October 24th, 2011 | nubae
personal thoughts about the future of operating systems
One is constantly looking for the best working/creative/or playing environment when it comes to one's desktop. It sounds like there must be a fairly obvious answer to a seemingly ridiculous question, yet everywhere you look or listen, everyone's opinions, when they have one (that excludes the majority of people who use a computer for less time than 2 hours a day (my opinion obviously)) is a changing, mostly circular desktop environment. This sounds somewhat convoluted, so let me try and break this down a little.
Most of us, other than those lucky enough to have had parents who were either highly alternative, worked in the academic industry or perhaps even the government, grew up using one of about 5 systems:
# Commodore 64 ands its cousins like spectrum atari or msx
# Commodore Amiga or Atari ST (The step up from the previous line)
# Apple (mostly macintosh)
# Microsoft DOS and Windows
# IBM OS/2 (god knows whatever happened to that? Did MS buy them out?)
Of course, we have to remember that personal computing was considered something for those people unable to do real number crunching requirements, and usually didn't want or need to. That was left for the nerdy geeky scientists and to a pretty large part the telecommunications companies, who I guarantee saw the mobile revolution far ahead of its time, and to some extent are still seeing things ahead of their time, releasing technology today that they probably developed 5-10 years ago. And why not... in an age where human beings have been programmed to work in order to buy an object and ultimately equate that to happiness, gradually releasing new products makes sense. More sense than releasing the technology and what they call their intellectual property just after being invented and created, which is surely what the scientist or creative person in charge would want, but can't due to stupid outdated and frankly cannibalistic intellectual property laws which would get them fired for even talking to their cat about it.
Think I'm talking hogwash, well, lets look at a scenario that is actually forcing certain companies to release products ahead of the times they usually would. As we are talking about computing we can pick either any BSD derivative or Linux kernel with a decent visual platform (be it Gnome, E17, KDE, XFCE or even LXDE) Now... we have 2 different completely free, in every sense of the word, operating systems running a stunning variety of highly evolved desktops, all also free in every sense of the word.
What's happening? Well, the so called fortune 10, high flyers, the guys with talking houses who still dominate by massive numbers due to the slow adoption of new computer systems, the fact that not everyone spends the majority of their day in front of a computer, and finally the massive and aggressive marketing campaigns these 2 companies throw at us like candy and coca cola.
But even with all that strength, the money, and probably seriously committed people, its clear to those of us living in the digital age and who understand the concept of open source, GPL, and free software, there isn't even a battle here to be won. Those 1000s of people working daily on the Linux kernel, or hundreds working on each of those open source projects mentioned above don't do it for financial gain, or for any kind of monetary aspiration. They simply do it because at that precise moment in time, they notice something needs to be created, fixed, tweaked, documented, or the hundreds of other micromanaging events that happen in open source projects. No one has told them they have to do it, nor how they have to do it, they simply get to a point where they can't resist scratching a so called digital itch, and go ahead and go forth, perhaps checked by a peer here and another interested peer there, but due to such an efficient self checking system it always just works out, eventually.
And from the outside this whole open source thing, Linux thing, or whatever other name is given to the information revolution, seems like a chaotic mess, uncoordinated, unmanaged, spread far and wide without any one person really knowing what the whole picture is.
But the truth and beauty of it is, because of this unstructured completely anarchistic (because its not even democratic, I can think of at least 5 benevolent dictators for life) system there will never be anything but the voice of the people that pushes the direction the information revolution takes. And if that doesn't fill you with joy then I suppose few things will.
Anyway, having digressed quite a bit, but I think in a necessary direction. these days more than ever we take the time to sit and think... hmmmm... what operating system should I install for the next X number of months or even weeks, and you might start thinking as many people of my generation think, what would best for our parents and grandparents or our kids. And the truth is, the choices are just amazing... Should I get an One laptop Per child XO for my nephew, while feeling good about myself for giving another individual on this planet the chance to learn. Should I buy a dual tablet/laptop made by Asus running ubuntu Linux for my Mom, and should I install pcBSD on the ageing computer (mainly used for the Internet) in my Dad's study room. Unfortunately the only person I haven't been able to convince is my 91 year old grandfather, but understandably, perhaps this is just too way out there for him, though I would give anything for him to feel the joy of using this tool most of us take o so for granted.
And my brother is in the Mac OSX phase, one I went through, I cannot lie, but freedom is far more important than an admittedly luxurious looking desktop, since the company in question bought itself a significant number of years by moving to a UNIX based system, possibly being the next dominant player, but I think the speed with which open source is breaking down digital walls will surely hit them to, perhaps not so hard since they've sneakily (in my mind) marketed themselves as pro-open source, which they are absolutely not... In that respect, and just looking at the amount of limitations they've stuck in the iphone and ipad on purpose makes me not only distrust them but consider them evil. At least the other big giant shows its true colours and doesn't hide behind plain sneakers, a black polo and 501 Levis (hello everybody, I'm the honest common man) Still, I run pinguyos in a virtualised second window and really don't notice much of a difference between that and OSX, other than the cost.
But getting back to the reason for this article in the first place, it was Linux, BSD, GNOME, and KDE which pushed the information revolution far faster than it would have gone did they not exist. It was due to the OLPC XO that the information revolution was pushed again faster making smaller and cheaper and even sturdier laptops. And it was due to yet another open source player, perhaps the biggest of them all, at least for now that mobile telephony is being taken in directions we can only dream about. I'm obviously talking of Android and the now millions of android apps and Android programmers. (I'm one of them BTW, hint hint)
So whats the prediction for the future? well its hard to say, because trends change, wallets get thinner or thicker, people are certainly manipulated in ways we still don't quite understand, watching TV, films, or playing Video Games. But that won't stop any time soon since those are the biggest money makers on the planet and unfortunately our own pride, greed and envy is our worst enemy, embedded in the very objects we desire and acquire ever more abundantly.
Can the information revolution still save us from this? Will open source, and its yet to be contested armour, GPL open the hearts and minds of people everywhere and unite us, rather than divide us....
aye... there lies the rub. So next time you are looking for your brand spanking new OS and desktop... give a couple of names you haven't heard of a try. Distrowatch.com is always a great starting point. My own recommendations in order of preference are currently ( and this always changes, I guess for everyone ):
# PinguyOS
# Strawberry Linux
# Mint
# Ubuntu / Fedora or even Fuduntu (not kidding, it exists and strives to be a combination of the best of both worlds.)
# PCBSD
# Sugar ---- extremely fun desktop environment that kids will love, and parents will enjoy. Built at Massachusetts Institute of Technology after decades of research into how humans and especially children use the computer. Its truly an OS that is years ahead of its competition, focusing on things like collaborative learning, journal based memory and intuitive management of the desktop. In fact, every program on the system can be changed right there on the fly, encouraging kids to tinker and look under the hood, rather than stay away and look from a distance with expected admiration at the expensive laptop Daddy bought at PC World with extra worthless guarantees, antimalware, antivirus, antiphishig, antihacking, antichildren, etc etc etc.
If you're serious and want industry standard telephone support, you have 3 options, Debian, Redhat Enterprise, and Novell SuSe Enterprise. Debian doesn't really have official telephone based support, though many companies support them anyway because of the large user base in the server Arena [basically, its super super stable], whereas Redhat and SuSe have proper industry standard contracts with up to 24/7 support, but it ain't cheap. Ubuntu is desperaately trying to get a foothold in that market, but either they've had bad marketing executives or haven't really tried hard enough. because their product exceeds both SuSe and Redhat in many ways. The likely explanation is that Ubuntu is still a young player, compared to Redhat and Suse, who have been around for at least 10 years longer. But one can argue that Ubuntu is simply Debian with some extras. Anyhow, its a political war which makes little sense, since they are all on the same open source GPL protected side. But everyone needs to eat I guess so perhaps we can write it off as a little bit of healthy, though somewhat silly competition.
