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Ask HN: Who's innovating in desktop operating systems?

10 points by itistoday2 ↗ HN
With Apple dropping the ball with Yosemite, I am keeping an eye out for alternatives. I’m hoping someone will pick up that ball and provide the world with an easy-to-use, “intelligently designed”, innovative, secure operating system that is performant and doesn’t kill your laptop’s battery life.

6 comments

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pedalpete
I'm somewhat keen to try Ubuntu on a touch device, but I've been a Windows stickler for years. I tried to switch to OSX but Mac always remained my secondary machine. I just felt that all the 'it just works' stuff was mostly just marketing speak. Sure it was nice to have a Unix compatible shell and have all my Ruby Gems work without issue, but once I moved to Node.js as my main server-side platform, the issue basically disappeared.

There is lots of talk about Windows 10, is it 'intelligently designed'? I'm not sure, it is fixing the errors made in Windows 8, it is definitely more innovative than OSX, not sure where it falls on the innovation curve compared to Ubuntu Touch.

I think if you want to be getting a future ready desktop OS, you can't ignore the importance of touch, and with HoloLens coming, getting yourself comfortable on a Windows OS may be a good idea. I'm amazed that as Apple lead the way with touch on devices, they have ignored the benefit of touch for the desktop OS. I don't use it all the time, but it's nice to have every once in a while, and I suspect it will only become more important in the future.

jtfairbank
Checkout Paperspace- it's an OS as a service, so you can access a powerful computer and all your data from any device.

https://paperspace.io/

DTE
Thanks for the shoutout :) (Paperspace cofounder here) Just to followup a bit - we let you run an full desktop computer in a web browser (we host the machine for you, so its fully managed). This means you can turn a macbook air or chromebook into a powerful machine. If battery is a concern, it might be a great fit.

We are still in a closed beta but shoot me an email dte@paperspace.io if that sounds interesting.

S4M
That sounds interesting, but what is the usage you expect your customers to make out of it? If it's for number crunching, I can rent a powerful VM for Digital Ocean or similar company; I don't think it will work for video games since I expect a small lag between sometimes.

Also, it's dependent of having an internet connection, which is not always the case.

raquo
Meh. I wasn't excited by any OS releases for a while now.

I'm normally using OSX, but I give Ubuntu a chance on every LTS release. Every time there are less and less dealbreakers, but the thing is – the downsides of switching are quite real and immediate, while the upsides are mostly idealistic.

So the operating systems ceased to be a thing on my radar. I just accept them as very basic tools that they are, and spend my energy elsewhere.

jamespcole2
Try UbuntuGnome 14.04 LTS, I use it daily and can highly recommend it. I've tried a ton of different OS and UI and always keep coming back to UbuntuGnome