What if the ultimate OS...

Ugh, I hate Vista. It came on my HP Pavilion laptop that I got for college. I couldn’t stand it. I quickly bought XP Professional w/ SP3 off of Newegg and it’s been awesome.

I am optimistic about Windows 7. I hear that it is less memory-hogging than Vista, and will not need additional equipment when you upgrade your current computer (assuming, of course, that your computer is compatible with Vista, etc.) I hear though that it would be able to run on something as small as a netbook. this is very good news.

I will not upgrade right away, but if I see it and feel that it’s a good change, I will upgrade.

There is no perfect OS. I understand that each OS is an improvement upon the last one, but it is never perfect. With each new OS, there is always new technology that we are incorporating into our computers that the OS needs to manage. Before we have time to perfect the system we have now, there is a new system available, with new tricks and features to learn!

I feel that reaching “perfection” in OSes, or anything else for that matter is like a line on a graph with a vertical asymptote, and y = perfection. You get closer and closer and even CLOSER with each step, but you never reach what you are striving for. However, it doesn’t stop us from trying, eh?

The OS is always going to change b/c of new technology it has to incorporate. The ultimate one would be a self upgrading and user customizable with simplicity.

@seekingwolf I like the analogy with the graph. You are right, perfection seems impossible to achieve. Especially when the definition of perfection will be different for everyone. I guess that’s where customization comes in, unfortunately there is no way we can possibly accommodate all of these different personalizations. Humans make everything more complicated, they are a variable that is hard to satisfy.

I guess the question that is in my mind now is what is the next level? Where are we going/do we need to go? What does the system need to do now that it can’t or struggles to do now?

sorry for going all philosophical on everyone

Personally, I think the problem with technology is that it advances just way too fast. All the new features coming in don’t always work with the newest OS, and need to be addressed in later OS. The process goes on and on.

I know it’s impossible, but I would love to have a versatile OS that could easily be upgraded to make up for features. It would be that instead of having to install a new whole OS every few years, it could be improved upon as time goes on with regular updates, and maybe the occasional hardware upgrade. It would save so much money.

Like I said though, I don’t think it’s possible (at this point).

it’s never bad to be philosophical me thinks

In a way this system has been used. Think of XP, they release patches, updates, upgrades. Patchwork, only works for so long and soon a new edition started from scratch is created.

I can think of one ‘application’ that works on every OS… the internet. Websites are in a way applications. Think about it, There is webmail, online video/movies, online music, wiki’s, databases, online Instant messenger, Online word processors, online image editors. and the best thing is they work on every OS. It’s cloud computing. It’s ‘Web 3.0”, it’s the next level. This is the future in a way. How do we implement these cross OS ‘applications’ into practicality? The next ‘perfect OS’ will have implement these.

What needs to be done to bring these websites into a true application format? Do icons need to be present? Does there need to be an offline (local) versions that communicates with an online version when possible? Is this possible?

if you use firefox check out prism and create a ‘gmail’ app or ‘facebook’ app .. is this the future?

The perfect OS would be made to exactly suit my needs, with everybody else on the world using it as well so it is supported by application programmers and hardware manufacturers, etc.

It’s just not possible, because everybody has different needs. That’s what I like about my OS: it has really extensive customization options so that I can make it ‘fit’ for me. Stil, it’s not for everybody, since a lot (I’d say most) would like it to work without needing to do anything to make it work better. For the same reason, people don’t like switching OS’s, because then they’d need to invest time in learning the new OS (though this is probably partly Microsoft’s fault for sticking with Windows XP for so long).

@seekingwolf – there are operating systems that can be constantly upgraded for features. I believe that’s called a rolling release scheme (you might want to check out e.g. Debian’s ‘testing’ release as mentioned on that Wikipedia page).

A similar idea is found in e.g. Debian’s ‘stable’ release or Ubuntu (which is easier to use), which you install once, then when a new release arrives, you can just upgrade your current system with a click on the button in the Update Manager.

But then again, this is change, so it does require you to invest time and effort into reading how to install it and actually installing it the first time. (Luckily, there’s always Fluther to help ;-)

@Vincentt

Oh yeah, like Windows receives service packs and other things like that…
I was talking about an OS that could do this continually, for YEARS, without having to upgrade at all. It seems that while many OSes can be updated for a while, there is a “limit” to how much, and eventually we have to upgrade, and that within itself brings a whole host of problems.

I also think what limits an OS is the hardware. You can’t just update hardware over the internet haha, you actually have to go out and buy and install.

@TheBox193

You’re right about the internet. Personally, I think the future of technology rests in the internet and investing more in it. I was reading this article a while ago (gah! I would find it if I could) about how computers are now leaning more towards web-based applications, versus those that are on the hard drive. Everyone (well, okay, MOST people) are online now and are almost always connected. The future computers are going to reflect this by utilizing the internet in all sorts of ways.

Windows 7 is almost identical to Vista but with a nicer teskbar, a bit more stability, and less stigma surrounding it. I have Windows 7 loaded on my Mac, so it’s stability might be accounted for by my Mac hardware, but I have friends who have 7 on PCs and they say it’s very stable also.

And I have it partitioned on a whopping 20BG of disc space.

However, comparing Windows 7 to Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) isn’t fair, it’s like comparing the XBOX 360 to the PS2, before the PS3 came out. I think we need to wait to see Snow Leopard before we make these big calls about the future of OS and so on.

And then there is Super OS .

Where are the mac and linux users?

@FrankStitt Many people here fit into one of those two groups, though few are both. Some people dual-boot their PCs to Windows/Linux, others bounce between their home Mac and work PC, but there are few Mac users I know of that also know Linux… and they are usually the ones that deny up and down that ther eis any similarity between them despite OS X being a BSD-deriviative and thus a close cousin to Linux, another Unix-oid OS.

@jerv I actually knew quite a few that used both. One of them explained it to me as “I like Linux, but at least OS X is closed source so I’ll have no temptation to break it.”