On binary drivers and stable interfaces

On binary drivers and stable interfaces

Posted Nov 11, 2005 2:03 UTC (Fri) by bk (guest, #25617)
In reply to: On binary drivers and stable interfaces by cventers
Parent article: On binary drivers and stable interfaces

I agree. The single-user OS idea is valid and a good niche to explore, however there's no reason why the Linux kernel can't be part of it. Linux is a *general purpose* kernel, not a Unix operating system in and of itself.

It's a problem of userspace engineering. Although I'm going to be booed for saying it, Lindows (or whatever they're calling it now) tried to fulfill the ideal of a simple consumer desktop OS and got nothing but skepticism from the majority of people. It was single user (root), simple, largely non-configurable, point-and-click everything and so on. You could argue the *implementation* of the idea was sub-optimal (I would agree), but that says nothing about the merit of the core ideal.

Perhaps Lindows didn't go far enough; it still exposed enough of its Linux underpinnings that people reviewed it as if it were just another Linux distribution. Linux 2.6 has the facilities to completely replace the classic Unix user/group security scheme, if one had a lot of ambition and venture capital another attempt at a mass market single-user OS might be worthwhile.

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