Linked by Kroc Camen on Thu 5th Nov 2009 21:05 UTC
There's no right way to do it, only ideas that are better than others in certain situations. But if you had the opportunity to head up the design of a new OS, one to Put Things Right, one that could be radical enough to varnish out those UI/X bumps that have clung on for years, but practical enough to be used every day, what would you design? How would you handle application management? What about file types and compatibility? Where would you cherry pick the best bits from other OSes and where would you throw away tradition? I've tackled this challenge for myself and present (an unfinished idea): KrocOS (warning: HTML5 site, will display without CSS in IE/older browsers). OSnews Asks: What would make your perfect OS?
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Member since:
2005-11-02
It's a simple process. Once commercial companies have a stable target, they target it. They stop releasing hardware specs. People use their drivers because such drivers exist, greatly driving down demand for a Free replacement or for enhancements to a Free version.
Repeat.
After a while you will clearly have *most* drivers for *most* hardware be proprietary. Linux, at this point, becomes fairly useless without such third party drivers... drivers distribution vendors probably cannot ship themselves (or, if they can, joe random hack-my-own-distro developer can't). Think the old nvidia redistribution problem for every single piece of hardware.
You cannot assume that companies will all do what nvidia (eventually) did and permit redistribution by anyone.
This is not certain, but it's certainly likely. Arguments like "It hasn't happened to $FOO, which has a stable driver interface" do not necessarily apply. Most Free operating systems do not have nearly the level of corporate interest that Linux has.
What Linux really needs is an improvement to workflow involved in getting and loading out of kernel drivers. That would solve most of the problems people actually want solved without any of the drawbacks.