We are joined on the show this week by our guest Tess Flynn, a consultant and technology trainer in the US midwest. She helps us discuss the past present and future of operating systems including the Amiga, BeOS and RISC OS camps and what monstrosity (or majesty) would arise if we combined their powers.
Here’s how the audio file breaks down:
| 0:00:30 | Intro |
|---|---|
| 0:02:55 | Reader feedback |
| 0:05:39 | “Amiga Review†|
| 0:31:49 | “Missing Features†|
| 1:35:03 | “Amazon†|
| 1:52:36 | Meta |
| 1:54:47 | (Total Time) |
On the show we mentioned the RISC OS menus and save panel, which you can find screenshots and detailed descriptions of here.
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The intro / intermission and outro music is a Commodore 64 remix “Turrican 2 – The Final Fight†by Daree Rock.
We genuinely hope that you enjoy the show, and that we’ve managed to bring up original points in our discussion. Do follow up what you picked up on in your comments!
We are always open to your feedback. Please either leave your comments on the site, or send us an email to [email protected].
If you were to offer ogg could FF3.5 link to specific starting points in the ogg file?
That would be a feature I would really digg
It would make the two hours so much easier to digest.
I loved this podcast. Tess is a really good addition (She seems to know what she is talking about
)
But you guys need to let her talk a bit more. Maybe she is shy (understandable for the first time), but I would have liked to hear her thoughts on ZFS/timemachine etc. I loved the FrankensteinOS part, taking parts from all OS and add your stuff .. but don’t drift too far off into the future.
PS.
Few remarks:
Linux Audio (ALSA + Pulse/Jack) will get there.(I am an optimist)
AmigaOS should add common sense features.
Amazon did not only delete the books, it also deleted remarks people made. A few school children lost the summer work they did on these books.
The end was out of sync.
An idea to make the podcasting easier:
https://fedorahosted.org/pulsecaster/
Each person records their own local microphone and I combine the files in Garageband. It produces far higher quality sound and avoids lags and droppouts in the Skype call if we were to record the combined audio stream.
Recording the combined stream is practical, but the quality just isn’t there.
Well, I obviously don’t know Tess well enough (we’ve only talked two times now
), and I can’t speak for her, but looking at it from my own perspective – if I were in her shoes, I’d be a little reserved as well.
She’ll become more prominent as time goes by. First time is always difficult (it was the same for Kroc and I).
I believe it was Kroc who said “rip it all out and start from scratch.”
That is exactly the problem we already have!
After two or three development teams rip it all out and start from scratch, you have Linux audio as it is. So please don’t create yet another system.
Why don’t we just dump ALSA and pulseaudio and just go for OSS again (which has a nice open source license now).
It emulates the 68000 – 68060 series of CPU + AGA/ECS etc Chip sets.
It is not a virtualizer.
Yup AROS is using it for binary comparability.
Great Podcast
Still listening to the podcast now.
The words about we wont care about the box sitting in the corner of the room and computers not being “special” are so so true.
I have tried so many OS and none capture the magic of the old days.
It’s all about upgrading now for most people.
Largest HD. Most RAM, Fastest Graphics. Blah blah.
To top it off most of the time the bloated software hides the gain anyway.
When i was younger i had an Amiga 500 for about 7 years. The only upgrades i was lucky enough to get was a 20 MB hard drive and memory improvement to 2.5 MB.
But it was possible to know nearly all the ins and outs.
I think the Charm of computers back then is defintitely dying.
I agree there is nothing special about KDE/Gnome/XFCE etc etc.
Nothing really imaginative is really happening with the Mainstream OS.
I hope something like Haiku can change this.
I have tried AROS and it was pretty interesting too and really snappy.
… Are computers really getting less interesting albeit more powerful or is it just my age.
I remember being so passionate at 15 or so with the miggy but now its about knowledge and performance.
Where is the passion.
Rant over 😉
Very good to hear all the opinions, especially thinking about the decentralisation of functions into dedicated devices mentioned. Do we want lesser ability, but dedicated devices? Of course there’s been a convergence in many areas, all the hand held devices at one scale, while media has been integrated on computer. There maybe dedicated game systems which can equally deal with media, as Tess pointed out, indicative of ever increasing processing power. While Thom points towards a few short years from now when every processing device, even hand held, are all going to have the same capabilities and all that will differentiate them will be the interfaces. When each OS becomes more or less homogenous, will you change the name of the site to UInews? Does this suggest that a limited system, such as the Chrome OS, will only ever be regarded as a disappointment and inadequate? Are Google anticipating where the ball is going to be? Will Chrome become a fully functioning OS in stages? Is this a creeping, stealthy attack on Windows and the Mac?
Good to hear the insights from Tess. Very interesting. Come back again and lets have more guests too. What was your web site URL? Couldn’t make it out. Advertise now!
Good to bring up some pros and cons of hierarchies and data bases Kroc. I always liked the transparent nature of Mac OS 8 and 9. It was like a car before electronic ignition, easy to mend when something went wrong. You knew where the stuff was. There was a simple beauty in controlling the computer by moving extensions and control panels in and out of active folders, tailoring the system for the activity. So much could be controlled simply by moving files around. Truly spatial.
There seems to be a general push towards lists, but the spatiality of any interface shouldn’t be disregarded. We often need a rich gamut of our faculties employed to interact well with a computer… What does anyone think of 3D interfaces? The reason to use one might not be there now, but does it suggest a functionality yet to come, or is it just overkill?
Yes Thom… in your TV… Everything will merge and there will be a fluidity in the way data is manipulated… and this will come and tap you on the shoulder sooner than you know it.
You asked what was missing from your OS. Can I suggest asking the question, What’s your favourite platform feature that you couldn’t be without? There are probably so many that people might mention and it would be interesting to see what highlights we might be missing. What arrangements of ones and zeros make us passionate? It might be the applications themselves?
Thanks all for a very enjoyable and interesting show!
In regards to the eBooks on phones comment that Tess made… I am already able to read eBooks on my iPhone. And, ironically, they’re from the Kindle store, on an officially produced by Amazon application. Here’s a screen shot of the about dialog box: http://twitpic.com/b2gbr
I can see something like this coming, eventually, too to platforms like BlackBerry and Android, however, the screen size and resolution on those does prohibit reading for long periods of time.
Anyway…just my 2 cents in the matter.
-Adam
Amiga OS: having the OS spin up my floppy every other seconds would be annoying, but it could probably be an option
desired OS features: AmigaOS:
– dragable screens
– resident commands, it’s also in DragonFlyBSD which also has:
– application checkpointing(!)
I also would stick to the hierarchical fs, iTunes DB doesn’t work particulary well for me, I had to resubscribe to my podcasts too many times because the xml got corrupted..(due to a full disk for example)
Thom sounded really really soft. Tess was loud and clear. Kroc could have been bumped up a notch or two as well…
The recording was not easy to do this time, trying to get someone else brand new setup quickly. It took us like five or six shows before me and Thom got a hang of it. Expect things to improve in the next show
The RISCOS file save dialog is not good. It is really, really annoying! I used RISCOS machines for about 3 or 4 years when in School and the save dialog fails to solve the problem of mouse based saves for a very important reason – where do you drag the file to? RISCOS didn’t support dragging to the desktop at the point I used it and IIRC, you couldn’t drag on to the filer icons either. You literally had to use the file manager to locate somewhere to drag the file to – this completely defeats the point! I want to do the “location” in a single pane of a window, so no – it does not make anything easier at all.
Last version of RISCOS I used was 3.7 – and if I get my A7000 working again, I’ll check it out, but I’m pretty sure it was still an issue even then.
Edited 2009-07-22 13:58 UTC
It’s for the reasons you’ve listed that I specifically listed it as something I would want in a more polished form in OS X. With OS X you can drop on the desktop, or onto folders and so forth, as well as being armed with Exposé. In OS X the drag-and-drop save would be a Good Thing™, compared to that awful file picker.
First time I’ve listened – liked. Sound levels were annoying, especially as the lady burbled a lot and didn’t add a lot to the conversation.
Kroc – RISCOS was always “RISK OSS” not “RISK OH ESS” back in the day, in fact, all OS were OSS in the UK (Amiga-oss, STOSS for STOS, RTOS was ARE-TOSS.) And whilst we are at it, it was “BEE-TA MAX” not “BAY-TA MAX” in the UK – I have still got a Betamax unit somewhere in storage 😉
A couple things I’d like to bring up.
First, you guys made a comment that in the propriety world the client comes up with a design and the programmer has to follow it exactly. That’s not really true. In the propriety world coders often have input on how the design of the system will work (and should). Yes, there is comprise to please to the client, but it’s much more of a collaboration of the design, where the programmers try lead the design in a way favourable to the programmers and their goals(i.e maintainability, reusability, etc). Also, its unfair to say open source doesn’t take in account the client(or perhaps user in this case) when designing. Since often in open source the user doesn’t pay (although for the linux kernel this makes up only about 30% of developers, src: http://www.linuxfoundation.org/publications/linuxkerneldevelopment….) then its hard for them to contribute to the project, since the programmers can just say no to client without worrying about losing funds. But the open source community has found ways for the users to contribute(like ubuntu has come up with brainstorm). When it comes down to it, you always going to need to come up a way to satisfy users the most and with the best possible program design. The programmers and clients goals don’t always conflict, and part of being a software engineer is finding a way to meet both. But you can’t always satisfy both. and generally propriety leans towards the client and open source towards the client(probably but I can’t prove that).
I laughed at your comment that in the future we will have many more computers, with each doing a distinct task, rather than one computer that tries to do it all. Imagine a gaming console that only plays game, a dvd player that only plays dvd. Maybe even a cell phone just used to make calls (perhaps too futuristic?). But seriously, their advantages to having multiple with that have distinct task, they usually perform that task better, but have a one computer do everything is cheaper and easier to manage. We kind of gone always from multiple computers towards one computer that does everything. But its possible that we’ll start going away from that, but who knows. I certainly don’t.
Any thoughts? I certainly appreciate comments/feedback.