5 ms·

This feels like the computing equivalent of epicycles in medieval physics. Will we ever just admit that the vt100 tty is just no longer suitable as a basic OS

This feels like the computing equivalent of epicycles in medieval physics. Will we ever just admit that the vt100 tty is just no longer suitable as a basic OS abstraction, and needs to be torn out and replaced? Or in 50 years will simple interactive programs still not be able to detect keyup without importing a bunch of bloat from x11/wayland?

tyingq 5y ago
I suspect in 50 years that we will have lost control of the local compute end of things. Our new "dumb client" will be some future iteration of a web browser. And you won't be allowed to run anything outside of it. You'll be able to see keyup, but most of everything else will be on somebody else's server.
- jrumbut 5y ago
  Over the last 50 years there have been a few cycles between thin and thick clients (in different contexts) so hopefully it's not all one direction from here.
  - tyingq 5y ago
    I agree, though this time there's big money behind taking local control away.
    - generalizations 5y ago
      Which is why, as long as there's hackers, there'll be another cycle in the other direction.
      - tyingq 5y ago
        They aren't having much luck with the iPhone...
        w0de0 5y ago
        The are! It's just not an everyday occurrence - and so is worth much more - so most zero days end up in nation state hands.
        kingofclams 5y ago
        Take what i say with a grain of salt, (I’m not an iPhone hacker and I follow their work semi-loosely but from my understanding there are a number of available and documented tethered exploits. I wouldn’t doubt theres a number of untethered exploits that are waiting in Apple’s bug tracker system, or are simply too abusable for the general public to know about.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    I wonder if these cycles have been studied.
  - saurik 5y ago
    The thick clients, though, seem heavily tied to mechanisms that still prevent local control.
sprash 5y ago
If anything the vt100 ttys are just as suitable as ever. Command line interfaces are superior even today because the step from interaction to automation is as minimal as possible. I predict that the futuristc VR GUI of tomorrow will still be just a bunch of vt100 terminals floating in space.
- voldacar 5y ago
  Can't we dream bigger though? For instance, I feel like templeOS's command line is unironically conceptually superior than the linux commandline or any other unix. I should be able to mix text with 3d models or images or sound, pipe them between programs, etc. I should be able to pause a running program, save it to disk, and resume it later. There are all sorts of things that I should be able to do but can't, because of the deliberate unix fetishization of 1970s era computing. >Command line interfaces are superior even today because the step from interaction to automation is as minimal as possible. Agreed completely. In fact, the OS should force GUI programs to all speak a coherent language so that you can automate them and pipe data between them. And if the machine is going to serve the user, the user should be in control of the GUI, they should be able to move buttons and UI elements around into the configuration they prefer. This would only be possible if GUI programs had minimal control over actual UI layout, which would make webdevs angry. But given the state of web UI, I think that's an acceptable sacrifice. Much of the above was possible in lisp machines. But sadly I don't think it would be possible to create such an OS today (unless the "OS" is running in a linux VM and using linux for the actual hardware interface) due to the sheer diversity of hardware. And the closed source nvidia driver would ensure that you never got cool graphics.
  - sprash 5y ago
    In my opinion the mistake was to move away from the terminal in the first place. Many gui commands like "draw button in bottom right corner" could be done via escape codes and creating a gui program would be as simple as writing a bunch of commands to stdout. As far as I know the earliest prototypes of X worked just like that.
    - 5y ago
otabdeveloper4 5y ago
> no longer suitable No way, it's way more popular and useful than ever. We just need to ditch vt100 and settle on some sort of xterm variation as the new standard.
- blueflow 5y ago
  This won't have much effect, since xterm is an DEC VT emulator.
  - nitrogen 5y ago
    A superset though. It's perfectly fine to support ANSI and VT-100 if we can add new escape codes to switch to a standardized raw mode, just like has been done for 8-bit and 24-bit color, and for mouse support.
rbanffy 5y ago
If I read this correctly, this proposal aims to solve just that kind of stuff while remaining compatible with all the legacy software in use today.

tyingq 5y ago

I suspect in 50 years that we will have lost control of the local compute end of things. Our new "dumb client" will be some future iteration of a web browser. And you won't be allowed to run anything outside of it. You'll be able to see keyup, but most of everything else will be on somebody else's server.

jrumbut 5y ago
Over the last 50 years there have been a few cycles between thin and thick clients (in different contexts) so hopefully it's not all one direction from here.
- tyingq 5y ago
  I agree, though this time there's big money behind taking local control away.
  - generalizations 5y ago
    Which is why, as long as there's hackers, there'll be another cycle in the other direction.
    - tyingq 5y ago
      They aren't having much luck with the iPhone...
      - w0de0 5y ago
        The are! It's just not an everyday occurrence - and so is worth much more - so most zero days end up in nation state hands.
      - kingofclams 5y ago
        Take what i say with a grain of salt, (I’m not an iPhone hacker and I follow their work semi-loosely but from my understanding there are a number of available and documented tethered exploits. I wouldn’t doubt theres a number of untethered exploits that are waiting in Apple’s bug tracker system, or are simply too abusable for the general public to know about.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  I wonder if these cycles have been studied.
- saurik 5y ago
  The thick clients, though, seem heavily tied to mechanisms that still prevent local control.

sprash 5y ago

If anything the vt100 ttys are just as suitable as ever. Command line interfaces are superior even today because the step from interaction to automation is as minimal as possible. I predict that the futuristc VR GUI of tomorrow will still be just a bunch of vt100 terminals floating in space.

voldacar 5y ago
Can't we dream bigger though? For instance, I feel like templeOS's command line is unironically conceptually superior than the linux commandline or any other unix. I should be able to mix text with 3d models or images or sound, pipe them between programs, etc. I should be able to pause a running program, save it to disk, and resume it later. There are all sorts of things that I should be able to do but can't, because of the deliberate unix fetishization of 1970s era computing. >Command line interfaces are superior even today because the step from interaction to automation is as minimal as possible. Agreed completely. In fact, the OS should force GUI programs to all speak a coherent language so that you can automate them and pipe data between them. And if the machine is going to serve the user, the user should be in control of the GUI, they should be able to move buttons and UI elements around into the configuration they prefer. This would only be possible if GUI programs had minimal control over actual UI layout, which would make webdevs angry. But given the state of web UI, I think that's an acceptable sacrifice. Much of the above was possible in lisp machines. But sadly I don't think it would be possible to create such an OS today (unless the "OS" is running in a linux VM and using linux for the actual hardware interface) due to the sheer diversity of hardware. And the closed source nvidia driver would ensure that you never got cool graphics.
- sprash 5y ago
  In my opinion the mistake was to move away from the terminal in the first place. Many gui commands like "draw button in bottom right corner" could be done via escape codes and creating a gui program would be as simple as writing a bunch of commands to stdout. As far as I know the earliest prototypes of X worked just like that.
  - 5y ago

otabdeveloper4 5y ago

> no longer suitable No way, it's way more popular and useful than ever. We just need to ditch vt100 and settle on some sort of xterm variation as the new standard.

blueflow 5y ago
This won't have much effect, since xterm is an DEC VT emulator.
- nitrogen 5y ago
  A superset though. It's perfectly fine to support ANSI and VT-100 if we can add new escape codes to switch to a standardized raw mode, just like has been done for 8-bit and 24-bit color, and for mouse support.

rbanffy 5y ago

If I read this correctly, this proposal aims to solve just that kind of stuff while remaining compatible with all the legacy software in use today.