From: Mike Linksvayer (ml@justintime.com)
Date: Mon Mar 13 2000 - 21:12:04 MST
Bryan Moss wrote:
> Mike Linksvayer wrote:
> > Now, invoking Godwin's law, Bill Gates is powerful, Hitler
> > was powerful, you appear to be defending Windows,
> > therefore you're a Nazi sympathizer. The end.
>
> No, you got me all wrong. I think Linux is an improvement
> over Windows - I use Linux when I get the chance, and I've
> even recommended Linux to friends!
Sorry, I was bored and made a very weak attempt at humor.
> I just don't understand why it's a "huge" improvement.
Technically Linux isn't a _huge_ improvement. Politically it
is, but then I'm pretty rabidly anti-IP.
> Swapping Windows for Linux on 95% of the worlds PCs is Big Thing;
I don't expect much actual swapping to occur. I extremely
stupidly predicted this sort of thing in 1994. Live and learn.
Unix won't ever run on 95% of the world's PC's and it will
only run on the majority a few years after it is shipped as
the default OS on most PC's.
> there's an oppurtunity here for the industry to push an OS that
> really is a huge improvement.
I doubt it. Much as DOS sucked, it was "good enough" to
dominate the 80's. Much as Windows sucked, it was "good
enough" to dominate the 90's... Know of a non-research/vapor
OS that on balance really is a huge improvement? I don't.
> The user interface isn't just graphics, at the very least
> changing the user interface in any significant way means
> changing the file system (i.e. the way the user can interact
> with 'objects' and other data, how they interact with each
> other, etc; this can be done on a command line or a GUI or
> whatever, it really doesn't matter).
Arguably an improved filesystem could make an elegant
UI easier to implement, but I don't see it as a
requirement. Files are just bitstreams, you can stick
whatever you want in them. Probably the really limiting
thing is that designers are so used to thinking about
a user interacting with a traditional filesystem that
they don't often enough consider other UI abstractions.
I say this extremely halfheartedly though, as most
lame attempts I've seen to hide the filesystem from the
user just causes frustration for a competent user.
For some UI improvement ideas from a guru, see
the March edition of <http://www.asktog.com/>. I'm not
incredibly excited.
Mike
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