Breaking down the OSes...

Soldato
Joined
12 Jan 2004
Posts
3,172
Location
Brighton
Ok, I have a question.

When did the windowing system become the OS?

Following on from another thread in the Windows forum (btw, I like how windows gets its' own forum and all the "alternative" operating systems get bunched in here) the operating system is quite a bit different from the GUI, so my question is...

What are the main difference between the "Kernel" of most operating systems, such as Windows, Mac (Unix BSD) and Linux?

Because, at the end of the day, most proponents of any operating (such as Vista, Mac OS) talk about things in terms of the GUI (Mac looks prettier etc).

It is my theory that if it would be possible to get a version of Aqua and Aero working on linux, it drive home the point that your operating system != your GUI. Linux already has GNOME and KDE (amongst others). What benefits would this have?

A) People would no longer be able to purely justify an operating system on the fact that it is pretty.
B) Operating system developers can no longer justify their operating system based on mostly "peripheral" or cosmetic differences.
C) People have more choice between what the guts of the machine they are running is doing, and how they can interact with it.

It would also aid in the development of software that runs on all operating systems.

Any comments?
 
The operating system is just a collection of different programs, the kernel, GUI, boot loader, disk management etc. While the kernel may be the "heart" of the operating system, non-tech people have no idea what it is, when they see a computer all they see is the GUI, that is why a lot of the time it is seen as the most important part, if not the only part.

Basically its because dumb users don't know anything about computers other than "it looks pretty"

[edit]

I am no expert, but I am sure it would be pretty much impossible to get Aero working natively on Linux, you might be able to get Aqua working because its built on BSD, but the moment anyone even started such a project they would get shut down by Microsoft and Apple's lawyers.
Also without having the source code for either would make things a lot harder.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom