3 ms·

Because we're using operating systems rooting from 80-s and nobody's going to rewrite them from the scratch along with all the software running on top of them.

Because we're using operating systems rooting from 80-s and nobody's going to rewrite them from the scratch along with all the software running on top of them. Web applications are the best thing we could get.

TeMPOraL 3y ago
Well, if Ubuntu Snaps are any indication, then I'm happy for the 1980s OS design. I mean, it's cool that you can get a sandboxed program with simple CLI comamnd. It sucks that it's completely useless until you figure out how to give it access to the host file system, because guess what, most software that's useful for anything other than entertainment needs to interoperate with other software using files. To be fair, Android does it better in that at least the apps can call into system file picker, which lets me simultaneously navigate the host FS and grant the app access to specific files or folders (and it explains what it's doing). Still, I'm worried, because decisions about future OS and platform architectures are increasingly made by people who grew up in the "apps era", and likely internalized the misguided idea that "data produced by a program belongs to that program", further disempowering the users (including, ultimately, themselves). This is in opposition to the idea that made computing ubiquitous and a tool for people to improve their lives: the idea that data is independent of the software that produced it; that the data files are owned by the user, can be copied and moved around using generic means, and worked on in many different software tools.
- livrem 3y ago
  Feels like Android keeps making it worse, at least for older apps that have not been updated to whatever the most recent way to access files is. I have several old apps installed that I can't figure out any way to access files for anymore. Interop between termux shell and apps is also trickier than it used to be. And small things like trying to launch a text editor from Dosbox Turbo to edit autoexec.bat that used to work fine but now just results in some error. I don't want anything like that on desktop. Some way of wrapping applications under my control (not some app stores control) and easily edit a simple text-file to give it permissions would be nice, but nothing beyond that.

TeMPOraL 3y ago

Well, if Ubuntu Snaps are any indication, then I'm happy for the 1980s OS design. I mean, it's cool that you can get a sandboxed program with simple CLI comamnd. It sucks that it's completely useless until you figure out how to give it access to the host file system, because guess what, most software that's useful for anything other than entertainment needs to interoperate with other software using files. To be fair, Android does it better in that at least the apps can call into system file picker, which lets me simultaneously navigate the host FS and grant the app access to specific files or folders (and it explains what it's doing). Still, I'm worried, because decisions about future OS and platform architectures are increasingly made by people who grew up in the "apps era", and likely internalized the misguided idea that "data produced by a program belongs to that program", further disempowering the users (including, ultimately, themselves). This is in opposition to the idea that made computing ubiquitous and a tool for people to improve their lives: the idea that data is independent of the software that produced it; that the data files are owned by the user, can be copied and moved around using generic means, and worked on in many different software tools.

livrem 3y ago
Feels like Android keeps making it worse, at least for older apps that have not been updated to whatever the most recent way to access files is. I have several old apps installed that I can't figure out any way to access files for anymore. Interop between termux shell and apps is also trickier than it used to be. And small things like trying to launch a text editor from Dosbox Turbo to edit autoexec.bat that used to work fine but now just results in some error. I don't want anything like that on desktop. Some way of wrapping applications under my control (not some app stores control) and easily edit a simple text-file to give it permissions would be nice, but nothing beyond that.