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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
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Comment 75Daniel Miller05-Dec-2003 01:22 GMT
Niche OS's for Mainstream Markets? : Comment 76 of 79ANN.lu
Posted by Kolbjørn Barmen on 05-Dec-2003 08:46 GMT
In reply to Comment 68 (bbrv):
> The main idea is slightly different. As TMHG suggests the focus on the user level is choice and independence. Run Everything! Run Anything! The object is to offer "freedom" of choice to the user.

OK - fine.

> At an application/integration level the idea is flexibility. The Pegasos is an open platform and a tool to be used to accomplish a specific task. The first real commercial product of Genesi is built along these lines.

OK - fine.

> 1. We start with building block #1 -- the Pegasos.
> 2. We define the task to be supported - in this case network security.
> 3. We pull out the palette of operating systems and we select the best for the task. We now have many to choose from. In this case we choose OpenBSD.
> 4. We integrate available, but sophisticated security tools built around OpenBSD (again running on the Pegasos).

Exactly what are those "sophisticated security tools"?

> 5. We customize the package for commercial release.

Is "customize" a good thing? In general anything with "customized" in it regarded as bad, since it means higher costs, slower maintaince etc.

> 6. We support and build up our Resellers with the opportunity to achieve sustainable and significant revenues on a recurring basis. Never forget that the first element of any security program are the people that manage it!

So you support and build up your Resellers.

Where is the support for your customers?

> In the end we offer a product -- call it the "Pegasos Guardian." This product will provide unrivaled enterprise and network security.

Will it? What guaranties do we have that it indeed is "unrivaled"?
Will there be certification of Guardian? Who will do the certification?

What happens when exploits show up, what system will Genesi provide to keep software updated, especially those "sophisticated security tools"?

> The idea is to provide the tools and flexibility to develop a solution.
>
> We will be working in the next phase of Genesi's development on providing "solutions" with partners and developers.

"solutions" indeed.

> As we look beyond that we hope to be part of a paradigm shift which we spelled out in another post on a thread from MarkTime.
>
> Here it is:
>
> One of the most dramatic impacts of computerization has been the orders-of-magnitude productivity increases organizations experience today in developing, articulating, and disseminating information. Because of competitive demands and the creation of the Internet, organizations have taken advantage of this much enhanced capability to generate an explosion of information about their organizations, processes, products, etc. ("digital content"). Unfortunately, because their existing systems are often relatively inflexible and have limited abilities to communicate, the digital content that is created or developed is typically recreated and/or repackaged many times in order to present the information usefully to all of the information consumers, e.g. customers, partners, vendors, employees. As a result, despite increased productivity, organizations experience (1) excessive costs, including duplicate entry, reconciliation different versions of data, rekeying of data into spreadsheets, etc., (2) decreased responsiveness, and (3) lost opportunities as the difficulties of managing and understanding information keep organizations from initiating new methods and communications because the costs don't appear justified - or just because the opportunity is invisible under the mass of data!


Or in short - if people just stopped using Microsoft Office, the world would be a much better place - gee, you dont say.


> Given these issues, what would be possible if organizations could collect all of their content in one place, present it over the Internet and easily customize views and documents, and easily export these to office productivity tools? What would be the impact of being able to manage all of the different types of digital content, e.g. specifications, pictures, drawings, and even video, within one repository? How much cost savings and flexibility would be available if an environment existed where all of the content was aggregated, but security allowed customers, partners, officers, employees, and vendors to only see what they are entitled to see? What is needed is a highly scalable, flexible architecture for aggregating and disseminating information throughout the Web in just this way.


In short - "Intranet is cool"


> If we could provide a simple, non-programmatic method for defining the content to be collected, and then automatically creates an intuitive interface for capturing that content. We should also provide for a non-programmatic method for defining content presentation, and then provide the content to information users everywhere -- but with tight security that ensures users only get the information that they are authorized to look at! Moreover, we could then provide the personalization capabilities to let information users see what they want - and not what they don't.


In short - our developers are so much smarter than anyone else and they will surely fix this. Scroll back 5 years, "smart clients"


> We should take advantage of a highly targeted architecture for the productive management of "aggregated digital content". The heart of this architecture would be a "DSS" (Directory Sub-System). The DSS allows this method to aggregate digital content of any type, and makes it easy to define both its collection and presentation. We could provide the solution for organizations that need to aggregate rich content and provide it to multiple types of users flexibly and securely.


What is a "highly targeted architecture"?


And again, Intranet is cool, eh?


> Of course, there already are a number of solutions created to address the information management problem outlined above.


Indeed.


> In response to the wealth of systems many organizations are using, e.g. "ERP" (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems, "CRM" (Customer Relationship Management) systems, several new software companies, "EAI's" (Enterprise Application Integrators) developed tools that allow organizations to more easily integrate their data across all of their systems. Where these systems are already in place, we can further leverage these capabilities by providing a flexible repository for collecting and presenting securely all of this content to all information users.


Exactly what?


> Moreover, in response to the overwhelming amount of data available in today's systems, "BI" (Business Intelligence) solutions were created to turn this data into "information". These solutions perform valuable "OLAP" (On-Line Analytic Processing) by summarizing collected system data and then presenting those results in a tabular or graphical way. By investing in both EAI and BI offerings, organizations can go a long way towards optimizing the usage of their data, but they will still lack an environment for managing all of the rich digital content they probably have developed, e.g. pictures, specifications, drawings, and even digital and audio, and they will still need the capability for flexibly and securely presenting that content to everyone. We should meet that need.


Really, and how/why is that?


> Morever, because we could manage relational content and would be based on relational storage, it could leverage existing BI solutions in two ways: first, by providing an environment for collecting data on which BI solutions can operate, and second, by being able to present BI results through a controlled content-management interface. This would be the missing piece that allows organizations to manage and disseminate all of their digital content.


"controlled" how?


> Later phases of the offering could include (II) interoperability with typical, relational database-based systems, (III) infinite-scalability, and (IV) integrated management of disparate, but highly related content ("metadata-aware").
>
> This strategy begins by powering the implementation of a "middleware" at the network level so that the complete metaMorphOSis of the desired data to be used or accessed by the user is possible. When you reach this point the user's "choice" at the interface or desktop level does not restrict the potential of what can be done beyond the hard drive of the user as they launch into the potentially infinite offering of data accessed through the Internet. A tool on the network enables not only the access, but the portability of any data itself to the user an agnostic to the client platform of choice.


So "middleware" finally reached Genesi, huh?

"at the network level"?

"The Network is the Computer" - heard it before?


> We are headed in that direction. :-D You can see the first indications here:
>
> http://www.pegasosppc.com/solutions.php


Yet another non-validating webpage by the company that is aiming at securing other people's data. How reassuring - a acompany that cannot accomplish the simple task of providing standard conform webpages tries to tell us how to maintain information. Funny. Damn con-artists.
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List of all comments to this article (continued)
Comment 77Christian KempRegistered user05-Dec-2003 08:46 GMT
Comment 78Bill Hoggett05-Dec-2003 09:08 GMT
Comment 79Don CoxRegistered user07-Dec-2003 13:19 GMT
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