OSDev.org

Windows 8 and RT are surely to cause confusion. Alternative, commercial, OSs might have chances in the future. It seems that the open source (e.g. Linux / KDE / GNOME) is not going to take over the desktops. It is not convincing. Too many choices without strong "default." This might be a flammable claim.

At least things are not getting worse. People are now more aware of the fact that Windows (or OS X) is not the only way to go. They use a lot of "alternative" OSs already (e.g. mobile phones, tablets). It means that perhaps PC could also have something new. It would not be so strange anymore.

I think this whole lot is going to splinter the market further, with only some javascript language abused for something it was never meant to do being the only viable option for truly cross-platform development including all the mobile platforms. Secure boot is just going in line there of forcing people to stick with one method or the other.

In other words, why does this war need to be fought out over the heads of developers.

Too many choices? Be purged, unbelieving! It's the choice that makes you free! </GNU Churchist imitation, with some self (self = GNU Churchist, not me, that is)-irony involved>

Anyway, I think that's what most of us aspire to do - an OS that is usable, that makes good platform to develop for, makes setup easy, and comes with official APIs and tools for most things - like window manager, GUI toolkit (but serious one, not like WinAPI - eh) et al.

And it must Just Work - without countless hours spent to compiling and installing (looking at you, Gentoo), with user friendly installer, with some system tutorial included, without too much visual effects (I would say that Win8 desktop style is pretty much perfect, when it comes to amount and quality of visual effects), with easy way to install applications (I think we all agree that real package managers are the way to go; even with commercial applications involved, properly designed package manager should allow easy addition of repositories and a way to find out who tries to download and install the package).

And this, my fellow OSDevers, are the reasons you should join the Reaver Project in its perfect spirit oriented on the goals above </shameless and self (self = me, this time)-ironic advertisements of a soon-to-be-awesome barely-started project advertisement>

@Combuster: no, Secure Boot is a step in (generally) right direction, just made with left leg instead of right. If it was just about using .efi hashes in some smart way, it could be really decent - just not in its current form.

I'm going to buy Real-Time Windows, soon.

Griwes wrote:I think we all agree that real package managers are the way to go

I know that by "we" you meant the regulars on the forums, but I felt like widening your horizons a little bit. There are people out there (I know at least one such person) who dislike packaging, repositories, stores and all that jazz and prefer the good old Windows way of double clicking setup.exe.

Creepy.