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Time for a new desktop OS

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by the admiral 3 views

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Over the past 10 years, I have seen a certain disdain for any desktop operating system other than Microsoft. Windows 95 kicked it off with making the user interface more ?intuitive? than many of the other operating systems. At the time, many of the other operating systems that were being developed started to look more like Windows with the GUI. The problem with those OS?s has always been trying to get the hardware vendors to sit up and take notice.

OS/2, one of IBM?s more stable Desktop OS products was initially in the running with the 32-bit architecture, being the first to market with the OS to desktops that were still running Windows 3.1. Jointly built by IBM and Microsoft, it had all of the great benefits of becoming the next Windows NT, until the two companies split. Once that tear happened, the Operating System war started, and the fallout from that war is still being felt.

Now that we see that IBM is pulling out of OS/2, and Microsoft is riddled with problems before the Operating Systems are released, it is time to start thinking about the next evolution of the operating system. The BE/Os was a great step forward, but unfortunately, did not take off with any measurable success in the retail sector. It is time for a division between desktop and server operating systems in that what riddles the desktop OS does not riddle the server OS, as we have seen in previous times with other OS?s.

Computer users around the world are clamoring for a set and forget OS where they can install it in less than half an hour, and when it is installed, it is resistant to viruses, spy ware, and other nasty bugs. I don?t blame them. From my perspective, I am sick and tired of having to keep my definitions updated and the patches streaming because of the seemingly large lack of forward thinking in products. It may not even be the lack of forward thinking, but the lack of intelligent management of problems that lead to the case of a new OS.

I suggest a prom based kernel OS where when you turn the power on, it is there, and there is no problems with the OS. The OS is what drives everything. If you change out the modem, then you lost the ability to use the modem because the OS on a PROM don?t recognize the card, it has to be done through software. Applications can be loaded, but since it will be loaded in its own memory space rather than be integrated into the OS, if the Word Processor Crashes, it does not take down the desktop or other processes working in the background. If you want to do multi-media, since most if not all of the functions is done by software already, why the need to have it integrated into the OS?

I am not being a purist here at all, I just believe that the more junk that we put into an operating system in order to do the stuff we want on demand, the more patches we need in order to keep it running. Who ever heard of needing to patch sound drivers because of an exploit? Or even a better one, a printer driver that allows a hacker to gain access to a system, or a manner of rendering the graphics from a webpage allows someone to take over your system? It has gone from mildly amusing to lunacy.

I suggest this, because companies are spending too much time and effort on items that should be the vendor?s responsibility. Microsoft should be drawn and quartered if their system (which by the way was patched previously ? remember unPnP?) is still vulnerable. Then an aggregate release of windows with all of the patches goes from Windows 2000 to Windows XP? Please, how about canning the speeches on innovation and start talking about the value that your operating system brings me if it is unbreakable.

For years, the Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 was something I used because of how easy it was to get rid of corruption in the Kernel. Power On/Power Off was the solution. Within 10 seconds, I was sitting there ready for the next program to be loaded and ran. Slow, sure, but those easily learned lessons about computing has become lost in a sea of bureaucracy, and now all users from Mom & Dad to large corporations are feeling the pinch. Just how long are we going to go before we start telling companies like the Operating System makers for every vulnerability in the OS that is found we demand a refund of a proportionate amount of money?

What the heck, if the Anti-Tobacco Lobby can blame companies for people?s bad habits, then why can?t we blame manufacturers of OS?s and applications for bad or vulnerable code?

27 replies

by tony hopkinson

A bunch of IT CEOs stood before a house committee, serially swearing
'We never knew client side scripting was a security risk'.

LOL

by jmgarvin

While in theory this is workable, the overhead can be a killer. If you can solve these issue, you can make a ton of money:
1) How do we gracefully (and quickly) load and unload "modules" so that there is no peformance hit on the system. Context switching probably won't be workable, so something more "interesting" is needed.

2) How do we keep track of various hardware and software (if the hardware or software changes how do we keep that in memory?) Part of the problem is that the PROM isn't writable (at least I'm assuming).

3) Paging/segmation can be problematic with lots of thrashing as disk access with be more often without proper "module" management

(I have more, but I'm out of time)

by the admiral

1. Never was a big problem with 16 Bit OS's. Loading and unloading modules is not a necessity if your Kernel has the hardware and appropriate modules for the OS already pre-configured.

2. Hardware for base systems is not a problem. The software for additional items can be placed in a drivers folder where install programs have access to then is locked down except for system processes.

3. Paging and segmentation is always going to be a problem even with proper module management.

Just remember, the OS is on the Prom, applications are not supposed to run in it. The Virtual stuff is to happen outside of the realm of the prom into seperate processes. Memory space is divvied up by need, and rather than having virtual space, you have space the apps can run in. The Prom is responsible for the stable running of the environment. All of the other virtual items are done outside of the main OS code.

by a.mcpherson

The main difference with exokernels and current microkernels is
that exokernels load modules depending on what the application
needs to run.
The exokernel is even smaller than a microkernel and it is
dynamic, your circumstances are not going to always be the
same, except on embedded systems like traffic lights.
However, if you want a fixed and stable OS, do it on the PROM.
But, I am making my OS able to run on a wide variety of
hardware as a portable CD / DVD / USB key system you can use
anywhere you are. By not fixing the OS to the computer, you
gain continuity of user experience regardless of computer.

by a.mcpherson

I'm doing an exokernel rewrite of the netbsd kernel. This, along
with a new Gui that takes advantage of the new features is called
KAOS. I would have this running on pretty much anything,
including the toaster (yes, there is a toaster running netbsd), the
idea is not to do the OS on PROM unless you won't update the
hardware.
There are EEPROMs, but it's still a bad idea to implement an OS by
ROM as you lose that adaptabilty you need for hardware updates.

by rmrenneboog

Whoa, people! I really think you are on to something with this train of ideas. Instead of having a huge, massive OS living as a transient species on your HD, why not have a basic OS (that just tells the hardware what it can and can't do) living in a removable module? Software could then live in individual modules that could be added or removed as needed, according to the tasks at hand. Want to run Linux instead of Windows? Pop out the Windows OS module and plug in the Linux OS module, or run them side by side. Word processing module goes here, spreadsheet module goes there, database module, office suite module, graphics module, etc. etc. etc. Do you see where this is heading? It's been right in front of our faces since the days of the old VIC-20 ind Sinclair Z80s, but we didn't see it or where it could go, and we let Bill Gates and the others lead us down the path of monopolistic profit-driven monolithic design that has brought us to the current mess in which we find ourselves. I say it is indeed time that the original design path was resurrected and brought into the 21st century!

by a.mcpherson

I am making an exokernel rewrite of the Netbsd microkernel.
If you have applications load OS modules before first run, then you
get this very stable OS where a app crash only takes down that app.

by themonster

OS code loaded off PROM (probably EEPROM, with a physical switch that must be manually engaged to enable writes) doesn't require a dedicated DMA any more than code loaded from a hard drive or over the network.

As EEPROMs have gotten larger, it has become posible to include LILO/GRUB, a Linux kernel, init scripts, shell, libraries (including X) along with a replacement for the old BIOS. I'd want to have a basic ROM that never gets overwritten, which can in an emergency boot a floppy, CD, HD, or USB stick with repair tools on it, and preferrably several separate banks of EEPROM for redundancy.

I'd use cramfs for most of this job.
A system that can load these things from EEPROM while the hard drives are still spinning up could really be an 'appliance' that can be turned on and off at will, and be especially resistant to viruses because of the write protection.

by theoracleprodigy

Sounds like a recompiled kernel in Linux to me. I agree that its nuts to have all the drivers for everything that have exposure to any part of the system. If you think about it windows is sitting there just waiting for you to plug in anything and it has the driver right there for it. How many operations per second are wasted on things like this that just might happen? I also agree why is it the network administrator?s problem when manufactures can't put out software that?s not vulnerable. The Microsoft xp exploit from a web page was the funniest and downright biggest mistake I have ever seen. Look how many patches there are for XP personally I think its nuts. If there was enough software on Linux I would dump Microsoft in a second. But see that?s the catch, there is not enough software out there for any other operating system because there are not enough users. So we have to bite out tongue and deal with the necessary evil of Windows.

by itguyy

Ok so your kernel is protected....

What about your data, applications, et al?

I don't think this is something that can't be exploited or will keep you from viruses/worms/hacks. Just a new challenge to overcome. For instance, your kernel is fine, but you add SMB to browse files systems and that gets hacked, or your users opens up security....

The other thought I had, Windows is what it is because the majority of people couldn't figure out the previous OS's. As a kernel for geeks, by geeks this would be sweet! But I kindof thought that's what Linux or CISCO were and its still not really adoptable by the masses for the same reason.

Just my thoughts on this subject.

-ITGuyy

by rm3mpc

I suspect a lot of capabilities have been added since the PROM/
EPROM-based OSes. Hardware's cheap, so that might not be too
big an issue.

Somebody in this thread suggested- rightly, I think- that if you
embed the OS in hardware, you still haven't prevented malware
from being installed on your system and running. Virus and
spyware writers will just get more creative.

What do you do with a hardware-based OS when you want to
add new classes of devices or fix bugs?

I'm inclined to agree that Unix and Linux aren't ready for prime
time. The interface is too complex for most users, who don't
want to do computer stuff anyway, they just want to turn their
systems on, use E-mail, a database, word processing or image
processing or whatever, and turn the computer off.

Ahem... how come nobody's raised the topic of the Mac OS yet?
It's built on top of Unix, which has a track record for reliability
and security that goes back over a third of a century. Unix is
widely used by the telecommunications industry, universities,
Internet service providers, and the list goes on. It's been
thoroughly kicked around. There's a ton of software that runs on
the Mac platform, and there are compilers that can generate
code on a cross-platform basis, so it's certainly within the realm
of possibility for developers who haven't written Mac versions of
their software - yet! - to do so. It's a market thing.

Which means that Apple has to do its part to popularize the OS
and build the incentive to port software. But if you're looking for
reliable and secure and easy to live with, then name a better
competitor. Windows isn't it (I almost said "Windows doesn't
hack it," but that's hitting too close to home!). It's a security
nightmare, and takes the equivalent of a college degree plus
ongoing credits to keep it going. And I doubt very much that it
will improve.

by jgreasebal

Since we're saying if there's a problem we can reboot, why not use or make a live cd like Knoppix. This way all you need the hard drive for is storage of your files.....

by warren sever, mcp

The OS you propose, regardless of architecture, would have to be PERFECT at v.1.0, because you seem to believe that Microsoft is doing something WRONG by identifying their imperfections and issuing patches...and you would have to convince every living human being not to try to hack it. Ain't gonna happen. You are just fantasizing. Wake up and get back to work.

by the admiral

Prove it. I have three sets of PC's at my house that prove what your saying is opposite.

A Commodore 128 with a hard drive and Ethernet Card and a bunch of other toys is one of them that has the BIOS that is initialized in 2 seconds, which loads the modularized application support on top.

by jdchapman

The question isn't can a commodore 128 be hacked. I'm sure it can. The reson it's not is that there is no point. Who would feel a sense of victory or superiority by taking down a machine from the stone age of computing. These guys get off on creating problems for large numbers of users supposedly using secure software. No one bothered to worry about security on a commodore 128. The biggest worry back then was that someone would walk up to the computer and steal info on a floppy disk. As for the MacOS. There have been plenty of viruses for mac but it doesn't affect enough users to make headlines. Sames true for unix though some of the first viruses did target unix and it's had decades to put proper security measures in place.
Bottom line is that there is no perfect system.

by neil higgins

The nightmare of trying to build the "perfect OS" has been going on for years.The main problem is knitting together all the spagetti code so that each piece talks to each other,runs easily on the desktop,and only needs updating periodically.As Zevon has said,the big problem is the hacker/cracker/etc who think $icrosoft is there for the taking.I've no idea how many people work at Redmond,and surrounding areas,it has to be roughly 20,000,with each person doing their "bit",which has to be tested,approved,and incorporated into the "stable" OS.A perfect v.1.0 is unachievable,as no matter how long you test it in Alpha,and Beta modes,eventually it has to be released into the "wild",ie,to the masses.Only then do problems appear,in the shape of new hardware architecture complaining,new technologies,and of course the usual idiots,who try and play Russian Rulette in the form of exploits.The only safe way is to go back to the abacus,shrug our shoulders,kiss "any code" goodbye,and go home.It is'nt going to happen.And if anyone thinks Linux,or the Mac is 100% fool-proof,dream on.

by robert.foreman

The problem we are suffering from is not really the OS it does things that 10 years ago we only dreamed of. The real problem is people who want to cause problems and disrupt the normal user who is just tring to do their job. Thus if any OS gets to be on 90 some-odd % of the worlds computers then that OS will be the target of malisious software.

by charleym

I agree the problem is with the people writing the problem software. I think it is time to bring the tar and feathers back for hackers, spammers, and virus writers followed by a nice long term in jail.

by jmgarvin

MS only holds about 95% of the desktop market and ONLY about 50% of the server market. Not to mention that Apache is far more popular a web server than IIS, but Apache isn't attacked as often.

How do you explain things like *nix having real kernel and user space, while MS keeps mudging everything together in a kludgy registry that is easily exploited? How about the gaping holes in security that MS gives the crackers?

by jdchapman

The reason that microsoft operating systems are insecure goes back to their main premise in creating an operating system with a GUI. Ease of use. An inherent risk comes with plug and play. Risk of exploitation comes whenevery you make anything easily configurable. If you make things very easy to do you, are opening the can of worms. Could the average power user install a new video card on a unix based operating system. The answer is most likely no. Also people don't tend to attack the underdog. I'm sure there are plenty of vulnerabilities in linux that have neither been researched nor exploited. There are too many people involved in the project for proper discipline to have been maintained in every area. Complexity creates problems that cannot be forseen sometimes. One can not always tell how one module will affect another.
I'll bet you'll find a lot less apache in the corporate world than you'd expect. It's popular becaue it's "free" and runs on a "free" operating system. Therefore every tom, dick and harry who were creating a startup company during the internet bubble used it to cut overhead. So did the home/personal users.

by warhog73

Go here_ http://nvd.nist.gov/ for some hard stats. 1st page, 20 vulnerabilities per page. Linux_5, MS_1, unless you count Apache as Linux-type, then it's 6. Go back 3 months, it's tit for tat. I never realized until I checked this registry out. Firefox (I'm not countin' this as Linux, BTW, just as 'supposedly secure') has the most vulnerabilities (9) in sequence on pages of 20 vulnerabilities per page, with MS next(8). Linux has no more than 3 in a row in any one instance. Most code out there is inherently insecure, and just because a lot of folks peek at it doesn't necessarily make it secure. My knowledge is VERY limited, but I've been taught that real security requires debugging/examination by qualified folk with a good math background. Security wasn't a big thing when the original designs of Windows were made. Same with Unix and Linux. All dinosaurs? To the best of my knowledge,they were all designed as single user systems with no network access and didn't have any need for security. I'm assumin' that's part of the reason the author here calls for a new OS for the desktop. Anyway, I'm not well-educated on all of this, just goin' by what I've come up on and been taught in the last few years. EAL-7, now that's secure. But for a desktop, EAL-4 is probably good enough. I'm puttin' my time & money on Bluecat/LynxOS from Lynux Works getting to that level (7) first and foremost, but that's not relevant to the desktop discussion, I reckon.

by jmgarvin

Unix was designed to work on a network originally. It was designed with ARPA in mind (at least at some level). *nix is designed to be more secure.

You need to check:
http://www.sans.org/top20
http://www.cert.org

*nix is more secure than Windows for a number of reasons. You need to remember that user space and kernel space in *nix is seperate, which is unlike windows. Also in *nix it doesn't have a "registry" like Windows. This single point of entry is a huge problem that has not been addressed very well by MS.

Oh and ease of use does not mean less secure. While there is some relation, you can still have an easy to use product that is more secure than Windows. Check out Mac OS X.

by warhog73

I don't mean to change the subject so abruptly, and I don't know if it's worth a hoot, but Linspire is offerin' 5.0 (downloadable version) for free until Sept.6. You fill out the form, use "Linspire" as the $49.95 coupon code, and you've got it. Here's where I'm trying (no success yet)_ http://www.linspire.com/products_order_linspire50.php and there are probably other routes as well.The servers are super-busy, so ya gotta be patient. I don't know if it's worth waiting for, but there it is.

by jmgarvin

1) Most *nix have some method of plug and play. Red Hat has kudzu for instance

2) Why is *nix the underdog with 50% of the market?

3) Sure *nix has vulnerablities and they are documented all the time. http://www.cert.org 'Course the vulnerabilities are actually FIXED...

4) How do you explain Apache holding over 60% of the web server market if nobody in corporations uses it?

5) You are implying that free is bad. Why?

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