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:2008-03-10
It's completely unrealistic to think that they will continue to maintain every driver in existence for Linux, and that the ones they do will always work perfectly for every release. It could still be argued that having people continually update drivers instead of just being able to use the same ones is a waste of resources.
Member since:2007-09-06
We should be so lucky as to have interface specs overwhelmingly provided by hardware manufacturers.
Aren't driver issues now managed like a bug found anywhere else in the kernel source tree? The glut of hardware supported natively in the kernel is staggering even if it's not 90% of desktop latest hardware.
I still like the example of Creative who started an open source X-FI driver then chose to hand it off to Alsa with full documentation. When they lost interest in the project, they performed a project lead's final duty; find a new project lead to carry on.
Member since:
2007-09-06
In terms of Linux based platforms, the OS developers are doing all they can to make it easier for hardware manufacturers. Kernel and Xorg folk will write the drivers taking development costs away from the vendor. The linux driver project provides a point of contact for hardware manufacturers rather than them having to figure out if they talk to Linux, Xorg, Alsa or some other project that provides direct hardware support.
Free platform support in exchange for the minimal interface specs to write drivers against; how much easier for the hardware vendor can it get? This is like your neibour saying; "point out where the endge of your driveway is and I'll shovel the snow out of it each morning while I'm doing mine" - 'I'm sorry, that's too complicated, I'll keep shoveling my own driveway."