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Who"s davidlian?

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davidlian is an ultra-geeky chinese dude that works for a technology PR agency. He loves fiddling with techno-toys, plays Warhammer 40K, and shoots pictures wherever he goes. Here, he rants about PR, Technology and anything else. Don't expect balance and un-biased, he ain't no journalist. Anything said on this blog are solely davidlian's personal views. Don't confuse them with company mantra, client's views or views of any organisation he may be part of.

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Thursday, May 29, 2008

Operating System evolution: next up, Windows 7?

Recently, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer used the D conference to preview Windows 7 (the next OS after Vista). Have a look:



I feel like I'm a little bit more qualified to talk about operating systems now that I have an Eee that runs Ubuntu. After living thru six iterations of Windows (3.1, 95, 98, ME, XP and now Vista), Ubuntu was pretty much a schooling in terms of the philosophy of operating systems.

The thing I love about Ubuntu is that almost everything outside the core kernel (the central bit of code runs the system), everything else is a component. You can choose between GNOME, KDE or XFCE depending on what you like to see on your desktop. You can add a "dock" a la Mac OS, or a sidebar a la Windows Vista. You can choose to have multiple virtual desktops, or not. You can customise your OS to be as lean or as bloated as your want it.

And this is only in terms of the interface.

On the flipside, the problem with Vista was probably that it was designed in a time where the emphasis was on pretty graphics, and cool, clickable "things" on your desktop. 98, ME and XP before it was about integrating functionality (like tying Internet Explorer to your operating system) and making everything one bloated piece of work. The worst thing is, since everything is so integrated, you could turn off some stuff, but you could never really make it run as lean as a Linux machine.

So imagine how interesting it is for me to read that Mr. Gates and Mr. Ballmer are now claiming that Windows 7 will be lighter, faster, and more componentized.

More componentized you say? Like, I could pick and choose the bits and pieces of OS I'd like to have installed?
Is Microsoft finally seeing the errors of it's bloatware ways and going the way of the open source community?

From the video, I'm not so sure. Still, at least it looks like we'll get to choose between a Touch version and a non-touch one. Too bad I'm not a fan of finger-printing my screen.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Vista is really fat; lucky I got it subsidized through my old uni :). They better get it right with 7 or I'm going to dump Windows!!

Nah who am I kidding :(. Can't switch until they start making more games for other platforms.

davidlian said...

You're right about the games part. That's why I still run my desktop on Vista.

And all Apple computers are woefully underpowered to be games machines.

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