11 Jun
2009
11 Jun
'09
3:15 p.m.
On Thu, 11 Jun 2009, John Floren wrote:
Linux filled a hole. To my knowledge, there wasn't
really any free
Unix-like available when Linux was first released, so everybody jumped
on the bandwagon. When the *BSDs came along, Linux wasn't that
entrenched yet. By the time Plan 9 was released with a free license
(around 2000), the dust had settled--Linux was on top, with the BSDs
coming along behind. If we had released for free in the early 90s,
maybe everyone would be using Plan 9 (and it would be as warty and
ugly as Linux).
Work started on 386BSD prior to the initial release of Linux, however, Linux
was more accessible. I'm not sure when HURD was actually started, but it
went for *YEARS* with nothing to show for it. Through probably '98 or so
BSD was a fairly good contender. During this time Amiga OS and Atari TOS
still had a sizable number of holdouts, and BeOS was gaining converts.
Fact is, if it doesn't run Firefox, vim, and gcc,
a huge percentage of
the Unix userbase is automatically gone. We don't use X, we do C the
way we like it, and not a lot of people want it. If Haiku were to
repackage Ubuntu with a BeOS theme, they'd probably get far more
users--the simple fact is that if your OS wants to diverge from the
POSIX/Unix compatible world, you're not going to get a lot of users.
You'll get hundreds of emails to the mailing list asking "Why doesn't
it do XYZ exactly like Linux? Your OS sucks".
You've hit the key problem. I love playing with Operating Systems, they are
what interests me most in the whole "Classic Computing" area. However I
have key dependencies on specific applications. For me the core apps I
*MUST* have are the Adobe applications, specifically Lightroom, Photoshop, and
InDesign. I also have a need for Eudora Pro, and ClarisDraw. All of these
are available only on Windows and Mac. The non-Adobe apps are no longer
supported (ClarisDraw hasn't been supported since about '95). Another
application I have a dependency on would probably be Perl. I don't consider
Firefox, vim, gcc, or much else from UNIX to be a dependancy. I do consider
an editor that does context colouring to be highly desirable. I prefer to
use MS Office, but I don't have to. For databases I'm all over the place, I
use FileMaker Pro, Oracle RDB, MySQL, and MS SQL.
Something to consider is that there are core applications that any OS needs,
and that some of these applications are as large or larger than the OS
itself. Then there are the non-core applications that people believe should
exist. To me these would include things such as Web Servers and Database
Servers.
As Rob Pike said, OS research is dead. (and we killed
it)
Sad but true.
Zane