Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 15th Jul 2009 21:38 UTC
It's time for another "OSNews asks" item. This time, I want to focus on something that I've been wanting to talk about with you all before, but never found the time for. The question is simple: which feature(s) from other operating systems would you like to see in your own main operating system?
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Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:38 UTC
"The Verge has learned that HTC's Chief Product Officer, Kouji Kodera, left the company last week. Kodera was responsible for HTC's overall product strategy, which makes the departure especially notable on the heels of the global launch of the make-or-break One. It's not just Kodera. In the past three-odd months, HTC has lost a number of employees in rapid succession." I really hope HTC pulls it together.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/22/13 13:30 UTC, submitted by JRepin
"It is with huge pleasure that the Debian GNU/Hurd team announces the release of Debian GNU/Hurd 2013. This is a snapshot of Debian 'sid' at the time of the Debian 'wheezy' release (May 2013), so it is mostly based on the same sources. It is not an official Debian release, but it is an official Debian GNU/Hurd port release." Important note: 75% of Debian packages are supported bu Debian GNU/Hurd. Impressive.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 22:06 UTC
"The first killer app was VisiCalc. This early spreadsheet turned the Apple II from a hobbyist toy to a business computer. VisiCalc came with room for improvement, though. In addition, a new architecture and operating system, the Intel-based IBM PC and MS-DOS, also needed a spreadsheet to be taken seriously. That spreadsheet, released in early 1983, would be Lotus 1-2-3, and it would change the world. It became the PC's killer app, and the world would never be the same. On May 14, IBM quietly announced the end of the road for 1-2-3, along with Lotus Organizer and the Lotus SmartSuite office suite. Lotus 1-2-3's day is done." Impressive 30 year run.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 21:45 UTC
"There's a disconnect between how Apple CEO Tim Cook sees his company's tax strategies and how some members of the US Senate view it. That became clearer than ever today after Cook and two other Apple executives testified before Congress, explaining why they're holding most of their international income in Irish subsidiaries like Apple Operations International, which declare no tax residency anywhere in the world. AOI hasn't filed a tax return anywhere in the world for the last five years, yet it earned $30 billion in income from 2009 to 2012, according to a Senate report released yesterday." Just because something is legal, doesn't mean it's just. Apple, Google, Microsoft, and many more - these companies might not be breaking any laws, but it's obvious to anyone that what they are doing is scummy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/21/13 15:53 UTC
The new WebKit Opera for Android has been released. "Opera 14 for Android is built on top of Chromium 26, with a total overhaul of the UI in native code, making it fit well with the latest Android design guidelines. Go get the build from Google Play or point your browser to m.opera.com, and give it a spin!"
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 22:43 UTC
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/20/13 21:50 UTC
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:15 UTC
"This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/19/13 23:11 UTC, submitted by Drumhellar
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.More News »
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2006-07-26
I'm more of an OS migrant than one that has a "main" OS. I used to be 90% BeOS, now I'm split between Windows 7 and Gentoo (with XFCE). Once I figure out how to get Haiku running on my new laptop I'll probably be using the three about the same. That said, here are my gripes.
Windows 7
* Most applications seem to assume the user is an idiot
* Too much bloat
* Too many things happening in the background
* Gives up on errors far too easily or not at all
* Strange errors of indeterminable origin (I assume due to the complexity)
* Doesn't play well with its peers
Gentoo with XFCE
* Stuff rarely works 100% correctly without tweaking/troubleshooting
* Too little consistency across different applications
* Bloat
* Unexpectedly large space requirements for stuff (e.g. needing 2 GB to compile a 3 MB firmware image)
* Most applications don't mind the small details
* Package management (in general) - the feature I want is always a point release away, or not compiled in (hence Gentoo... although firefox 3.5 is still hard masked so it's not immune). Then there's usually a "now what?" after installing something as I try to figure out how to run it.
* Too much reliance on the command line... Yes, it's powerful and great and all, but IMHO that's no excuse for not spending much effort on the GUI.
* Having to type filenames when autocomplete can't help. Example: \\\\SambaServer\\Share\\\[Group\]\ File\ Title \(codec\)\ \[A0B1C2D3\].mkv (This is even more "fun" when you need to escape stuff multiple times since the filenames are passed along.)
* Making a typo in a config file and spending hours debugging (most recent: using parenthesis instead of brackets).
* Compile time options and libraries rather than system-wide codecs need to die.
* The kernel isn't really software nor hardware agnostic.
BeOS
* It's rather dated nowadays
* Hardware support (especially no touchpad scrolling!)
* Software support
* A command line that's just different enough from Linux to throw me off at times
All OSes
* Inability to cope with strange events (BeOS is the best in this regard, but still not quite there). If I bothered defining "strange" then I'd be getting into specifics rather than speaking of a general, reoccuring issue.
* The ability to kill a process instantly and under any circumstances. Linux might be OK for this, I haven't had too much trouble with it so far.
* The ability to not run stuff I don't need nor want.
* Modal dialogs and things that prevent me from doing other stuff at the same time
* Focus stealing, especially when I'm typing.
* Small lags in the second[s] range (opening a window, an application, or doing stuff when some resource is saturated).
* Desktop icons that don't have graphical glitches. It's quite minor and purely cosmetic, but I've seriously seen this problem in every OS.
* Feature creep or needless division of tools. Neither end of the spectrum is desirable.
* Not quite user-centric enough in that developers have a bit too much power. (E.g. installing where they want to, accessing the internet, behaving differently than other applications, etc.)
* Overloading the home directory with hidden folders/files.
Edited 2009-07-16 06:01 UTC