3 ms·

There has yet to be a better technology to win in the desktop OS. Examples 1) CPM was so much better than DOS 2) Amiga was 7 years ahead of its time (Though t

by baldfat 12y ago

There has yet to be a better technology to win in the desktop OS. Examples 1) CPM was so much better than DOS 2) Amiga was 7 years ahead of its time (Though the OS had a ton of bugs the first 18 months) 3) BeOS 4) We still deal with a corporate IT that is 90% Window shops for corporate desktops. (Though Windows has gotten MUCH better) 5) Gnome and GTK+ gained more mind share than KDE :) Okay that one is personal opinion but :)

dheera 12y ago
I think in most cases it's due to compatibility reasons. The "better" technology usually comes later and is thus less compatible with the rest of the ecosystem. I used to use Gnome in the Gnome 2.0 / KDE 3.x days. Even though I thought KDE was better, it simply wouldn't play nice with GTK and Gnome apps. Conflicting sound servers would crash, themes and widgets a mess between the two ecosystems, never-ending font issues.
- Narishma 12y ago
  All those cases mentioned by the post you replied to came out earlier than the "worse" technologies that ended up winning.
Zardoz84 12y ago
OS/2
- baldfat 12y ago
  That wasn't "better" :)
agumonkey 12y ago
That's the way of the world. 'better' is a fuzzy term, what catches on 'is' the best, in some way, if that's the metric we observe. Everything that was 'better' failed in some regards, either came too early, wasn't aligned with mass market of users (lisp, smalltalk, sml), neglected some detail that wasn't a detail for the mainstream (why PHP instead of Perl), etc etc. I spent the last 10 years wondering why so much beautiful things died in the past while we suffer subpar systems. And everytime there's a stupid indirect but perfectly valid reason. Less is more, or something of this kind. Nature.
- romaniv 12y ago
  You're forgetting about external factors that have nothing to do with the product itself. Having better marketing team or deeper connection in the industry does not make your actual OS any better. Survival of the fittest doesn't really apply to human artifacts and especially to art and cutting edge engineering.

by baldfat 12y ago

dheera 12y ago

I think in most cases it's due to compatibility reasons. The "better" technology usually comes later and is thus less compatible with the rest of the ecosystem. I used to use Gnome in the Gnome 2.0 / KDE 3.x days. Even though I thought KDE was better, it simply wouldn't play nice with GTK and Gnome apps. Conflicting sound servers would crash, themes and widgets a mess between the two ecosystems, never-ending font issues.

Narishma 12y ago
All those cases mentioned by the post you replied to came out earlier than the "worse" technologies that ended up winning.

Zardoz84 12y ago

OS/2

baldfat 12y ago
That wasn't "better" :)

agumonkey 12y ago

That's the way of the world. 'better' is a fuzzy term, what catches on 'is' the best, in some way, if that's the metric we observe. Everything that was 'better' failed in some regards, either came too early, wasn't aligned with mass market of users (lisp, smalltalk, sml), neglected some detail that wasn't a detail for the mainstream (why PHP instead of Perl), etc etc. I spent the last 10 years wondering why so much beautiful things died in the past while we suffer subpar systems. And everytime there's a stupid indirect but perfectly valid reason. Less is more, or something of this kind. Nature.

romaniv 12y ago
You're forgetting about external factors that have nothing to do with the product itself. Having better marketing team or deeper connection in the industry does not make your actual OS any better. Survival of the fittest doesn't really apply to human artifacts and especially to art and cutting edge engineering.