Re:Ideas Ubuntu should steal from Windows 7
by bitwize on Wednesday July 22, 2009 @03:45PM
(#718400)
In my opinion, there's one critical thing which is keeping Linux out of the non-nerd workstation market, and that's X11.
In my opinion, that one thing is Unix.
The Unix model is full of philosophical details which are appealing to programmers, but which have been thoroughly discredited in the end user space: the minimization and generalization of APIs, the minimization and generalization of the notion of what a "file" is, the process or task based model of interaction, etc.
An end user OS needs to be document-centric instead of task-centric. It needs to have a spatial file manager, and support for that needs to be built into the filesystem. It needs a UI spec that is set in stone and backed up with usability research. The I/O patterns for a file on disk, the display, mouse, and sound card are all different; to get the most out of each the OS needs to provide for each specifically.
These things are precisely what made the original Macintosh such a revolution: the designers at Apple were willing to completely rethink what an OS is and should do. These days not even Apple is so bold, as its OS is basically a reskinned Unix. (Of course, consumer electronics and not computers are their new primary market and where they focus the most innovation.)
In my opinion, that one thing is Unix.
The Unix model is full of philosophical details which are appealing to programmers, but which have been thoroughly discredited in the end user space: the minimization and generalization of APIs, the minimization and generalization of the notion of what a "file" is, the process or task based model of interaction, etc.
An end user OS needs to be document-centric instead of task-centric. It needs to have a spatial file manager, and support for that needs to be built into the filesystem. It needs a UI spec that is set in stone and backed up with usability research. The I/O patterns for a file on disk, the display, mouse, and sound card are all different; to get the most out of each the OS needs to provide for each specifically.
These things are precisely what made the original Macintosh such a revolution: the designers at Apple were willing to completely rethink what an OS is and should do. These days not even Apple is so bold, as its OS is basically a reskinned Unix. (Of course, consumer electronics and not computers are their new primary market and where they focus the most innovation.)