Re: Borrowing the ideas [was: Re: New nvidia driver obstacle]

[Bill Hacker <wbh@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yury Tarasievich wrote:

> On 13 April 2005 20:13, Bill Hacker wrote:
>
> > Jonas Sundström wrote:
> >
> > > Miguel Mendez <flynn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> ...
>
> > > > and there are some ideas from BeOS that might be
> > > > adapted to DragonFly. I'm thinking rich metadata mainly
> > > > and some parts of their API.
> > >
> > > Yeah, the filesystem goodies of BeOS just make sense,
> > > at least for desktop use. I believe POSIX extended attributes
>
> ...
>
> > Wonder if 'born-again-F/OSS' IBM might GPL/BSDL/similar license
> > the Warp metadata model and SOM as they have JFS?
>
>
> And then you'd want open-sourced *WPS*?

Sure would! OS X sure hasn't reached that far yet,
WinWoes is still years behind, and 'X' just now reaching
Win-3.X levels.

BeOS had a lot of good ideas too, several of which would be nice to have.

Things I miss about SOM and WPS:

- being able to have an arbitrarily large number of 'desktops',
disk-resident, not necessarily/always memory resident.

- being able to set theme, style, colors, borders, menus individually
for each application or even sub-window.

- having attributes, colors, sizes, screen position from whence last
closed of each app remembered indefinitely over time.

- being able to tailor the metadata to a fine degree if I am not
satisfied with what Warp auto-detects.

- being able to drag an entire app, or just it's primary executable, off
a local drive to some other local or networked location, and all the the
icons still work.  Same again each time I move it around.

- having browsers that open from a cold power-off reboot in sub two
seconds on a 2 GHz AMD with mere 20 MB/s SCSI, and sub 2/10 second from
a warm SCSI RAID cache.

- unrestricted individual customizability of each workplace.

- very high resistance to mal-code.

- ability to run GUI-less or even 'headless' with a simple config.sys
entry (not as easy on WinWoes...)

- Really good unity-gain SMTP.

- An Exec that really IS an Exec, i.e. can detect a serious problem,
gracefully shut down all non-critical apps, then the entire entire WPS
(X can do also), then restore it to as near-as-dammit previous state
without human intervention, even to which apps are open and in what
window positions  (X cannot do that part for an abnormal termination)
 - all while not missing a byte on two or more network downloads.


Things I *don't* miss:

- the difficulty of adoption of whatever I want from POSIX-like land (ports
or packages).

- chronic lack of up-to-date SSL, SSH and friends.

- DOS-like backslashes that lean the wrong way.   ;-)

- Java - a problem in search of a place to wreak havoc.

- Lack of good AMD64 support (eCS is working on it.)

- Convoluted installation.

- Lack of 'native' UTF and i18n transparency.

- Marginal or limited-choice video drivers.


Bottom Line?

I don't want *all* of Warp ported to a *BSD.  NFW!

Only the good stuff - and even THAT without the 'warts',
and believed me - there are plenty of them.

The 'object' model was never finished.  ;-)

> And obsoleting saint windows-monkeying 
> workplaces, eh? :)

Can't obsolete something that was never good enough to be adopted (here).
DRDOS & GEM => OS/2 2.10

We are 'making do' with OS X and GNOME or Xfce4 on *BSD. ;-)

Windows contribution to the human race has been the most reliable
'gullibility detector' invented since Eve.

Fortunes have been, and will continue to be made due to MS auto-ID of
the gullible, and at their own expense, yet.

Statistics say that if you will run WinWoes, you will buy enlargement
pills, grant personal or corporate financial access to all comers,
willingly allow monitoring of your activity, offer up senitive data
on a platter, spend a fortune on software and staff to *preserve*
that mess, and remain blissfully accepting that
'this is how it is supposed to be'.

National governments and other criminals just *love* that.....

All MS had to do to escape any meaningful penalty over anti-trust
was to 'just keep making possible what MS makes possible'.

Langley, Fort Meade, and organized crime combined could not have
invented a vehicle more suited to *their* purposes, nor found more
willing victims.

Obsolete?  Not soon.  "Fit for a purpose" Windows is.
 Just not the purpose paid for...

If Satan wanted it upgraded Ballmer would fire his ass for messing with
success.  ;-)

Bill



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