Why you need a new operating system.

The time is ripe for new operating systems.

And I'll tell you why.

Here are some everyday problems people have with existing (traditional) operating systems such as Linux and Windows - and why a new OS of the type that I propose is free of these problems.

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The computer sits there and I can hear that it is doing some wild things that obviously incur frantic hard disk activity. I want to know what the machine is doing - whether because I am generally curious or because I like to be in control or to make sure the activity is one that I approve of.

Under a traditional OS though, I can't really find out what is going on. I will have to install specialized monitoring tools. And even then, all I usually get is the name of the program that is doing it. Not WHAT it is doing there. Nor how I can stop it from doing that.

A next generation OS can answer all these questions at any time. All activity is traceable and configuration options are accessible easily. If a software is not cooperative or not sufficiently configurable, the user can just take some or all of its rights away. This can be done with any program at any time - with or without the program's consent.

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I want to install a new software. Under Linux especially, this is a bit like flying blindly. I don't know what files it will create, where they will be put and if anything stops working after that. Yes, there are probably ways to inspect packages to get some answers to these questions. But it has to be done manually and it is probably rather tedious.

In a next generation OS, you can answer these questions easily. Any program can be "dry run". System-changing actions are not executed - but recorded meticulously for convenient inspection by the user. Only if the user approves, the software is run again, with the ability to actually change things.

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I want to run/install a software, but I am not sure if I trust it. What are my choices? In a traditional OS, it is a simple choice: Run it or not run it. If you run it though, you can't stop it from doing things you might not approve.

There is the theoretical option of running a program with another user account. But there might not be a suitable user account and the approach is, overall, not very elegant.

Thus, with a traditional OS, the approach is: fire and hope for the best. And after you ran the program, you can't even inspect what exactly it did.

In a next generation OS, you can start any program with limited rights - or even no rights whatsoever. If it requires any additional powers, it will have to explicitly ask for them, and you may or may not approve the request.

[Anonymous]

Have you looked at http://nixos.org/nixos/ ? It has some neat ideas.

[Anonymous]

I have had the same vision for decades. Time is finally getting there.