I just spent like an hour searching for an OSAlert story about this, because I was sure we posted about this, only to realise I was confused with this year-old story. Anyhow, this story is kind of similar in that John Brooks has released ProDOS 2.4 for the Apple II, fixing bugs, and adding features. I like Jason Scott’s take:
Next is that this is an operating system upgrade free of commercial and marketing constraints and drives. Compared with, say, an iOS upgrade that trumpets the addition of a search function or blares out a proud announcement that they broke maps because Google kissed another boy at recess. Or Windows 10, the 1968 Democratic Convention Riot of Operating Systems, which was designed from the ground up to be compatible with a variety of mobile/tablet products that are on the way out, and which were shoved down the throats of current users with a cajoling, insulting methodology with misleading opt-out routes and freakier and freakier fake-countdowns.
The current mainstream OS environment is, frankly, horrifying, and to see a pure note, a trumpet of clear-minded attention to efficiency, functionality and improvement, stands in testament to the fact that it is still possible to achieve this, albeit a smaller, slower-moving target. Either way, it’s an inspiration.
The ‘take’ on the current os updates status, is an interesting one and i agree that there is a shift away from what we, the users need, to what the corp’s need/want. they may be sprinkeling glitter and glaze on, but they can’t hide the turd underneath.
But what is really worrying is thom’s ability to find and use a gilmore girls clip, even in context
What, pray, was the context? Perhaps I’m just not familiar with the Gilmore Girls, but I just don’t get it.
Yesterday was also the 30th Anniversary of the Apple IIGS
Time to boot up my Apple II emulator.
I cut my teeth on ProDOS and Apple DOS 3.3 when I was five years old, and kept with it until I got a Mac around age nine or ten. I loved it then, and it still brings up fond memories today. It’s sometimes good to see it just for the memories, but to actually see an update to it even now… Well, this made my day.
Linux is not that THAT trashed, also…[yet].
We’ll always have Slackware… *BSD… Haiku… Hurd… My project OS that I keep saying I’m going to write but never really get around to….
I loved Slackware back in the day. Given the state most Linux systems are in these days, I think it’s time it and I get reacquainted. Even Arch, which used to be simple like Slackware but with more packages, has gone down the ultra complex route. Slackware retains that OpenBSD-like simplicity that makes my life so much easier. Heck, I’d use OpenBSD more often but its hardware support just isn’t quite up to scratch. OpenBSD does make great gateways and servers though, if you buy the right hardware specifically with it in mind.
That simplicity is what I really loved about Unix-like OSes to begin with.
I dropped Arch from my watch/use list after the switch to Systemd. You’re right, it wasn’t easy anymore; the BSD style init was just so clean.
I’ve been getting back into FreeBSD again, and I’ve been meaning to get to know OpenBSD more.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AndroidQuestions/comments/52oc9i/what_is_fd…
Edited 2016-09-16 15:18 UTC
The flip side of that, unfortunately, is that often those features are incomplete or work they way the developers want and not the way the users will expect. There are a few good examples of F/OSS software (Apache, PostgreSQL, Firefox, the Linux kernel) but a lot of the time the rest just don’t have the resources to keep up with what the users really do need. The best open source projects, from a users perspective, are often (though not always) the ones that have an entity backing them with money and have paid developers actively debugging them. The rest tend to have loads of features that just don’t quite work. It’s the 80/20 rule, and the 80% is just not fun so there’s no incentive to do it apart from money once the program works to the developer’s satisfaction.
With Linux it depends on which Company it is and what technology they’re pushing. RedHat pushes subscriptions, and Canonical will try anything to make some cash. Something like Gentoo or Slackware are pretty much a blank canvas.
FOSS stuff has politics to deal with. You’re not really going to find something that is entirely free of some sort of agenda. Somethings may be more opinionated about their point of view, python vs perl or Ubuntu vs gNewSense, but they are still going to be there.
I swear I must have asked this before, but did Apple release the ProDOS source code at some point? Is that what they’re building this off of?
The issue with modern “OS” upgrades is that they’re not solely “OS” based, but, particularly with Apple, they’re Applications Updates.
Granted, perhaps some underlying mechanism is enabled in the kernel to facilitate some feature, but in truth, these are application changes.
“New iMessages”. That’s not an OS, it’s a messaging app.
Being creaky and old school, the OS to me is the kernel, swapping, and, now, power management etc.
To the point, Apple has done a lot of work on the OS — notably in things like power management, memory management, graphics subsystem, etc. So each new OS does have new “OS” features.
But what we the consumers see, and react to, are the visual changes to the applications riding on top of the OS. Since the modern OS environments are application rich, there’s motivation redo the user experiences each time.
Of course with iOS, each update they poke yet another gate in to the armor that surrounds the applications, thus opening up new functionality.
In the meantime, I updated to iOS 10 last night, and can announce that I can chat with fireworks now.
You don’t need the original source for something like this. Small vital parts of old computers have all long since been reverse engineered any number of times. Want a better version of TopDos for the Atari? I have my own reverse engineered version that I made a number of changes to.
These aren’t modern OSes with gigs of code and data, we’re talking like anything from 2KB to maybe 100KB at best.