IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
Agreed, but it's still a distro thing. If it were common for every major DE regardless of distro that'd be another thing.
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The lack of independent commercial operating systems is a sad situation
- Thread starter partikl
- Start date
Agreed, but it's still a distro thing. If it were common for every major DE regardless of distro that'd be another thing.
There are certain technical points missing from the discussion. Hinted, perhaps, but not brought forward outright.
A great deal of the discussion here has not actually been about the operating systems discussed. Most focused on various GUI features, or management and administration features.
This subject is ripe for self assumed definitions, where everyone thinks they have a grip on what the meaning and definition of what is meant by the term "operating system", but frankly that seems to be missing. It is also quite understandable, because in the consumer realm what really matters is what people think, whether or not they use accurate terms.
To be clear, there are only three main operating systems in use today, and two of them are "genetically" related (a metaphor, certainly).
Android is based on Linux (it is considered a Linux distribution by the Linux foundation, but not by Google for some reason). It is, however, a Linux release. What makes it "Android" isn't the operating system, but the GUI and the stripped down packaging.
iOS is based on UNIX, more specifically FreeBSD. There was once considerable debate on what was "real" UNIX, but since the Open Foundation gained ownership of the rights, that debate is now over. MAC OS X is UNIX. It is so because Apple paid the fees, passed the registration tests, and were so declared by the owners of the UNIX name. UNIX is, at present, a specification for an operating system. No longer is a code lineage required to qualify, though arguably FreeBSD has that pedigree.
The point about these two (well, three where iOS differs from OS X) is that the underlying operating system is entirely separate from the GUI and packaging. The GUI, which provides the "personality" most in this thread have discussed, and provides the API for which applications are built, is basically an application run in the operating. They are not the operating system itself.
To that extent it would be possible for Microsoft to write a GUI of the Windows API, and release it for Linux. The world would be better off for it if they did. Even for Windows there is a separation between the GUI and the operating system, though it isn't as clean a demarcation as that of Linux or UNIX.
The operating system is responsible, first and foremost, to control processes, memory and I/O, where for I/O there is a natural requirement to manage disk storage organization (the file system). By necessity, the operating system provides control for the graphics system, but that is a separate concept than that of processes, memory or I/O. The graphics device(s) are one of the I/O devices, which is the beginning of the operating system's management of the graphics resources. In the early, primitive operating systems like DOS and CP/M, there was no operating system control of the graphics device. That was left to the application domain. Early releases of various PC games, in the early 80's, including the first DOOM, viewed the graphics device as a set of ports and some memory. What the application did to draw graphics was akin to what device drivers do today.
What this means is that in order to compare operating systems, one must compare the primary responsibilities of the operating system. That does not include the GUI, or the interface to configuration of fonts, the features of a file manager, or the style of the icons and buttons, or what keystroke combination switches between windows, or lets one find an installed program.
The primary comparisons are on the level of efficiency and security of process control, of memory management, of the disk system. In this, Linux is king, while UNIX (FreeBSD on MAC) is a close tie. Windows is far, far behind.
There is a reason the top supercomputers of the world all run Linux. It is the same Linux kernel and code in your Android phone, or on the servers of a hosting service (just built with options and packaged with appropriate software to serve the unique nature of modern supercomputers). When a company pays upwards of millions on hardware, they tend to choose what makes that work most efficiently and reliably. Though Windows comes in an HPC flavor for supercomputers, very few use it. On the technical level of process control, efficiency and storage management, Windows just isn't in the same class.
You may not see it much in desktop usage, but the disk system (be that SSD or old fashioned hard drives) is Windows Achilles heal. Windows can crash over some drive issues, and can hang in a wide variety of others. Linux simply doesn't do that under normal circumstances.
Windows is good enough that it works. The market position made it central to the plans of various developers, but that has lost importance in recent years (starting perhaps 15 years ago).
One post made the point that development for Windows is seen as a profitable direction, whereas development for Linux or other operating systems may not. That was true in the 90's and the early 21st century, but is no longer the case.
It so happens that the best development tool in the industry is Visual Studio (Microsoft's IDE). Some argue for IntelliJ, or it's ancestor Eclipse, but frankly I can't see why. I think it is mere opposition to Microsoft. You can get into some religious level arguments among developers on this subject, but frankly there's nothing as efficient as forming a project in Visual Studio, writing code, debugging and completing the project. It's fast, efficient and rock solid reliable. The point here is that Microsoft has always made it a high quality, efficient experience to build software for Windows when compared to other platforms. This was not ALWAYS the case (early Visual Studio products, back in the 90's, were not so great).
That said, developers in the modern era see the exact opposite of that point made in these threads which supposes development focuses on the operating system, Windows specifically. There is no longer much of a reason to develop specifically for Windows with the exception of OS specific products like Anti-Virus applications, device drivers or something on that level. All application development, from accounting to CAD, from games to Photoshop, are best built with cross platform tools, in cross platform languages.
Even Microsoft has noticed it. Visual Studio can now be used to build Android and Linux applications, and the IDE can use other compilers, like LLVM, that are definitely NOT Microsoft or Windows oriented.
Frameworks are used to build an application level GUI which can run on Linux, MAC and Windows, from one body of code. Even where one may write high performance 3D applications (anything from game engines to CAD, medical imaging to engineering products) no longer even CONSIDER writing to one platform.
Hard lessons have been learned over decades on this point. There are still lessons to be learned.
Adobe products, for example, are written (and have been for quite a while) to target both Windows and MAC. Nothing, absolutely nothing stops them from choosing a few options and building a Linux target. They just choose not to at this time.
Consumers should not even have to care about the operating system. This thread tends to support the assumption that they actually don't. Many, if not most, MAC OS X users have no idea they're using UNIX. They should have to know. I doubt anyone with an Android phone realizes that's Linux. It's a good sign they've not realized it.
Now, reading various blogs, forums and threads like this one makes it clear people have deeply seated opinions about what they perceive to be the operating system, which are, in reality, the features of those products they're operating and interacting with, like the GUI of iOS or MAC, or the GUI of Windows, or Android. My own wife will throw a computer out the second story window if it isn't running Windows 7. That is not as much of an exaggeration as it may seem. She destroyed a keyboard throwing a fit over Windows 10 because it crawled into her computer without her realizing it. I thought someone had broken into the house and was trying to attack her. Seriously, I was so relieved to discover it was just an assault on Windows 7, and the criminal instigator was just Microsoft.
So I get it when people view KDE, GNome or some variation of a GUI in Linux as inferior. It may well be.
If Microsoft ever did (they won't, I'm sure) release the Windows GUI as a daemon for Linux, you would never know that the underlying operating system had changed. MAC OS X users are proof this would be the case. Even applications would hardly "notice" - the API they use is largely that provided by the Windows GUI layers, and there are counterparts between those that aren't and Linux which can be mapped in a straightforward effort. Anti-Virus applications would be one category of an exception to that.
At this point Linux is the most ubiquitous operating system on the planet, because it's in every Android phone and most web hosting providers.
Personally, I look forward to a day, likely some few decades from now (when I'll be 90 something), that Microsoft's Windows is irrelevant, and a future version of Linux is the basis of what becomes of the computer, if they still exist as we know them today.
A great deal of the discussion here has not actually been about the operating systems discussed. Most focused on various GUI features, or management and administration features.
This subject is ripe for self assumed definitions, where everyone thinks they have a grip on what the meaning and definition of what is meant by the term "operating system", but frankly that seems to be missing. It is also quite understandable, because in the consumer realm what really matters is what people think, whether or not they use accurate terms.
To be clear, there are only three main operating systems in use today, and two of them are "genetically" related (a metaphor, certainly).
Android is based on Linux (it is considered a Linux distribution by the Linux foundation, but not by Google for some reason). It is, however, a Linux release. What makes it "Android" isn't the operating system, but the GUI and the stripped down packaging.
iOS is based on UNIX, more specifically FreeBSD. There was once considerable debate on what was "real" UNIX, but since the Open Foundation gained ownership of the rights, that debate is now over. MAC OS X is UNIX. It is so because Apple paid the fees, passed the registration tests, and were so declared by the owners of the UNIX name. UNIX is, at present, a specification for an operating system. No longer is a code lineage required to qualify, though arguably FreeBSD has that pedigree.
The point about these two (well, three where iOS differs from OS X) is that the underlying operating system is entirely separate from the GUI and packaging. The GUI, which provides the "personality" most in this thread have discussed, and provides the API for which applications are built, is basically an application run in the operating. They are not the operating system itself.
To that extent it would be possible for Microsoft to write a GUI of the Windows API, and release it for Linux. The world would be better off for it if they did. Even for Windows there is a separation between the GUI and the operating system, though it isn't as clean a demarcation as that of Linux or UNIX.
The operating system is responsible, first and foremost, to control processes, memory and I/O, where for I/O there is a natural requirement to manage disk storage organization (the file system). By necessity, the operating system provides control for the graphics system, but that is a separate concept than that of processes, memory or I/O. The graphics device(s) are one of the I/O devices, which is the beginning of the operating system's management of the graphics resources. In the early, primitive operating systems like DOS and CP/M, there was no operating system control of the graphics device. That was left to the application domain. Early releases of various PC games, in the early 80's, including the first DOOM, viewed the graphics device as a set of ports and some memory. What the application did to draw graphics was akin to what device drivers do today.
What this means is that in order to compare operating systems, one must compare the primary responsibilities of the operating system. That does not include the GUI, or the interface to configuration of fonts, the features of a file manager, or the style of the icons and buttons, or what keystroke combination switches between windows, or lets one find an installed program.
The primary comparisons are on the level of efficiency and security of process control, of memory management, of the disk system. In this, Linux is king, while UNIX (FreeBSD on MAC) is a close tie. Windows is far, far behind.
There is a reason the top supercomputers of the world all run Linux. It is the same Linux kernel and code in your Android phone, or on the servers of a hosting service (just built with options and packaged with appropriate software to serve the unique nature of modern supercomputers). When a company pays upwards of millions on hardware, they tend to choose what makes that work most efficiently and reliably. Though Windows comes in an HPC flavor for supercomputers, very few use it. On the technical level of process control, efficiency and storage management, Windows just isn't in the same class.
You may not see it much in desktop usage, but the disk system (be that SSD or old fashioned hard drives) is Windows Achilles heal. Windows can crash over some drive issues, and can hang in a wide variety of others. Linux simply doesn't do that under normal circumstances.
Windows is good enough that it works. The market position made it central to the plans of various developers, but that has lost importance in recent years (starting perhaps 15 years ago).
One post made the point that development for Windows is seen as a profitable direction, whereas development for Linux or other operating systems may not. That was true in the 90's and the early 21st century, but is no longer the case.
It so happens that the best development tool in the industry is Visual Studio (Microsoft's IDE). Some argue for IntelliJ, or it's ancestor Eclipse, but frankly I can't see why. I think it is mere opposition to Microsoft. You can get into some religious level arguments among developers on this subject, but frankly there's nothing as efficient as forming a project in Visual Studio, writing code, debugging and completing the project. It's fast, efficient and rock solid reliable. The point here is that Microsoft has always made it a high quality, efficient experience to build software for Windows when compared to other platforms. This was not ALWAYS the case (early Visual Studio products, back in the 90's, were not so great).
That said, developers in the modern era see the exact opposite of that point made in these threads which supposes development focuses on the operating system, Windows specifically. There is no longer much of a reason to develop specifically for Windows with the exception of OS specific products like Anti-Virus applications, device drivers or something on that level. All application development, from accounting to CAD, from games to Photoshop, are best built with cross platform tools, in cross platform languages.
Even Microsoft has noticed it. Visual Studio can now be used to build Android and Linux applications, and the IDE can use other compilers, like LLVM, that are definitely NOT Microsoft or Windows oriented.
Frameworks are used to build an application level GUI which can run on Linux, MAC and Windows, from one body of code. Even where one may write high performance 3D applications (anything from game engines to CAD, medical imaging to engineering products) no longer even CONSIDER writing to one platform.
Hard lessons have been learned over decades on this point. There are still lessons to be learned.
Adobe products, for example, are written (and have been for quite a while) to target both Windows and MAC. Nothing, absolutely nothing stops them from choosing a few options and building a Linux target. They just choose not to at this time.
Consumers should not even have to care about the operating system. This thread tends to support the assumption that they actually don't. Many, if not most, MAC OS X users have no idea they're using UNIX. They should have to know. I doubt anyone with an Android phone realizes that's Linux. It's a good sign they've not realized it.
Now, reading various blogs, forums and threads like this one makes it clear people have deeply seated opinions about what they perceive to be the operating system, which are, in reality, the features of those products they're operating and interacting with, like the GUI of iOS or MAC, or the GUI of Windows, or Android. My own wife will throw a computer out the second story window if it isn't running Windows 7. That is not as much of an exaggeration as it may seem. She destroyed a keyboard throwing a fit over Windows 10 because it crawled into her computer without her realizing it. I thought someone had broken into the house and was trying to attack her. Seriously, I was so relieved to discover it was just an assault on Windows 7, and the criminal instigator was just Microsoft.
So I get it when people view KDE, GNome or some variation of a GUI in Linux as inferior. It may well be.
If Microsoft ever did (they won't, I'm sure) release the Windows GUI as a daemon for Linux, you would never know that the underlying operating system had changed. MAC OS X users are proof this would be the case. Even applications would hardly "notice" - the API they use is largely that provided by the Windows GUI layers, and there are counterparts between those that aren't and Linux which can be mapped in a straightforward effort. Anti-Virus applications would be one category of an exception to that.
At this point Linux is the most ubiquitous operating system on the planet, because it's in every Android phone and most web hosting providers.
Personally, I look forward to a day, likely some few decades from now (when I'll be 90 something), that Microsoft's Windows is irrelevant, and a future version of Linux is the basis of what becomes of the computer, if they still exist as we know them today.
It is though... its a feature of Gnome desktop. Which is hands down the #1 Linux DE. Gnomes search function is hocked into the package manager API. So its the standard in ANY distro running Gnome. Gnome is the default in Ubuntu / Fedora / openSuse / SLES / RHEL..... those 4 alone account for likely 95%+ of all Linux installs by volume.
Perhaps it isn't the default in some of the lesser used DEs like Cinn and XFCE... still Mint has a package manager that makes installing stuff not much more difficult.
Anyway with Gnome (and KDE) its not really a distro thing... the packagekit deamon ships with most distros these days, and they all follow the rules as laid out by freedesktop.org for almost 20 years now. Gnome and KDE and XFCE all follow those standards. Gnome and KDE have the package manager searches hocked into their activities/star bar search by default, XFCE I believe isn't be default but can be exposed with a simple extension. (which I do believe a lot of XFCE based distros do use).
Anyway its not a feature that is exclusive to windows 10... and Linux does it better.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
Android, GNU/Linux, ChromeOS are operating systems- Linux is a kernel. If we're being specific it's a point worth being picky about.
More generally, Android is a Linux distribution, but not a desktop Linux distribution and not a GNU/Linux distribution. Same for ChromeOS.
Mac is an exception as their transition to BSD was one in a very limited ecosystem. They did this while still on the Power architecture which had absolutely failed to keep up with AMD and Intel on the desktop in terms of performance for user applications. In short, it went as perceptibly smoothly as it did because there were so few people to actually complain and their emulation of legacy operating systems, something Microsoft would have to accomplish in order to move to the Linux kernel, was for a comparably far smaller target. It was only after Apple moved to x86 that their PC ecosystem took off again and at that point they had everything ported over to BSD that needed to be from a performance perspective. They then had to emulate Power on x86 of course, but this was comparably the easier task.
This is really only going to happen as the computing paradigm as we know it evolves, if it's going to happen. We can only hope to imagine how that might come to pass.
IdiotInCharge
NVIDIA SHILL
- Joined
- Jun 13, 2003
- Messages
- 14,675
Please note that I'm being specific about Spotify because it absolutely isn't included the the Red Hat repos for Fedora. You cannot install Fedora, defaulting to Gnome, hit the windows key, type Spotify, and be at an installation prompt.
Gnome does have the feature to search, but this is still limited by each distribution and that is part of the overall Linux Desktop challenge.
Yes, inquisitive people will quickly figure this stuff out, but no, that is not at all appropriate for consumer desktop use. That distro paradigm is necessarily evolving with containerized applications in the form of snaps and flatpaks and the like but it's also just not there yet.