fakes it at the application layer using various tricks and one-off application services, most of which are focused on streaming decoded audio and video or RDP. The various unix/linux implementations have a much older track record of this, but it's most limited to redirection of I/O streams within the OS and rarely offer much in the way of a friendly UI to manage such things.

The purpose of an OS is to provide infrastructure services to the application layer, period. I'd like to see some OS doing a better job of providing services to stream content or redirect content anywhere I want. Combine these two things (strong redirection services + a very scalable platform) and I can have my dream of a desktop PC that, with a right click on a file and a "play on downstairs projector" can stream that AV to my receiver downstairs which also is running an embedded version of that OS and can pick up that stream and sent it to my projector.

That's my dream OS. I don't believe it exists yet.
 
AbJ32 said:
...what you're left with is how much memory Windows Vista uses by itself. 2045 - 1426 - 61 = 558mb
Click to expand...

I think you need to add the (rather large) Vista kernel into your committed memory-- that kernel memory is reserved and your applications will never get to use it, and that brings your total OS footprint to approx. 850MB.

Here is the latest vista SP2 build (6002) I can get my hands on:

vistsp2_6002.jpg


Please notice the Vista Kernel Diet-- a 56% drop in the kernel footprint, and the Windows 7 Beta has even smaller requirements, within approx. 100MB of XP.

It appears Microsoft is finally getting the message, no?
 
SonataSys said:
I think you need to add the (rather large) Vista kernel into your committed memory-- that kernel memory is reserved and your applications will never get to use it, and that brings your total OS footprint to approx. 850MB.
Click to expand...

Then where is the kernel memory accounted for in the Physical Memory section? Unless the kernel memory is part of that 1426mb 'cache' figure, the Kernel Memory should be included in the 558mb of committed memory that isn't being used by superfetch.
 
ideal OS?

i dont know, but Windows, Mac OS, and the rest of the open sourcers are all getting damn excellent lately.....

honestly, at a certain point, it becomes hard to go wrong with anything...
 
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