Brugge Blog

The diversity of operating systems in my daily life has expanded recently, and it’s an interesting change. At work I’ve gone from Windows XP and a smattering of HP-UX, to Linux and a smattering of XP. At home I’ve gone from XP to OS X.

My first reaction to the change was to celebrate the freedom from the blandness and bigness of Microsoft. I was with the hip fringe element, and my life was sure to improve. New things to learn, for sure, but all well worthy of learning.

A month later, I’m feeling at least comfortable enough to be productive, and finding out where the places are to go to find answers to what I don’t know. But the reality of living on the desktop fringe has changed my attitude on why I’m enjoying it. The touches of style throughout OS X and the Powerbook are marvelous, and the breadth of offerings for Linux is eye-opening, but their shortcomings show too: the mouse-centric interface of the Mac when I want to keep my hands on the keyboard, the Unix admin skills you can’t avoid for long in Linux (the power you get from a full Unix environment comes with a learning price tag).

What I think is most important about the shift, instead, is in the same vein as biological diversity. A monoculture is not only more fragile, but it’s just plain less interesting. Our world of computers is really young, and as an industry, very far from knowing just what the best way of presenting the capabilities or possibilities to us humans. We’re groping around, and the current crop of operating systems and devices is only the latest test bed.

Business interests and economics, of course, are a significant factor in the makeup of the operating system ecosystem, but with computer technology being so integrated into our lives, the set of forces at play are complex enough that any one force can’t affect it for long. The Mac seems as though it’s been declared dead or irrelevant every five years or so, and Linux has no “business plan” or “market analysis”, but both are hear to stay, however seemingly marginalized. And that means that the competitive forces between operating systems can continue to keep them growing (as in “improving” or “learning”, not necessarily “getting bigger”.) You can see where the Linux GNOME desktop has learned from Windows and OS X, and I can see where either of them could learn something from the Linux installation and packaging process.

And it’s in the individual who moves from one OS to another that much gets noticed. For instance, while I want a graphical interface for most things I do, I hadn’t realized how much I use keyboard shortcuts to manipulate them until I noticed the things I couldn’t do with keys in OS X. I’m hardly alone in this, and Apple may be stubborn and elitist, but they also aren’t dumb and they listen to folks. If they really want to get all of the Windows users to switch to OS X, they’re going to have to hear what people have grown to expect.

So I hope I can learn something from my multi-OS life, and do my little part in keeping the ecosystem healthy.