kohlrak: Well, the thing is, convergence isn't the job of the OS. The old model for the OS still reigns true: things that are separate tasks should be separate projects. The OS is supposed to be the solid foundation upon which you build your house, not the house, the frame, the floors, etc. The OS should basically provide the HAL and that's it, and the drivers behind the HAL should e provided by the hardware manufacturers (as they are) via the standard that the OS sets up (even better would be to create a standard like what we used to have with VESA/VBE/VGA). The OS is the frame of the car, upon which the modules of tires, windshield, etc can all be dropped in and changed as needed. In an odd way, you actually would have the convergence you're asking for if the OS' actually stuck to their jobs. The problem is, everyone's expecting that to be way more than it should be which would stifle freedom, and therefore technological evolution. The OS should look to the user as C does to the programmer.
Do you vote the microkernel design then?
As far as I remember, they are great in theory (small, more secure, portable)
but my suspicious is why haven’t seen new ones
(My surprising outdated QNX was one of those few, not sure if still)
Might be the low performance compared to the monolithic ones?
Has been long time since I read on that, Win2k was still monolithic
(despite the MS allegations that since NT they used microkernel...)
a quick googling tells me Win8 and the next ones are -Hybrid-
I'd need to refresh & update the concepts to clearly understand what exactly means & entails that...
Microkernels are a bit too minimalistic. I think a driver interface should certainly still exist. I just believe OSes should be far, far more modular than they are.
kohlrak: It's not as hard as it first appears.
That's the thing: we lost the goal. OSes suffer from featuritis, they're bleeding security holes because they lost sight of what they're supposed to be and do.
Minimalism is the opposite of featuritis. Imagine for a moment that your health insurance suddenly includes vehicular rental in it's policy and charges more for it, and you don't have an option to opt out of the charges and the new providing of a vehicle.b Woohoo, new feature, right? Oh but that's not it's job? The OS' job has always been mimalistic. We found that when projects focus on only their primary purpose they become better at that, in terms of stability, speed, and security. This is actually one of the design rules for the UNIX OS which is the basis for all major OSes other than Windows. If all it was was simply adding feature, then i would agree, but those features cost things.
Orkhepaj: yup
i dont say feature spam is good , i say minimalism is bad and it is
when 99% of the users will just install the same features after an os install that clearly shows the os missing that feature and should be there by default install, and you get an adhoc system hopefully integrating well togeather the consistent design and ui is just extra
or in case of minimalist one trick apps , when you want to do something which is clearly in the area of what the app does but it cant you have to look for another app with that feature , install again learn again the user interface etc.
clearly not user friendly at all
I would agree if that were actually true. Most people don't even install their own OS, and a minimalist OS would not actually change any of that, really. People have different needs for their OSes, and 99% of the people are drug along without choice, hence people complaining about the Windows 8 UI so badly, which is something you (for the most part) have an option with with linux, since the desktop environment is not only optional, but modular. And thus when Linux was doing the mobile UI thing in the major distros (Ubuntu had Unity and everyone else went to a version of gnome with that) i switched to LXDE, which had the traditional design that returned in windows 10. A setup like that, desktop UIs alone, is something that would vary per person and per device. Some people actually want their computers to have that UI, and some people might want a traditional desktop UI on their phones. Some people might want to have the option to switch between the two as needed, and there are countless competing UIs for linux for different needs: LXDE, for example, is great for an older computer, while something flashier with compiz installed on top is great for people who like to uselessly have windows catch on fire and burn away when you click the X button.
dtgreene: No.
In terms of not crashing, Linux was far superior for many years, and only more recently has Windows been able to catch up. Even then, I still think Linux is more stable in general.
In terms of not changing too much, Linux (particularly distributions like Alma/Rocky Linux and even Debian GNU/Linux) tend not to change much; you get security updates, but won't get any feature updates that could break one's workflow or conflict with the hardware being used. If it works, it remains working. Furthermore, you have the option to not install updates. Contrast this to the forced updates in Windows 10, which can't be disabled and can sometimes break things or remove features that one might depend on.
in case of installing and updating linux is just not as stable
ive just tried to install linux on a laptop and it had install problems , strangely using the exact same settings 3rd time it was installed without errors
and then i wanted to add nvidia optimus and it just killed the system ...
how is that stable?
and then adding printing is so frustrating , oh it can see the printer can see its type ,but then it cant connect to it :O
The woes of driver support. IMO, if i had my way with OSes, this problem would be solved. The problem isn't with any of Linux's code, but with the fact that there is no uniform driver standard, which is also why windows is plagued with issues using old printers (I can't use my printer with windows 10, for example, because it's drivers were for windows 7).
steam is a still a mess with proton , updating games left and right all the time and wargroove still crashes if you dont use the no-intro launch option
Is that linux or steam?
and is there an easy way to check if your nvidia drivers are working well ?
a few, actually. Some like hte GLXGears test since it's simply running a program and seeing the FPS. There's a few other commands you can do, too, which tell you directly but i can't remember what they are. You cuold also run any program that does full screen color refreshes that has vsync, as well, as vsync is broken on most VESA drivers (which is the fallback windows, linux, and everyone uses when you don't have drivers). If there's tearing of frames, vsync isn't working.
