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[Rant] Niche OS's for Mainstream Markets?ANN.lu
Posted on 03-Dec-2003 02:10 GMT by takemehomegrandma79 comments
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As the Windows platform is getting more and more bloated, infected with viruses, spy wares, ridiculous EULA’s and other unpleasant things, more and more people are looking for alternatives. And not only people, even large organizations and governments are searching for new solutions to meet their computing needs. This has made many people in the alternative computing market full of hope for a broad future acceptance of their favourite OS. Linux currently has a major momentum in this field (and not only in the server market), much thanks to its buzz word name. But other not-so-difficult-to-understand OS’s might as well be winning from this. What is stopping them? What is needed to make a former niche OS acceptable as a desktop replacement for Windows?

Genesi is pushing the concept of the “Super Bundle”, a way to make sure that general usability is brought to a custom OS. I have personally enjoyed that effort for my MorphOS installation, but as far as I understand, the Super Bundle is not meant to be limited to MorphOS alone in the future. It’s a *Pegasos* concept, and the Pegasos is a *hardware* platform that is supported by lots of OS’s.

The Super Bundle is great. But applications are only one piece of the “mainstream acceptance puzzle”, what other pieces are there? The desktop will be another. From a *Pegasos* perspective, perhaps some kind of a “Pegasos Open Desktop” standard could be created? I’m not talking about a technical solution here, not a low level technical standard or API, but rather a behavioural (and expectational (is that a word BTW?)) standard from a “Joe User” perspective. The goal would be to create a common set of desktop behaviours that leaps across the Pegasos flavours of all its supported Operating Systems, obviously somewhat inspired by Windows.

Because like it or not, the Microsoft Windows is the de-facto standard when it comes to desktop OS’s. Perhaps the looks and graphical design isn’t the most important thing here, variations in appearance and visual looks may be accepted, but “the masses” are used to the way things are organized and managed in the Windows desktop environment. Windows actually defines everyone’s expectations of a computer desktop today.

And what is that? You tell me! Is it the “My Documents”, “My Music”, “My Pictures” folders? Could be! The Start menu, the quick launch field, the tool bar, etc? Absolutely! Right clicking on an icon and getting a context menu (including the “properties” option)? Yes! Right clicking on the desktop to get the option of setting the looks of the desktop, the screen resolutions, the screensavers, etc? Sure! The list goes on (feel free to fill in the gaps).

Mainstream people expect a desktop to behave in a certain way (the *Windows* way), and I am afraid that the tolerance for alternative ways of doing things in this area may be low among mainstream users. On Linux we see different window managers and desktop solutions; some are obviously striving to emulate the windows behaviour in several ways. This is no coincidence IMHO, neither is the fact that the PocketPC grew so fast, and that Windows enabled cell phones are gaining acceptance rapidly. Branding is only a minor part of the explanation IMO, the “familiar feeling” of the user envireonment may be more important. That lowers any entry barriers for the customer.

Well, how could this be achieved on the Pegasos platform, to make its OS’s more usable for mainstream desktop applications? A beginning would perhaps be to define a set of core user expectations of a desktop’s behaviour, like I started above. This would be quite easy. The more difficult task would be to implement these features on the various Pegasos OS’s without damaging the respective OS native feeling and unique benefits. This would be a delicate balance between niche and mainstream, between tradition x and tradition y, between unique custom solutions (with high learning curve) and broad acceptance, between geek only and broad success.

Could it be done? How? Is this needed? Is it wanted?

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Comment 1Bill Hoggett03-Dec-2003 02:02 GMT
Comment 2JoannaK03-Dec-2003 02:45 GMT
Comment 3Anonymous03-Dec-2003 02:54 GMT
Comment 4gary_c03-Dec-2003 03:13 GMT
Comment 5Kjetil03-Dec-2003 06:20 GMT
Comment 6Anonymous03-Dec-2003 07:06 GMT
Comment 7hammer03-Dec-2003 07:38 GMT
Comment 8Amon_ReRegistered user03-Dec-2003 07:39 GMT
Comment 9Anonymous03-Dec-2003 07:45 GMT
Comment 10Atheist203-Dec-2003 07:48 GMT
Comment 11treqie03-Dec-2003 08:12 GMT
Comment 12Raffaele03-Dec-2003 08:17 GMT
Comment 13Daniel Miller03-Dec-2003 09:03 GMT
Comment 14Don CoxRegistered user03-Dec-2003 09:40 GMT
Comment 15Don CoxRegistered user03-Dec-2003 09:46 GMT
Niche OS's for Mainstream Markets? : Comment 16 of 79ANN.lu
Posted by takemehomegrandma on 03-Dec-2003 09:56 GMT
Bill Hoggett, JoannaK, Anonymous, I agree with you all. The point of my post was exactly to get posts like this.

The small OS's fills the small gaps (if any at all) in the market. But at the same time, many people, some companies, and some governments are hoping for a real alternative to Wintel for mainstream desktop usage. At the same time many supporters of small OS's are hoping for increased significance of their favourite OS. That is a driving force. Look at the Amigans for example, remembering the glory days when there were a number of computer platforms of importance and no one had the rock solid position as the Wintel has today, and we think "one day you'll see, the Amiga will do a comeback and once again become a platform worth keeping an eye on from outside this community".

Bill Hoggett: "A niche OS is suited to a niche market."

Absolutely. These small OS's will at best function as a back bone in a very specific hardware application, they will run in the background to drive some menus in a cell phone, a Set Top Box, a toaster or similar device. This is not bad. Not at all. It will be a great achievement for a small OS other than Linux to gain that much of significance in real life usage, most of the small OS's has no real point at all.

Anonymous: "Niche OS survive mostly because their supporters don't want to be part of the mainstream."

JoannaK: "As soon as MorphOS starts to Look and Feel Windows I'm gone.."

Me too, **And here is the paradox**, applications is one major piece of the puzzle to make any platform worth looking at. We want great applications for our "little" OS (not speaking about a menu system and TV tuner software in a STB here) that keeps up with *todays standards* in their respective areas. We want to use our favourite OS for similar things that we use Windows, but we refuse the things which might make the platform interesting for the developers of those serious applications that we will need. Sure, there are niche developers as well as niche OS's (doing "work of love" rather than expecting to actually live on their work until their pension), but making a 2004 level version of any *big* application will be *expensive* for any venture willing developer, in money, and (perhaps most of all) in time. The only way for the developer to hope for a small return of their effort is a broad (and I mean *really broad*, talking at least six figures here) acceptance for the OS they are developing on.

*Nothing* can threat the Wintel platform on broad desktop usage.

At the same time, *No OS* can survive and gain a sustainable evolution over time without serious applications comparable to those on the leading platform. The applications developers need broad support, but that won't happen in these small platforms.

Is there something in between?

Billions and billions of euros, and years and years of time, has been spent on ECDL training programs and similar, with the only purpose of making people understand what the start menu is, what happens if you right click on something, how to change your screensaver, how to start and use M$ Word, etc. Everything targeted towards the very specific *windows* and *Microsoft* way of doing things. Trojan horse or not, there *can not* be an alternative to Windows for desktop usage that does not emulate these things, because these are standards similar in significance as the alphabet, traffic rules, etc.

Some Linux flavours are hooking on to this to give it a shot, and is gaining some momentum too. Another effort is Lindows.

Other OS's may, as said before, find its role as backbones in various devices, thus the most important applications will be menu systems that can be controlled through your TV remote control and a light weight TV web browser, a TV mail client, a media player, an ICQ clone, etc ... **IF** a strong mother company can take it all on its own shoulders or find someone to share the burden (and the benefit). In the case of the Pegasos platform and Genesi, we seems to be lucky in this area.

But I can't help it. I am still dreaming "one day you'll see, the Amiga will do a comeback and once again become a platform worth keeping an eye on from outside this community". I am still dreaming about using MorphOS as *the only* OS, both for work and for pleasure. But I don't think that will ever happen, not for work anyway. I will always be stuck with windows to get access to the "real" applications.
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Comment 17takemehomegrandmaRegistered user03-Dec-2003 10:36 GMT
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