It's like perpetual chase of "new, inexperienced user", at cost of people using the OS for last 5-10-20 years, and no actual benefit to anyone using it seriously to do work.
That said, I like the concept of this OS design. It reminds me a little of the theoretical concept behind Star Trek’s LCARS interface, where the interface adapts to the user and the task at hand. As a power user I doubt I’d use this myself, unless it could be installed on top of NixOS, but it might be more intuitive and accessible to a more general user base.
It will be hard to get rid of files and folders though, even for general users. As messy as that can get, it’s a simple abstraction burned into just about every human’s brain at this point.
Also if I open too many windows, opening Windows explorer takes 1-2 or more seconds. Something about exhausting GDI handles?
I don't often have more than 30 open, and at that point I start thinking it's excessive and that I should probably tidy up to make sure I actually complete a task rather than get distracted.
The annoying part is just that Windows explorer gets really sluggish -- to a comical degree. For example, I'll do a file operation (copy, rename etc) and it'll take that same explorer Window 5 seconds to register the operation that it itself performed. Meanwhile, Sublime Text open in the background detects it within miliseconds.
I just looked it up, there's a thing called Task View (Win+Tab) which is this big scrolling view of open window thumbnails.
Curiously, Alt+Tab itself is very slow (half a second of lag?) but if I kill explorer.exe I get a different Alt+Tab screen which is extremely responsive.
(And Win+Tab is, of course, much slower than even the slow Alt+Tab...)
I wish I could just leave explore.exe killed, but it makes it a bit harder to do things. Maybe I should do that, to force me to program my own alternatives in Python. (They'd still be faster than what Microsoft made...)
Search function in window names would also be nice... I swear that shit haven't progressed in windows since '95
It's more like a rebellion in a jail block doing time for focus stealing. :)
In I3 at least it just highlights window and workspace if it is not on currently active workspace, instead of switching focus, so you know app wants something but don't get diverter.
Only thing that should be able to is app that you're using opening another window. There is no case focus stealing of different app is desirable and couldn't be just a notification.
I3 tiling WM does it reasonable enough; I use it pretty much in "app per workspace" model (with config auto-putting started app on its designated workflow) and if app on other workspace wants focus it doesn't get it, it just lights up a given workspace and app window; there are also config options to explicitly disable all or some windows from taking focus.
> That said, I like the concept of this OS design. It reminds me a little of the theoretical concept behind Star Trek’s LCARS interface, where the interface adapts to the user and the task at hand. As a power user I doubt I’d use this myself, unless it could be installed on top of NixOS, but it might be more intuitive and accessible to a more general user base.
That idea seems to only work where either you build the interface for yourself, or for a specific narrow set of tasks
"Focused. The clutter we take for granted in today’s operating systems can be overwhelming, especially for folks sensitive to stimulation. Mercury is respectful of limited bandwidths and attention spans."
Still that is fairly far from the OS layer. Microsoft and Apple sell the 'OS' as a bundle with everything (a window manager, file explorer, etc) that you cannot really configure a lot, but that is a problem with their products.
Here's the thing: You are not the target audience of this OS and you are by no means required to use it.
In my opinion, this is a solid attempt at creating an operating system for non-techies. Way fewer concepts to learn, way easier interaction.
This is about as close to designing an operating system as drawing a front cover is to writing a book.
> That thinking is why
What kind of thinking? Acknowledging that writing an OS is a massive undertaking? I have written hobby OS kernels so I'm not speaking hypothetically here. I wasn't suggesting that the UI isn't important either (which is what I believe you were alluding to with your "that thinking" snub), just that the UI is literally just the surface layer in a much deeper stack of technologies -- all of which is important.
> The UI part is harder than the hardware part
Writing device drivers is much harder. The failure modes are much more extreme. No amount of UI polish will improve the user experience if your OS frequently trashes your file system because it doesn't handle buggy storage devices correctly. No amount of UI polish will improve the UX if your platform frequently crashes, or even just doesn't support your hardware at all. And to compound matters, the vast majority of hardware isn't documented either.
So yeah, UI is important but your OS isn't going to win any fans if you don't nail the stacks beneath too.
> [UI's] deals with a piece of diverse, non logical and unpredictable piece of meatware, instead of simple and predictable silicon.
Hardware is often anything but predictable. The fact that it seems that way is a testament to just how well written most operating systems are.
Having lived through 20+ “the year of the Linux desktop”s I can tell you the goal was clearly to become he dominant desktopOS that everyone used.
About that last part… the op was talking about people, it actual hardware, you seem to have missed that. Hardware is in fact predictable, unless it’s failing or just that poorly designed.
Again, Linux isn't an operating system like Windows, macOS or even FreeBSD. Even the broader definition of Linux has it as multiple different collections of different individuals sharing different groups of packages. What one team might aim to do with Linux is very different to what another team might want to do. And "The year of the Linux desktop" wasn't a universal goal by any means. Case in point: I've been using Linux (as well as several flavors of BSD, Macs, Windows and a bunch of other niche platforms that aren't household names) for decades now and I've never once believed Linux should be the dominant desktop. I'm more than happy for it to be 3rd place to Windows and macOS just so long as it retains the flexibility that draws me to use Linux. For me, the appeal of Linux is freedom of choice -- which is the polar opposite of the ideals that a platform would need hold if it were aiming for dominance.
So saying "Linux failed" isn't really a fair comment. A more accurate comment might be that Canonical failed to overtake Windows but you still need to be careful about the term "failed" given that millions of regular users would be viewed as successful by most peoples standards -- even if it didn't succeed at some impossible ideology of a desktop monopoly.
> About that last part… the op was talking about people, it actual hardware, you seem to have missed that.
No i got that. It's you who missed the following part:
> Hardware is in fact predictable, unless it’s failing or just that poorly designed.
Don't underestimate just how much hardware out there is buggy, doesn't follow specifications correctly, old and failing, or just isn't used correctly by users correctly (eg people yanking USB storage devices without safely unmounting them first). The reality is that hardware can be very unpredictable yet operating systems still need to handle that gracefully.
The market is flooded with mechanical HDDs from reputable manufacturers which don't follow specifications correctly because those devices can fake higher throughput by sending successful write messages back to the OS even when the drives are still caching those writes. Or cheap flash storage that fails often. And hot pluggable devices in the form of USB and Thunderbolt have only exasperated the problem because now you have devices that can be connected and disconnected without any warning.
Then you have problems that power saving introduces. You now have an OS with hardware that shouldn't be connected and disconnected yet still able to power that on and off gracefully (otherwise your OS is borderline useless on any laptop).
...and all of this is without even considering external conditions (ie the physical nature of hardware -- the reason it's called "hardware"). From mechanical failures, hardware getting old, dusty, dropped etc. Through to unlikely but still real world problems like "cosmic bit-flips".
Now imagine trying to implement all of this via reverse engineering - because device manufacturers are only going to support Windows, maybe macOS and, if you're lucky, Linux. And imagine trying to implement that for hundreds of different hardware types, getting each one stable. Even just testing across that range of hardware is a difficult enough problem on its own.
There's a reason BeOS-clone Haiku support FreeBSD network drivers, SkyOS's user land was eventually ported to Linux, and Linux (for a time at least) supported Windows WiFi drivers. It isn't because developers are lazy -- it's because this is a fscking hard problem to solve. And lets be clear, using another OS's driver model isn't an easy thing to implement itself.
Frankly put: fact that you think hardware is easy and predictable is proof of the success of Linux (and NT, Darwin, BSD, etc).
To come back on topic. I wasn't saying hardware is unpredictable per se -- just that it often behaves unpredictably. And I say that because there are a set of expectations which, in reality, hardware doesn't always follow.
However the predictability of humans vs hardware is a somewhat moot point because that's only part of the story for why writing hardware-interfacing code is harder than human interfaces. I did discuss cover a few of those other reasons too but you seem fixated on the predictability of the interfaces.
Now you can walk around telling every grandma that they should not refer to it as OS, but you will unlikely succeed in that mission. Accept it...
But we are technical people talking about OS design. So I don’t really understand your point.
My point is that you produced dozens of paragraphs about terminology but added zero value to the actual discussion and all that while totally understanding what others actually meant.
Tech news sure. But not in average peoples news. Or at the very most, only on special tech segments. Either way, definitely not frequent.
> My point is that you produced dozens of paragraphs about terminology but added zero value to the actual discussion
I was discussing the complexities of writing hardware drivers after it was stated that it’s easier than UIs.
Where’s the value in your comments here? You are adding nothing, just arguing for the sake of arguing.
> all that while totally understanding what others actually meant.
“Misunderstanding” I assume you meant (given the context of your comments). Either way, and as I said to the other commenter (though I’m not convinced you two aren’t shill accounts for the same person given your writing styles are the same), I did understand. I just disagreed and cited some experience I had to back up my points of view.
I don’t really understand your problem here. This is a tech forum and we are talking about operating system development. Yet you’re begrudging me having a technical conversation about operating system development.
I would much prefer a world where we empower people to actually learn about the tools they use, rather than one in which we jump through hoops in order to try and design around predictions about what we think "they" want when, in reality, it's like trying to hit a billion different targets with a single dart.
We should be reaching for designs that give tools to and enable people to achieve that which they can think up with their own free will and imagination, not predictive trash that more often than not simply results in annoying the user with something that is, at best, close but not close enough to what they want to actually be useful, leaving them with the frustration of not being able to do anything about it.
It's not, stop being offended on behalf of others. "non-xxx" is as neutral as it can be to refer to a population.
And it does make sense to give different end products to techies and non-techies, because the needs are wildly different.
Personally, I would like some sort of "personal workspaces". Sort of virtual desktops that were project-oriented.
I would like switch to a project, find all my notes, emails, lists, files and more (terminal windows? web browsing/tabs? apps?) in that environment.
and when I run out of time, shut it down. Next time I switch to it, all my context is right there, ready to jump in.
could be some combination of fast-user-switching, virtual desktops, containers, vms, don't know? but unified.
Fuck.
I don’t use the workspace feature on the Mac, I assume they’re recovered as well.
Obviously applications need to be restart aware as well. I really like how the provided Mac apps (Pages, Numbers, etc. ) work with the first class document model in the system. I have dozens of Untitled documents across apps, some are years old. Never “saved” them. They just exist. Across reboots, app upgrades, and OS upgrades.
I wish more apps embraced my lazy house keeping.
I don’t know how the documents sync across devices, if at all.
I wanted to mimic the OS document model in Java with my own app, but that’s easier said than done.
I tried it, but it is just not there yet. My use case is switching between 3d cad design and printing apps (browser, slicer, notes) and between coding (jetbrains ide’s, terminal, browser, draw.io app)
And when i switch from design to getting into the production stage, it should make the slicer module more prominent. Cad design usually are tweaks after this.
Cf: The Anti-Mac Interface, for a bit of a tonic
Me too but to be fair, we would probably call this a desktop environment, not an OS. It's a shell that could run on top of Windows, MacOS or Linux. Data could be stored in a standard filesystem or a database and managed by the shell and presented to users as "content and actions [...] fluidly assembled based on your intentions"
... or whatever your OS application search is