What do you look for in an OS?

[piranha]

What do you think?

What if you could change the amount of each as an option in the OS?

[Alboin]

This is a really hard poll. On one hand, I think speed and stability make the OS, while on my government conspiracy paranoid hand security is very important. Moreover, I also think the OS should be able to get what I want done quick, so ease of use is also important.

If I had to pick one, I guess my government conspiracy hand wins: security.

[jerryleecooper]

I chose speed, because it's what matters for me in my WouldBeOneDay great exokernel. But speed and exokernel is not a good marriage, no?

edit. I said silly things. Oh my.

[Zacariaz]

i voted stability but really i could have voted anything else.

What i look for is simplicity.

If i go out to buy a new mobile phone and ask the salesman if he has got something simple. I tell him that i need a phone, and nothing else. No camara, mp3 player, wap, mms, toaster, etc. the answer is no.

What i look for is a stable, simple, userfriendly OS, with the stuff that you actually need, and nothing more.

[os64dev]

i don't vote, because i miss the option all of the above.

[Combuster]

I'd have stability pass as a first. If the system breaks down every other time, the rest of the qualities are not of any use (many of the other features imply stability: not needing to wait for the computer to reboot, not having to look at the bios and guru meditation screens wondering what that is for, less opportunities to slip in a bootable disk)

Of course the three other items are very important to consider as well, although they depend on the intended use. Some systems can do without security, optimisations for speed or an full-blown user interface. Just consider the full range of embedded devices as opposed to the desktop PC.

[Dex]

i voted stability, its the most important of part of any OS or program, that why i alway try and keep the design simple, as it much easier to debug and find the bugs before others do.
But theres always that odd PC that like to be difficult.

[SpooK]

A good sense of humor.

Seriously though, too quote my own OS development text...

Safety
The priority is safety, because if the system crashes and becomes unusable, not much else matters.

Security
Second is security, denying the capability of malicious programs such as viruses and worms to wreak havoc on the system is a must. Even more so is security-related software, denying access to such software's memory space is imperative.

Efficiency
People tend to claim that it is OK to write inefficient software, stating that "computer systems are so fast these days, that you won't see the impact." This type of mentality is dangerous in operating system design. It might be OK to write sloppy code when making a simple application, but when it comes to critical code that may get called thousands of times per second, you need to take out all the overhead you can. The operating system should supply the computer as a basic resource, to all applications, with as little complication, abstraction and overhead as possible... else it could eat up valuable system resources and make a run-away impact on the the entire system.

This would break down to stability, security, speed and efficiency in that order... so I voted for stability

[Pirogoeth]

Stability over everything else, and security coming in second. Speed and user friendliness are only meaningful if it's got the other two.

[frank]

IMO I think this should have been more of a list them in the order of importance kind of thing. So I'll do that.

1. Stability
2. Speed
3. Ease of use
4. Security

Of course this is coming from a person who has never had a virus, that I know of.

[Alboin]

Of course this is coming from a person who has never had a virus, that I know of.

Let's go back to a day a few years ago. I had just bought a new PC. (It was running Windows, as always.) As I had just gotten it, I had not had time to install Linux, so I innocently went on the web to research something. This is the first time IE was ever ran, mind you, on the PC. After a few hours of surfing, my system crashes and I get a small window with a countdown in it. 20 seconds later my system was down. I reboot. The same thing happens.

I have to do a system restore to get it back to a working state.

That's one reason security's important to me, and that's why I use a *nix.

<Insert catchy jingle here>

[binutils]

i chose usability of my own sense.

[inflater]

Stability as a 1st. If a OS doesn't contain bugs, therefore, it doesn't crash and it's stable. And if it doesn't crash and it doesn't contain bugs, in other words, it's stable, there are no exploits to discover - it's secure
The 3rd thing is speed, if the OS would crash and it would be unstable - its worthless then - and the fourth is ease of use.

Regards
inflater

[com1]

After working with windows for many years (and finally switching to Linux), i must say i would rather have an operating system that is more stable and less pretty. Vista is the epitomy of an os with pretty graphics and much less stability... a second thing would probably be speed (efficiency)

[AndrewAPrice]

I'd look for speed and stability.

I don't care much about ease of use unless I have to go through a huge routine to do simple tasks and then it just becomes plain annoying.

I don't care about security either (i.e. if you don't want file sharing - just disable file sharing!). Besides, if you're behind a hardware firewall (i.e. a modem/router) you don't have much to worry about.
a) It's not like I have top secret nuclear plans stored on my computer.
b) Any problems with.. say.. a webpage executing remote code, should be the responsibility of the browsing program.
c) If you run a malicious program on your computer, then IMHO the PEBKAC not with the OS writers.