Douglas A. Gwyn wrote:
Dave Lukes wrote:
> Given a wonderful OS used by 10 people or a crap OS used by 10E6
> people, I'll take the former.
The problem with that is that, except perhaps for research purposes,
an OS is not an end in itself, but rather a platform supporting
applications, which are what actually satisfy human needs.
To be specific:
the _percieved_ _needs_ of _it's_ user base.
> As time goes on, the popular platforms acquire a large number of apps
that
become ever more essential
"Essential"?
AFAIK the list of human "essentials" still only includes
air, water, food, shelter and sex*.
All the rest is window dressing.
The above may sound facetious but is seriously intended:
what your user community views as essential is down to that community,
not down to some perceived need for global conformity.
(PDF reader or MPG viewer, for example).
Why does one _need_ an mpg viewer?
If the OS developer population is below some critical mass, it can't
keep up with such user requirements and eventually the platform
becomes in effect unusable for what have become everyday needs.
I refer to my formula-1 analogy.
a Ferrari _is_ "in effect unusable for ... everyday needs",
yet I hear no-one decrying the imminent demise of the brand.
(There are similar problems in keeping up with device driver support
for new hardware.)
Again, by analogy, F-1 teams don't suffer from this problem.
i.e. there are solutions to this, but they involve lots of money ....
> Linux seems to have reached the critical
threshold, so it is "alive and well"; Plan9 seems to be well below
that threshold, and has become largely irrelevant, except perhaps as
a testing ground for ideas that may get adopted into more popular
platforms.
Hmmm ... Bit like a formula-1 car, really ...
D.
* and chocolate or course.
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