New developments with today's -- and tomorrow's -- OSes
Edmund X. DeJesus
No one ever bought a computer to run the operating system. And yet, OSes often inspire a "rather-fight-than-switch" loyalty among their users. Many users have been caught up in religious wars.
Expectations of OSes are constantly changing. We used to be pretty happy if it simply ran our application and let us manually configure the system with arcane and undebuggable commands. Now, we're miffed unless these software servants can automatically recognize and use all equipment (even on-the-fly modifications); wring the utmost performance out of the CPU, memory, hard drive, monitor, and all the peripherals; network effortlessly with practically any other machine; provide a stable, crash-proof platform for applications to run on; support a
simple but rich applications development environment; and clothe the whole shebang in a snazzy designer interface -- which users can customize to their heart's content. Not much to ask.
Our lead article ("OS Paradise" by Tom Yager) shows how OS vendors are meeting the challenge with 32-bit desktop OSes possessing some heaven-sent features. Text boxes look at Linux, a public domain superstar ("The Linux Phenomenon"); some behind-the-screens considerations of user-interface (UI) design ("What You See: What You Want?"); and two OS architects who have each gotten a second shot at designing a new OS ("Doing It Over").
Utility programs provide a welcome and necessary adjunct to the powers of the OS. Historically, pioneering features have appeared in utilities first and in OSes later. While Windows 95 has numerous features that were previously offered by third-party utilities, it also opens the door to new possibilities. In "Filling in Windows Blanks," Peter D. Varhol details some fresh opportunities for
utilities in Windows 95, as well as some classic utilities for other OSes.
In "Not THAT DOS," Paul Korzeniowski discusses new distributed OSes, many of which exist only in university research labs -- but perhaps not for long. Systems such as Plan 9 (from AT&T) and Spring (from SunSoft) have features valuable in the networked world, while Exokernel, Spin, Scout, and Flux explore the outer reaches of OSdom.
Barry Nance ("Sincere OS Flattery") shows how one OS can be made to run applications intended for another, thanks to third-party emulation software. In today's multiplatform office, that flexibility becomes essential.
Object-oriented OSes promise to simplify applications development. But where are they? Dick Pountain explores their nature -- and why they don't seem to be moving off the horizon -- in "OO Meets OS." The good news is that they really are getting closer.
Developers writing applications today must often pay attention to more than one OS platform. David Linthicum leads a t
our of development tools ("And One for All") that may simplify cross-platform development chores.
No discussion of OSes would be complete without mentioning crashes. BugNet's Bruce Brown ("Crashing the Party") examines these daily cataclysms from his unique perspective, giving helpful recipes for crashing all the major desktop OSes -- and insights into what they reveal about the inner workings of each one.
Available only on BYTE's World Wide Web site (
http://www.byte.com
), Edmund X. DeJesus's "Reconcilable Differences" examines Microsoft's struggle to maximize Windows 95's compatibility with existing DOS and Windows applications. The programs that still won't work exactly right seem to fall into distinct categories.
Unless you're still running programs by rewiring circuit boards, you're dealing with an OS every day. Our lineup will keep you up on what's new and decidedly different in the software we love to hate.
Smooth Operators
