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The Boring Now leads to the Exciting Future
written by Peter William Lount version 1, 20050223 6:30pm PDT
When I joined OSNews in 2001, I did it with a great excitment because of my love for...
messing around with many operating systems in order to explore news ways of doing things.
Back in the '80s and the '90s there were a lot of OS projects that would draw the attention
of the computer users of the time. But in this decade, it seems that other than Windows, OSX,
Linux and a very few other much smaller OSes, the scene is sterile. And it's only getting worse.
In the OSNews editorial The Boring State of Operating Systems Today Eugenia Loli-Queru writes about the sorry boring
state of Operating Systems today. This issue goes much deeper than simply the OS, it's pretty much all
software systems that suffer, especially applications and operating systems build using static
software technologies.- Eugenia Loli-Queru In reply I posted the following: I must agree with Eugenia that the current state of the art of OSes looks bleak.
F i r s t b u i l d a s t r o n g b a s e . "
As someone working with state of the art technologies for applications and operating systems
it's very important that the operating systems evolve more rapidly then they have. Why?
To support the latest advances for the end users pretty much all applications need to be
rethought and rethought deeply to their roots in the underlying systems. Many new features
and capabilities are simply not possible to build upon existing OSes.- Sun Tzu
T h r e e h e l p i n g o n e a n o t h e r w i l l d o a s m u c h a s s i x w o r k i n g s i n g l y . "
For example, the limitations of the number of protected processes is usually way under 10,000.
With new advanced object based systems the number of active threads will be in the millions if
not billions (for some corporate collectives). With clusters of cheap PC hardware running it's
important for parallelization and security that programs be broken into small fragments each
contained within it's own protected process space. This enables safe widespread grid computing
with automatic process migration between computing nodes in a users trusted grid. This is a necessity
to take advantage of N-CPU motherboards and awesome systems such as Cell computing (9 CPUs per chip),
64 bit computing (AMD-64 & Itanium, yes Itanium) and specialized multi-processors, but mostly to take
advantage of massive numbers of cheap networked and clustered PCs.- Spanish proverb It has been said that C is a language that was built for making Unix. C isn't the language for the next breakthrough operating system primarily due to C's lack of expressive power and it's static nature. Unix (and most other software systems) are contained within a protective shell due to their statically compiled nature. Having the source code isn't the whole answer either as 99.99% of users have no idea what to do with the source. They can't easily tinker with it as they must learn a complex set of tools and they are subject to the hell of edit, compile, link, run, debug, test cycles. It simply isn't reasonable for the majority of computer users to use today's software development tools. Anyone can take a path that leads them to produce systems as static, complex and bloated as Microsoft Office, Windows XP or, yes, Unix. A serious problem with these systems is that there is no way to access the full power embodied in the program. It's as if all the money spend by Microsoft on Office (and that's likely more money than most, as in 90% of, companies will ever earn in their respective corporate lifetimes) is locked up behind a static shield to protect it from the users. Almost like a museum artifact that must be protected at all costs. Unfortunately for the users of static applications and operating systems this isn't a metaphor it's reality, the functionally is really locked away behind, usually, clunky user interfaces that almost seem to coddle the user. This forcibly shapes the user to fit through tiny uncomfortable holes in the dark to follow impenetrable and often inexplicably torturous paths to get some trivial task done. Who wants to take Frodo's journey into Mordor everyday just to get something done? There is a better way. A few of the state of the art technologies required are:
If one needs to find some fresh ideas, it's the the small guys he needs to look at.
Not because the small guys are "more intelligent" than the big guys, but because the
small guys don't concern themselves with legacy support or deadlines. They can break
everything they want on their OS and only 10-20 people will notice.
The big guys can't afford to do that.
D y n a m i c s y s t e m s t h a t r e v e a l w h a t i s g o i n g o n a t a l l l e v e l s i n r e a l t i m e . D y n a m i c s y s t e m s t h a t
p r o v i d e t o o l s t h a t e n a b l e u s e r s a c c e s s t o t h e f u l l p o w e r o f a l l t h e c o m p o n e n t s i n t h e s y s t e m a n d
a p p l i c a t i o n s . D y n a m i c s y s t e m s t h a t t h e u s e r s c a n e v o l v e . D y n a m i c s y s t e m s t h a t e l i m i n a t e t h e h o r r o r s
o f t h e e d i t , c o m p i l e , l i n k , r u n c y c l e b y p r o v i d i n g i n t e r a c t i v e t o o l s . D y n a m i c s y s t e m s t h a t a r e
c a p a b l e o f r e w r i t i n g t h e m s e l v e s b a s e d u p o n n e w s p e c i f i c a t i o n s . S y s t e m s t h a t m a k e u s e o f a n d l e v e r a g e
t e c h n o l o g i e s t h a t s i m p l i f y w h i l e p r o v i d i n g e x p r e s s i v e p o w e r . C e l l u l a r a u t o m a t a i n c o m b i n a t i o n w i t h
d e c l a r a t i v e s y s t e m s t h a t a s s i s t t h e u s e r s i n g e t t i n g t h e i r j o b d o n e . D y n a m i c s y s t e m s b u i l t u s i n g V i r t u a l
M a c h i n e - l e s s m o b i u s l a n g u a g e s ( l a n g u a g e s t h a t a r e w r i t t e n i n t h e m s e l v e s ) a n d K e r n e l - l e s s ( o r n a n o - o b j e c t k e r n e l )
s y s t e m s t h a t m a x i m i z e f e a t u r e s a n d c a p a b i l i t i e s w h i l e o p t i m i z i n g s y s t e m r e s o u r c e u t i l i z a t i o n . S y s t e m s w h e r e
s i m p l y u s i n g t h e c o m p u t e r i s a f o r m o f p r o g r a m m i n g . S h a r e d c o l l a b o r a t i v e e n v i r o n m e n t s w h e r e g r o u p s o f p e o p l e
c a n a c c o m p l i s h w h a t o n e a l o n e c a n ' t a n d t o b e a b l e t o d o s o i n r e a l t i m e . G e n e r a t i v e p r o g r a m m i n g s y s t e m s w h e r e
e n t i r e a p p l i c a t i o n s a n d s y s t e m s a r e b u i l t f r o m t h e g r o u n d u p f r o m s p e c i f i c a t i o n s a n d u s e r a c t i o n s .
T h r e e d i m e n s i o n a l e n v i r o n m e n t s t h a t a r e v i s u a l l a n g u a g e s ( a n d w h i c h h a v e a p o t e n t i a l t o r e p l a c e t h e
c u r r e n t o n e d i m e n s i o n a l s t r e a m b a s e d a s c i i l a n g u a g e f o r m s ) . F a u l t t o l e r a n t s y s t e m s t h a t p r o v i d e r o b u s t
s y s t e m s t h a t c a n h a n d l e m a c h i n e a n d h u m a n e r r o r s g r a c e f u l l y . - Eugenia Loli-Queru There are other exciting technologies being developed the combination of will produce the next revolution in operating systems and applications design. The key is to find and exploit them in a cohesive whole, and if you can't find the technologies, invent them! Make them up and get them working!
WHAT IF...
T h e p a t h t o t h e f u t u r e i s n ' t c l e a r u n l e s s w e m a k e i t s o . S e e t h e f u t u r e . A s A l a n K a y s a i d T h e b e s t w a y t o
p r e d i c t t h e f u t u r e i t t o i n v e n t i t . T h a t ' s t h e f i r s t s t e p o f t h e h a r d p a r t . T h e r e s t i s b u i l d i n g r e a l s y s t e m s
t h a t w o r k a n d f i n d i n g s o l u t i o n s t h a t m a k e t h e u s e r s l i f e e a s i e r a n d m o r e p r o d u c t i v e w h a t e v e r t h e y h a p p e n t o b e . ...we were to create a new operating system and user interface knowing what we know today, how far could we go? What kinds of decisions would we make that we might have been unable to even consider 20 or 30 years ago, when the current set of operating systems were first created? ...we could collaborate with one another in an online dimension to create or simulate anything we wanted to? ...we had the robustness of a 3D immersive technology, the diversity of the Internet, and the degree of social interaction we have in the real world? Enter Croquet. There are many challenges. I've been working on a new operating system and a language to support it's development and expression for quite sometime (research since 1987 and implementation for the last few years). It's a major challenge for technical and economic reasons, many of which present massive barriers to entry, which is one of the main reasons there are only three or so main operating systems in the marketplace. The driver issue is one of many problems that need practical solutions for an ever increasing choice of devices.
I m u s t c r e a t e m y o w n s y s t e m o r b e e n s l a v e d b y a n o t h e r m a n ' s . "
Last year saw the definition of the dynamic language, Zoku a derivative of Smalltalk and Fault Tolerant Object
database systems, that is being used to build the Zoku Collaborative Operating System (ZokuCOS).
There is much work to be done implementing the system, years of work. Why do it? If I don't then I'll never
see the system I want, as I don't trust the big boys to get it right. Maybe I won't either but it's worth a shot.- William Blake To learn more about an exciting new collaborative visual interface technology that you can run now checkout: OpenCroquet.org To learn more about the Zoku language and system visit Zoku.com and read the relevant articles at Smalltalk.org. Copyright 1 9 9 9 - 2 0 1 0 b y S m a l l t a l k . o r g "! , A l l R i g h t s R e s e r v e d . |
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