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:2006-01-02
*yawn* Linux is FOSS. Non-free binary drivers have proven to be problems for the maintainers of FOSS kernel bits in the past. Linux devs and maintainers do not want binary (black-box) drivers. A stable ABI only benefits makers of binary (binary) drivers.
Currently, plain old buggy drivers are a problem (Do Atheros G cards work with this kernel version? Try it and see!), but the kernel's internal functions changing faster than the maintainers can keep up has helped cause issues, before. A stable API (for certain definitions of A) would reduce the work needed by maintainers of various drivers, at what should be a very minor cost (provided the API is planned out, not just frozen as it is now) to the people working on related parts of the kernel, and likewise, a very minor cost in terms of memory complexity of the kernel.
Member since:2005-11-02
Maybe you should go to an ashram and invest some time to think about a world that does not match (and never will) your idealistic view ..
There is no technical benefit to a stable ABI. If you show one then there is some merit to this conversation. Until you do show one it is simply about helping proprietary software... which isn't a goal worth pursuing.
Member since:2006-01-06
Of course there's a technical benefit: Binary compatibility. Done. Whether you think this benefits proprietary or open source software is a secondary issue.
Member since:
2005-07-12
Sure they can. Common desktop users ignore Linux and their religious behaviour all the time (and vice versa, since fundamentalistic Linux developers ignore common desktop users needs all the time, too) ..
How do you know? Somehow, the proof that Betrand Russel and the pope are one comes to my mind when reading such baseless statements ..
Now this if funny. I thought Linux is about free software and not about an instable ABI. So having an unstable ABI is what makes Linux free?
Maybe you should go to an ashram and invest some time to think about a world that does not match (and never will) your idealistic view ..