RSSThe case for smaller, simpler, faster operating systems
By Carmi Levy | Published June 11, 2009, 3:01 PM
Call me a shameless optimist, but I can't shake the feeling that the operating system arms race may finally be over. After countless generations of new-and-improved OSs that consumed every iota of additional performance built into ever-faster hardware, I think we're finally seeing a tiny light at end of a tunnel many of us thought would continue forever.
Newer, but not better
We've all had this experience: We replace a three-year-old computer running an older version of an operating system with something supposedly light years ahead of the old machine. By the specs, the processor is twice as fast and has twice as many cores. Memory is an order of magnitude larger and faster. Storage, video, network, wireless and other components are similarly rocket-powered compared to the old stuff. If we believe the numbers, our new machine should blow our suddenly obsolete one of the water.
If only we could be so lucky. After we're done setting it up, the expected quantum improvement in productivity never materializes. We click…and wait.
Sure, we all seem to have a honeymoon period during which our spanking new babies can do no wrong. We marvel at the slick interface and cool new features, but before long we're back to being frustrated by the same old pokey performance. Error messages and other unexplained popups don't help, either.
"Featuritis" runs rampant
Why is this so? Because piles of features and eye candy somehow became more important to developers than outright performance and reliability. They spent too much time spiffing up the front end and not enough time making the back end robust and efficient. Even various flavors of desktop Linux, long used by hobbyists to extract more life from older hardware, have fallen prey to featuritis and bloat.
As Microsoft and Apple put the finishing touches on Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard), respectively, I think we're finally starting to see a flicker of recognition that consumers want function over form. Unlike Vista -- which, depending on your perspective, has been rightly or wrongly savaged for substandard performance on anything less than leading-edge hardware -- Windows 7 is a leaner beast that promises to work well on netbooks and other pedestrian hardware. Its simplified interface consolidates functions and won't force my mother-in-law on half-day adventures to update her printer driver.
After years of trying to convince us that we need to pay more attention to our operating system, vendors are finally pulling back on the rhetoric. We don't really care about the OS because we don't actually use it to get anything done. It's a utility, one that only draws attention to itself when it breaks. The rest of the time, we're content to ignore its very existence. What matters to users are the applications that let us get work done, not the underpinnings that make it all possible.
Please let me work
A personal case in point: As I'm writing this column, my computer is helpfully suggesting that my thumb drive would work faster if I plugged it into a USB 2.0-compliant port. As far as I can tell, it's a USB 2.0-compliant drive, and my laptop has only USB 2.0-compliant ports, so why is this error message taking over my machine every ten minutes? I suppose I could root around until I find a settings panel or dialog box that allows me to turn off such notifications permanently, but I've got a deadline, and I'm already annoyed by software that assumes I care. I don't. I just want it to work.
As I stare at my now-popup-filled screen, I notice that my windows have a lovely translucence to them. They open and close with an animated flourish that my kids find endlessly entertaining. The gadgets to the side look slick and impressive...when they're not spontaneously crashing. I look at my calendar and realize it's been six months since my last full-on OS refresh. Time to pull out the master DVDs and repeat the process.
With this frustrating waste of time in mind, here's my wish list for Microsoft, Apple and anyone else who's working on operating systems for use by regular folks like me:
• Forget the eye candy. I like drop-shadowed, translucent windows and animated transitions as much as anyone, but not when every mouse click brings my hardware to its knees.
• Shrink the landscape. Why must there be six ways to change a printer? Why must I dig through multiple windows and panels to find what I need? Stick all settings in the same place to minimize wandering time and allow me to get back to work more quickly.
• Be realistic about minimum hardware requirements. Being able to install something on last year's hardware and actually wanting to live with it are two very different things. If you oversell the product, I can guarantee you I'm switching OS vendors for my next machine.
• Make it self-maintaining. I shouldn't have to reinstall my OS every six months. Why must system performance degrade over time?
• Leverage your mobility learnings. Handheld devices are, for the most part, instant-on and fairly straightforward to use. There's no reason why desktops, laptops, and netbooks can't work the same way.
The rise of the netbook and other form factors is driving a fairly substantial re-think in terms of how we use computers and what we expect out of them. We no longer shoot for all-encompassing capability, and instead want simpler devices that do the job quickly and efficiently. We don't want to wait after every keypress or mouse activity, and we don't want to be confused, either.
Simple is the new goal, and an OS that strips out needless complexity, stays out of the way and lets users get their work done uninterrupted represents the new state of the art.
Carmi Levy is a Canadian-based independent technology analyst and journalist still trying to live down his past life leading help desks and managing projects for large financial services organizations. He comments extensively in a wide range of media, and works closely with clients to help them leverage technology and social media tools and processes to drive their business.
On my Linux Ubuntu, I have a lot of visual effects on, because I love this, but I my hardware have no problem with this.
Score: 0
|Does an OS *really* slow down over time or do we just get used to it? My computer seems much faster when I come back from a holiday .
Score: 1
|No doubt it does DrTeeth,after you gnashing on it all the time,it to enjoyed the rest?
Score: 0
|I run OS X and I have never had to reinstall. The author wants something that just works. OS X fills that requirement quite well. Nothing is perfect but it comes closer than anything else I've tried. The OS X weakness is still a more limited set of native applications. As the author says, this is why we use a computer. The rise of virtual machine technology has blunted this criticism but I want native applications to make use of the rock-stable Unix underpinnings. Help stamp out BSOD!
Score: 0
|To Pc and Garretthylltun- Thank you for what turned out to be a very good debate. Clearly both of you have a great deal more knowledge about computers than most here including myself. and listening to the civilized give and take between the two of you can only help the rest of us learn more and think about issues we might not have thought of without it. I look forward to listening to you two debate as it can only benefit everyone
To Garretthylltun- I owe you an apology for the posting on the one article. It was uncalled for and after watching your debate here clearly there is a lot I can learn from you and I hope you and Pc continue to debate the issues as it will benefit the site and those that come to increase their knowledge.
Score: 1
|Yep just one problem with this simplification of "I"just want it to work,in that that with the development of software(see complication that might in en- cruw),the OS has to be able to handle new developments,in the rapidly advancing of said.Especially, in say the editing off HD Video were, even now the highest spec computers have their problems?
Score: 0
|Uhhh, when you buy a new car you don't care how it drives but just that it drives. And you like the fact that the newer car model looks better than the old one (hopefully). I agree that I don't want too much glitz at the expense of performance but why would you want to buy a new OS that 10 years later looked exactly the same. I would not want my OS looking like Windows 95 no more than I would want my new Cadillac to look like an '85 Geo Metro.
Unless you are a hardcore performance nut . . . eyecandy sells.
Score: 0
|"• Be realistic about minimum hardware requirements. Being able to install something on last year's hardware and actually wanting to live with it are two very different things. If you oversell the product, I can guarantee you I'm switching OS vendors for my next machine."
Eh Windows 7 runs on a 5 year old PC i have with 2GB RAM and it's snappy. It might require some tweaking, but it IS Windows and is meant to be tweaked for speed by those who need it.
"• Make it self-maintaining. I shouldn't have to reinstall my OS every six months. Why must system performance degrade over time?"
-XP 32 suffered from this. XP x64 did not, nor does Server 2003/2007, Vista, or W7. it sucked for XP, which is why i went with x64 for years. Also, poorly written drivers and anti-virus slows a computer down more than the "degrading performance" of XP.
"• Leverage your mobility learnings. Handheld devices are, for the most part, instant-on and fairly straightforward to use. There's no reason why desktops, laptops, and netbooks can't work the same way."
Yes there is...handheld devices use flash memory for storage. flash is literally over a hundred times faster in access times and can be magnitudes faster in small file IO and throughput. mechanical drives are slooooooow, but theyre incredibly cheap. Until SSDs come down in price, there wont be "instant" on desktops from any vendor. of course, as already stated, there are motherboard flash chips running gOS and Express Gate that power on a system in mere seconds using very similar technology to handhelds, but they only offer the basic functionality like web surfing, document writing, email, and IM and would never realistically be able to support advanced applications like photoshop, Office, gaming, etc.
most of the bullet points are flat stupid. i think the author looks at computing differently than most people on this site. this is betanews, you wont see grandma or Joe PC User on here...we dont care how hard it is for those types to use a computer since they only provide us with additional side income anyway.
Score: 0
|"Forget the eye candy. I like drop-shadowed, translucent windows and animated transitions as much as anyone, but not when every mouse click brings my hardware to its knees."
Except, of course, that it is the GPU that looks after the eye candy, leaving the main CPU(s) to get on with the rest of the stuff. Windows 7 has optimized the CPU/GPU balancing somewhat.
Engineering Windows 7 : Engineering Windows 7 Graphics Performance
"Why must system performance degrade over time?"
LOL. This is supposed to be "Betanews"!
Score: 0
|>They open and close with an animated flourish
That looks to me like the box lacks the oomph
to do the job instantly. (My gracious. A 486dx
66 walking Win95 changes windows more
quickly than this new OS on a box that should
be about 25 times faster? Oh. It's a feature.
Hey, guys, go out sometime and learn what-
from the driver's seat-"zero to sixty in 2.6 sec"
_really means.)
>Please let me work
Please don't make me say "Good Computer!"
every time a task succeeds.
And when something goes "wrong" let me
decide forever if I actually care--Case in point.
An important system device is missing or (I
forget). Uh, yeah. It's charged so I took it off.
That's what we do with removable devices.
Score: 0
|Well the software company I work for is Microsoft FTW since they are a full fledge MSDN subscriber. So we will definitely be using 7 for development and using the heck out of XP mode to support our current models of development.
Score: 0
|yes, you are shameless. no doubt you wear lacy panties under that suit and tie on occasion.
perhaps, microsoft should simply sell a bare bones version of windows on the cheap.
then offer a variety of enhancements for downloading and each for a cost.
then "all" consumers can pick and choose what features they want or need.
personally, there is a lot of crap in Vista that i can do without, like Junk for tablet. I don't plan to get a tablet. So i don't know why I had to pay for the extra junk.
Score: 0
|You didn't...the Tablet stuff was free. ;)
Score: 0
|What's wrong with wearing lacy panties? I would think that would be a good thing. :D
Score: 1
|@PCT
you may think it is since you are not atuned to business finance.
but it took money to create the tablet services and others.
because there is a cost associated them, there is also a return that has to be made to offset those costs.
Score: 0
|@DBBen: Learn to take a joke, genius.
Score: 0
|@PCT
unfortunately, you're no longer entitled to the benefit of the doubt.
perhaps, in the future you can be humorous with those whom you haven't attacked, insulted or harassed.
Score: 0
|Heh..
My deepest apologies, oh ye of the oh so fragile ego.
Got a tip for ya: If yer gonna be posting inane BS about things you know *nothing* about on teh intarwebz, grow a spine. :D
"2kps instead of 6kps." Yeah, I still get a kick out of that one... Did I ever thank you for that?
Score: 0
|to Morriscox-
Laughing..I missed your post but sometimes humor is a good way to break the ice. Maybe Betanews should run another contest with the prizes being an assortment of multi-colored sizes but then again given the s*** they took on the last contest, I doubt that they will be running another contest any time soon.:)
Score: 0
|To Database-
I'll keep it short since it is not really on topic but my experience before retiring was in the book business and sometimes you offer as one time deal or as an ongoing service something that does have a cost associated with it but may not give you an ROI on that service but does give you some intangible benefits. Not every cost automatically needs an ROI.
Score: 0
|@bit30
true for the most part but not for analysts and accountants.
Score: 0
|Let's agree to disagree on that point:)
Score: 0
|"Because piles of features and eye candy somehow became more important to developers than outright performance and reliability."
..or because features and functionality became more important to users than blazing fast speed? (Vista was a black-eye in that department on both fronts) Not sure where you are getting the stability issues, but as it stands now, most OSes, free or otherwise tend to be rock solid in that department on supported hardware...
"They spent too much time spiffing up the front end and not enough time making the back end robust and efficient. "
Efficiency and robustness are subjective. If I have to install 18 applications to get the job done another "bloated" OS can do out of the box, how is that being more efficient or robust?
": As I'm writing this column, my computer is helpfully suggesting that my thumb drive would work faster if I plugged it into a USB 2.0-compliant port. As far as I can tell, it's a USB 2.0-compliant drive, and my laptop has only USB 2.0-compliant ports, so why is this error message taking over my machine every ten minutes? I suppose I could root around until I find a settings panel or dialog box that allows me to turn off such notifications permanently, but I've got a deadline, and I'm already annoyed by software that assumes I care. I don't. I just want it to work."
Here we have someone who does *not* want to be notified when something is wrong... whereas I would assume that most folks would like some kind of indication that their hardware is not performing properly. Sure, it's annoying when things go wrong (with *anything*) but isn't it better to *know* they are going wrong so you can *do* something about it rather than bury one's head in the sand?
"I like drop-shadowed, translucent windows and animated transitions as much as anyone, but not when every mouse click brings my hardware to its knees."
Sounds like your running the wrong OS for the hardware? Aero enabled on my HP ze2113us laptop runs fine. Sure, I won't be opening more than 3 or four apps at a time, but it still perofrms better than XP did...and Vista never would install on it.
"hy must there be six ways to change a printer? Why must I dig through multiple windows and panels to find what I need? Stick all settings in the same place to minimize wandering time and allow me to get back to work more quickly."
It's all about workflow and intuitiveness. While you can get to almost every setting through various OSes "control panels" putting *all* of the settings on *one* systems settings page would not only be absurd, but completely confusing to most users (information overload). Power users can easily set up shortcuts to their most altered settings and most OSes are pretty good about making settings the majority of users frequently change easily accessible (Win-P in Win7, for example).
"Being able to install something on last year's hardware and actually wanting to live with it are two very different things. If you oversell the product, I can guarantee you I'm switching OS vendors for my next machine."
Makes no sense. Obviously running an OS at it's bare minimum is going to suck...but why would that affect the next machine? Put something that works on the current one and something that works on the new one. Past issues shouldn't be relevant, what works best *now* should be.
"I shouldn't have to reinstall my OS every six months. Why must system performance degrade over time?"
It doesn't? XP was the only offender in recent memory in this category. XP is also nearing a decade old....
"Handheld devices are, for the most part, instant-on and fairly straightforward to use. There's no reason why desktops, laptops, and netbooks can't work the same way."
Splashtop, and others have shown there is no difference...unless you want more functionality, more options, and such. If all you are doing with the machine is email and document editing, use ExpressGate or Splashtop. Hell, use gOS...whatever suits your style. But you'll never see this in a gaming system, or a system that allows for upgrade flexibility because the driver-loading/swapping would involve reflashing (to avoid bloat and only include support for existing HW)...flashing is not generally recognized as a safe thing for most users to do...
So... I think we agree on most of these. :) It's definitely gotten better, but I think you're looking at it from a different perspective. I won't turn down an OS from any vendor based on past performance. Example: Ubuntu has always given me issues, but if they made a release that functioned better than Win7 does on the above laptop, I'd jump all over it. As it stands, Win7 boots faster and responds better than 9.04 currently. If that changes upon the next release, I'm not forced to stick with Win7 on that system by some silly notion of spite for their past mistakes.
Score: 0
|We still have a few Win 2K machines at our office. Yes, they are slow to POST, but they rarely crash and do everything that we need them to do. I look at many businesses and hospitals and government offices and see Win 2K running at these places. Why? Because it is no frills, no XPerience, it just gets the job done. To bad that it is no longer officially supported. Or, perhaps it is better that it is no longer supported. There are few "updates" to mess it up now.
Just my 2 cents.
Score: 1
|I agree with you regarding Win2k. It was possibly the most solid system MS has put out. Yes, a bit slow on startup, but when it ran, it ran rock solid and didn't seem to need the 6 month reinstall cycle that XP seemed to need.
Another system that is close to what it seems Mr. Levy describes is the old Geos Ensemble. It wasn't concerned with fancy GUI effects, it was concerned with giving you a straight forward interface and path to what you needed to do. The draw back though was that it was not able to keep up with the world's need and demand for media rich apps and networking/internet access. It was stuck with dialup only access. It eventually went the way side as many other systems did years ago. Eventually it did get picked up again, but it is still not up to date with what most of the world would expect from a system. You can check it out at http://www.breadbox.com/ If you have any old PC's floating around collecting dust, maybe you can revive them and make them a bit useful again with Breadbox Ensemble, or even Puppy Linux.
Score: 0
|"We still have a few Win 2K machines at our office. Yes, they are slow to POST, but they rarely crash and do everything that we need them to do."
Few things, not *trying* to be an ass...
1: POST means Power On Self Test. It is the initial BIOS load and testing prior to bootstrapping the OS. The OS has nothing to do with POST times, as it is not yet started.
2: I understand the "it still works for what we need" argument but am confused about why you think it is "better" than XP, which has had a number of years to mature, it's "frills" can be disabled through group policy settings or from the install image, and most important, it is still supported (and is 100% compatible).
While it is no surprise you've seen government agencies still doing it, please don't ever confuse what can be attributed to laziness or stupidity for a Good Idea™ with regards to *anything* the government does. :) Their track record for technological intelligence is astoundingly dense. :p
Score: 0
|but am confused about why you think it is "better" than XP, which has had a number of years to mature, it's "frills" can be disabled through group policy settings or from the install image, and most important, it is still supported (and is 100% compatible).
Probably because Win2k didn't need to be tweaked or messed with, it worked great as is from install and didn't require the user to do much of anything else but use it. That would be one of the main reasons why someone might say it was better than XP, otherwise, XP introduced many things that were either better than what Win2k had to offer, or didn't even exists in Win2k.
The catch 22 in all of this is that you can never really get too comfy with your OS because eventually you'll need to either upgrade or jump ship to another OS just to keep up with the times.
Score: 0
|"Probably because Win2k didn't need to be tweaked or messed with, it worked great as is from install and didn't require the user to do much of anything else but use it"
That's *highly* subjective. There are *countless* tweaks and modified "installs" of Windows 2000...just as there are with XP. It all depends on what *you* feel needs to be done.
So...out of curiosity, since you brought it up, what tweaking and "messing with" has to be done to XP to make it "usable"?
"The catch 22 in all of this is that you can never really get too comfy with your OS because eventually you'll need to either upgrade or jump ship to another OS just to keep up with the times."
I think we're beyond that with Win2k. ;)
Score: 0
|