Riboflavin wrote:
Not necessarily. The OS generally plays a role in memory management, even at the application level.
MKM wrote:
Ever seen those Bill Gates joke books that feature a picture of the Windows logo that looks like a Swastika?
if we were back there… we could color this thread closed… it has reached its end, with MKM calling up the names of Hitler and JC… In the same sentence even… sheeeeesh…
† Jon †
Phillipians 4:13
Originally posted by Navigator:
Yup. Godwins law strikes again.
I seem to recall even a CD vs. Vinyl discussion where people were getting called Nazis.
[resuscitation]
Quite a few linux advocates want linux to be a desktop OS, competing with Win9x. Do you think its possible that the linux/X-windows double team will be serious competition for MS in the next, say, 5 years?
Here is my take on the problems linux has:
-
No consistency. Consistency and the open source model don’t really work well together. I think it takes a heirarchy of developers, and stuff like decent UI guidelines, to make things consistent. This is also a problem at the API level, but I’m more concerned with the user interface.
-
No centralization. If part of my OS breaks, I want to know who to call to bitch to. Ditto feature requests.
-
Complexity. This is actually being addressed pretty well. I’ve seen a few packages that attempt to simplify linux and make it more windowsy, but the overall learning curve for linux is still pretty steep.
All in all, I like the open source model, and I’d like to see linux get a good chunk of the server market, i’m just curious if anyone thinks it really does deserve that place on the shelves at Best Buy.
[/resuscitation]
Thanks to those who answered my off-topic reply about why there isn’t a Windows alternative that can run Windows apps. My line of thinking about this was VCRs: several different companies make VCRs, but the tapes they play are interchangeable. Do you think it would be possible/a good idea to make and market a GUI OS that can run Win apps that does not have the design flaws of Win 9x? To me, that would seem like the path to take rather than starting everyting from scratch like BeOS and Linux are trying to do.
Awhile back Lord Derfel wrote:
True. A CLI will never be as intuitive as a GUI. Of course, I’ve seen many attempts to make the unix CLI more intuitive. You can always create your own commands that are easier to understand, for instance:
list_all_files_one_on_each_line_and_show_human_readable_sizes
This is fairly intuitive, but it’s much easier to type the following:
ls -a1sh
In a GUI, you’d have to pull down menus, click multiple buttons, etc. to accomplish the same thing. It may be more intuitive, but it’s less efficient.
Furthermore, I don’t know how you would emulate the following in a GUI:
ls -R | grep -i ‘.html’ | tee html_archive.lst | gzip > html_archive.gz
The optimum OS combines the best of both worlds. Windows tries to do this but falls a bit short (in my opinion) in both arenas. MacOS X will be trying to accomplish the same thing (I hope they are more successful than Microsoft).
AppleScript!! 
Designated Optional Signature at Bottom of Post
Hurray! Another AppleScript lover! You’ve just got to like a language where your comments are often harder to read than the code.
Phew, I thought I was the only one in these days of visual basic and perl.
I’ve got to hand it to the AppleScript developers, they wrote one damn complicated language, and made it easy to read. I tried writing a parser for AS once. What a pain in the ass; it made C++ seem simple. But coding in AS was so easy.
Scripting languages. Bah humbug.
I gave those up when I tired of TRS-80 BASIC.
Originally posted by JoeyBlades:
Well, in BeOS, which just happens to be the optimum OS :), I would probably do the following:
Open a terminal window
run the command “find . -name *.html | tee html_archive.lst | gzip > html_archive.gz”
But thats just cause I’m from a unix background, and I like find better than ls -R | grep
If I didn’t know that stuff (and IIRC), I could use the built in find command, search for all html files (based on MIME type, not some extension, so it would get .htm, .shtml, etc too). This query is automatically saved, so I don’t need to do the tee. And the query gets treated just like a folder, so I can compress all the files in that query easily.
From what I understand, it’ll be pretty similar in MacOS X.
So modern OSs have realized that there are really nice things about a CLI, and are trying to integrate them nicely. Most people agree now that there are definitly jobs for a CLI that a GUI just makes too painful (and vice versa). The new issue is gonna be finding the right balance between the interfaces.
AHunter3 writes:
I’m with you. I’ve developed a number of AppleScripts. I also use MacPerl. Still a scripting language doesn’t give you the instant gratification that a CLI does. Mac does have a CLI, though… it’s called MPW. Unfortunately it’s deceptively similar enough to unix to lure you into a flase sense of security and deceptively dissimilar enough to frustrate an experienced unix wizard…
Hunsecker,
I’m not familiar with BeOS, but it does sound pretty sweet to a hybrid kinda guy like me…
Yeah, my example was kind of contrived. I wanted to raise the questions: “How do I do options in a GUI?”, “How do I pipe in a GUI?”, “How do I tee in a GUI?”, etc… I did try to make it look like it was doing something useful, as well.
Doh! I meant to acknowledge that your example forces all those same questions to be asked.
Originally posted by JoeyBlades:
Yeah, I know. My response was just a shamless plug for my current favorite OS.*
You’re absolutely right that CLIs have some distinct advantages. Controlling programs with switches, doing regular expression matching, rerouting inputs and building up complicated strings of little programs comes in really handy sometimes.
Part of the problem is one of context though. Its easy to think of a problem that a CLI or GUI could easily handle that the other couldn’t. But someone who was just trained in one or the other probably wouldn’t concieve of that problem. For example, to do an operation on multiple files, in UNIX you can use name globbing, so you can say “look how easy it is to operate on all files that start with a,b, and l, and end in .txt”. While in Windows you could say “look how easy it is to operate on everything from apple.txt to orange.rtf (alphabetically), as well as pomegranite.ps and pear.C”
- OK, now that I think about it, I feel bad about my answer. I can’t count the number of times comp.*.advocacy boards have had OS wars that degenerate into “Well why can’t I do X”, “Sure you can, heres how”, “thats not what I mean; ok why can’t I do Y”, ad nauseum.
Whoops, I forgot you were advocating hybrid OSs, and I made it sound like you thought CLIs were better. My apologies.
I think in a good OS, the CLI bit will be a lot like menu shortcuts are now. For GUI purists, command keys are bad because when you use them there is no graphical representation of whats going to happen. But while the menus do a nice job of presenting you with all your options, they are slow and inefficent. So a compromise was made where beginners can use the menus, and advanced users can use the shortcuts.
I think that CLIs should be an extension of this. There should be a clear, intuitive, visible way of doing something for the novice users, and a nice scriptable CLI for the more advanced users.
I’m a little confused of this CLI vs. GUI debate. Don’t most people use both? Personally, when I decide on a task I’m going to do next on my workstation, basically the first thought is whether its going to be fastest to do it from a command prompt (in which case I hit a hot-key combination and am typing in 2 seconds, and have the advantage of many RK utilities and unix utility ports, as well as my own batch files to speed things up) - do it through the GUI (many operations are actually faster this way) or write a VB script or even a program to do it.
Why do we have to argue about whether a GUI or CLI is better? For my money, windows is not a GUI any more than Linux is - its a CLI with a GUI shell, and you can use a different GUI shell if you want. You can write your own GUI to run on either 9x or NT.
im an openBSD person myself, and thats just because i like the fact that the system is based around cryptography. hey, your not a real man unless you have a shirt with your OS on it.
Gimme a break, ya’ big weenie. A T-shirt? Man, I’ve got the Mac OS logo tattooed on my forearm… that’s what real OS loyalty is all about!
I can’t beat a tattoo, but I picked up the world’s geekiest bumper sticker at Comdex in Vancouver last week. It says (complete with umlaut on the U): “LINUXGRUVEN”
Makes absolutely no sense, but I thought it was funny. None of my non-techie friends get it. Wonder why?