We've abstracted over the CPU nicely. Without even thinking about it, my software will compile and run on any modern CPU just fine. Excellent! But it's dumb that we still have to learn about the specifics of the OS, just to write a simple application. I wish they'd just pick some kernel-level API, some common formats (filesystem, executables), some UI-level APIs, etc., and then everyone could just write to that.
(That's basically what the web is, except the API is in terms of HTML/CSS/JS, rather than CPU/RAM/disk/devices. You know you suck at standardization when you're getting lapped by the web standards committees. It's easier for me to cross-compile C to JS than to compile C on all the different platforms I use. What happened?)
It seems like every couple decades, a few companies get together to try to make a standard operating system (Multics, Taligent), and it always falls apart. We're just about due for another doomed effort!
This assumes that there is agreement on what the UI experience should be. Navigation patterns, menu bars, keyboard shortcuts, touch gestures.. But there is still active competition between OS vendors on UI. Just in the last decade, the most common form of interaction with a computer has changed from mouse and keyboard to touch and speech recognition.
> It's easier for me to cross-compile C to JS than to compile C on all the different platforms I use. What happened?
The web is a lowest common denominator. A web app is still missing a lot of affordances that users take for granted in a native app on their given OS. That is why still in 2019, there are new native iOS and Android apps being developed. Look, there are even entirely new programming languages being invented (Swift) or integrated (Kotlin) for the purpose of writing native apps for those platforms.
Specifically regarding compile C, I don't see what your problem is compiling C. You can even compile C11 on windows with Clang. Yes you may choose to include a OS-specific header and it won't compile, but also your JS doesn't necessarily run if you call some browser specific function.
We had that for a while.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Common_User_Access
And most DEs even implemented it to some extent. But they didn't converge as a result of that.
Yes, it is, but why? HTML/JS has a LCD interface. x86 has a LCD interface. Even filesystems sort of have an LCD (some superset of MS-DOS FAT). Shouldn't the OS have one, too?
If we standardized filesystems, executables, and syscalls, I don't see how our world would be any worse, and I can think of many in which it would be better.
I've used CMake for many years. But now that I've discovered Meson, I cry a little every time I have to edit a CMakeLists.txt file.
CMake is very easy to use, if you do things properly with targets. include_directories and link_libraries should never never ever be used, use target_include_directories and target_link_libraries instead. This way there is no need to mess about with shell script style variables for dependencies. But so many resources online explain to people how to do things the wrong way, and so their libs end up being a pain to build or depend on.
I did a large project conversion last year and was well into it before I started getting a feel for how everything fit together with Public/Private.
CMake only helps a little bit (it's still very old and has way too many warts). But Meson is very pleasant to work with.
Which is often unavoidable if you want to do filesystem stuff.
It always feels like computers are stuck in the same place because every time we improve CPU performance, we end up adding more layers of abstraction so the whole thing is moot.
It seems Google will take a shot at it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia
We've done this for layers below the OS (x86) and layers above it (HTML, JS). There's just this one layer in the middle which we missed.
No mate it isn't sad. There is always going to be a scrap between things, whether they be OSs or iguanas and snakes on the Galapagos islands.
I'm going in with a penguin myself and I will win.
The tricky part was the X11 server. X.org doesn't seem to work on the Linux subsystem, but there are a few X11 servers for Windows. If you install one of them, you can run Linux GUI programs.
But yes, there are better options. You can run Xming or other X server and configure it yourself. Or you can buy X410 in the app store, and then the only configuration needed is DISPLAY=:0 in your shell.
Testing across multiple .net frameworks without containers or virtual machines.
It's a lot faster to initiate an app inside wine on Linux then start up a VM and launch it on Windows. I think it's even faster than containers on Windows but don't have any data to back it up.
Lastly, for sandboxing applications (not a great security layer of course, but safer than running natively) so they don't pollute the registry or access sensitive files.
Wondering if it's possible to play dx12 games on older versions of Windows that don't officially support it.
Sadly, the Apple II emulator for Macs was real hardware.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Lindows.com....
I'd bet on them forking or outright buying Ubuntu.
Calm down there Satan.
> Microsoft's plan to invade cuba and overthrow the government has succeeded. One Microsoft official said "It's a win-win situation. The US Government is happy and shuts up the DOJ while Microsoft institutes a monopoly within Cuba for everything from computer software to toilet paper. One more step closer to world domination. Heck, we could feed a whole development department for the cost of one developer's salary in the US. They may not know how to create an Operating System very well, but neither do our US developers."
Oh my. I wasn't sure what I was looking at and then I read that to the right of the link.
quite obviously linux has something that they want.