I wish we would have executed on that wish a year ago, because with the two Microsoft & Apple events, it's clear there is demand for "a Surface Studio, but not with Windows 10". Yesterday people effectively said they stay on Macs because of macOS, but envision switching to PCs because the innovation and specs are much better. Had we worked on that, we would have released a credible alternative to Macs, with distrib that would have embraced the Surface Studio while providing 1. the design, 2. the experience and 3.the privacy that everyone is looking for in an Apple computer...
As a reminder, the idea of a Paid Linux is to fund the open-source community with the same flow of money that Apple and Microsoft get from their OS (at $200/yr), in order to provide the same "red carpet" experience for specific profiles of users (either 3D workers, either graphists, whatever profile we target first). At the market level, one great experience for one type of work would develop adoption for Linux on the desktop. At a more selfish level, the benefit to paying for Linux instead of MS/A is that the new improvements are effectively open-source, so we're effectively raising the baseline of what every other distrib can do. The way to make people pay is by only providing their upgrades through authenticated PPAs, which means professionals will pay because it's easier, and hackers will redistribute versions on Torrent, which we don't mind, because hackers are a benefit for Linux. Besides, even hackers understand the value of funding open-source, so they might still participate. A lot of people would rather pay for open-source than closed-source.
I didn't execute on that wish, because I'm not an OS-level person, and I don't have the UX design background necessary for this endeavour. Nor the marketing know-how to execute at a high level. But I really wish someone would do it.
I feel the exact same way. I've been a Mac user for over ten years largely because of OS X, but I've been disappointed in Apple's direction for the past few years, and yesterday's MacBook Pro announcement was the last straw for me.
Linux is a wonderful server OS, and in fact I do most of my development inside of a VirtualBox VM running Debian, but in order for me to move to a full Linux workflow, I need to use some proprietary software packages like Microsoft Office and Apple Keynote (while I find LibreOffice Writer to be a suitable replacement for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel fits my needs better than Calc, and Impress is behind both PowerPoint and Keynote).
In line with a paid, polished Linux experience, another thing that would be nice for me and other disgruntled Mac users is a Wine-like compatibility layer that allows Linux users to run Cocoa programs. There's already a project called Darling (http://www.darlinghq.org/introduction/) that has some of the basic functionality implemented. If this project had more contributors, then it could develop into a working solution for running my Mac programs.
My dream OS would have a Unix-like foundation (like Linux or FreeBSD) with an interface similar to Mac OS 8/9 (with various features from OS X added like Spotlight, Expose, and the Dock) and with Don Norman's UI advice (http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/apples_products_are.html) taken seriously.
I'm actually interested in contributing to such efforts toward an alternative OS for disgruntled Mac users; I have experience with systems and kernel programming. If there is enough interest, maybe an alternative OS will materialize.
I actually think that this is likely to happen over the next 2-3 years. Every single one of these companies is now going in the wrong direction in a specific way--which opens up a real desire for a real alternative.
We all used to love Mac, we all see that Apple has lost its way and seems to be heading more and more confidently in the wrong direction, and that may be just the push the community needs to actually build something.
And what an amazing achievement it would be--an actually open alternative that runs on lots of (powerful) hardware with the beauty of Mac OS (before Lion lol).
I really think it's going to happen because I think a very large percentage of the community now realizes that there is no existing private company heading in the right direction. So we now have to take the steering of the ship into our own hands.
I agree. In my opinion Snow Leopard was the high water mark of Mac OS X (although there are some features of later versions I like such as the auto-save feature of open documents between reboots). From a UI standpoint each subsequent version of OS X has been a deviation from the ideal user interface.
A fully open community "Mac" operating system that runs on any x86-64 hardware would be an excellent thing. I believe the best way of getting there is contributing to the GNUstep and Darling projects so that the underpinnings are fully functioning, as well as working on a Snow Leopard-esque interface.
I have some free time over the next week or so; I'm going to start developing a plan for making this idea a reality!
Who's going to fund the upfront development? "We're going to make a new desktop OS that takes on both Apple and Microsoft" sounds like a hard sell for the VC crowd.
And that's the hard part....OS/2, NEXTSTEP/x86, and BeOS were examples of alternative OSes that failed to successfully take on Microsoft in the 1990s. It would be difficult for a VC firm to fund a business model that has failed multiple times in the 1990s. Moreover, the desktop market as a whole is shrinking, and my understanding is VC firms are interested in growing markets. An alternative OS dedicated to power users is definitely a niche market.
I wonder, though, if these is enough interest in the FOSS community to make such an idea a reality, where the project could be started by volunteers and donations could be requested?
It could be, but it seems like that would depend on the brand awareness / credentials of the team writing the software. Note that KDE, Gnome, etc. have been trying to do exactly that for decades, with only marginal success.
So if you got the team that wrote the Apple Aqua UI on board to write it, and have great PR, then maybe. If you get the KDE or Gnome team, no way.
Your paid Linux idea won't work, because money is not the only thing holding back the open-source community. Other reasons are:
- Design isn't appreciated or valued. A successful OS effort can't be driven only by engineers.
- An obsession with choice as an end to itself, and being unable to say, "This is what we think the best user experience will be. You can't change it."
- Fragmentation with too many APIs, GUI toolkits, and so on.
- Participants focusing on users like themselves (tinkerers and geeks) rather than typical end-users who want to use the device to get their real work done, rather than messing with the system.
Until you have a plan to address all these, throwing more money at the open-source community won't produce a macOS-quality OS.
If it's a paid Linux though, then you can get a team that:
-Appreciates design.
-Makes choices.
-Supports the most powerful and popular hardware.
-Yes, focused first and foremost on tinkerers and geeks, who are the main people losing out in the current environment. It's all a group that's increasing in size and will likely continue to for the foreseeable future.
"Makes choices" and "focused on tinkerers" are at tension with each other.
Because tinkerers want choice, such as with multiple window managers, sound subsystems or what have you. If you have N window managers, now you need to build and maintain all of them at a high bar, which is N times as much effort as one.
Plus the combinations: window manager X doesn't work with sound subsystem Y.
An awesome Linux would have just one supported window manager, filesystem, sound subsystem, and all the rest.
You will also need one dictator who understands eng, UX, product design, sales, marketing, and so on. The dictator listens to everyone, and people can present information and perspectives and debate as much as they want, but at the end of the day, it's the dictator's decision.
If you do all this, yes, you can succeed, in theory.
I wish we would have executed on that wish a year ago, because with the two Microsoft & Apple events, it's clear there is demand for "a Surface Studio, but not with Windows 10". Yesterday people effectively said they stay on Macs because of macOS, but envision switching to PCs because the innovation and specs are much better. Had we worked on that, we would have released a credible alternative to Macs, with distrib that would have embraced the Surface Studio while providing 1. the design, 2. the experience and 3.the privacy that everyone is looking for in an Apple computer...
As a reminder, the idea of a Paid Linux is to fund the open-source community with the same flow of money that Apple and Microsoft get from their OS (at $200/yr), in order to provide the same "red carpet" experience for specific profiles of users (either 3D workers, either graphists, whatever profile we target first). At the market level, one great experience for one type of work would develop adoption for Linux on the desktop. At a more selfish level, the benefit to paying for Linux instead of MS/A is that the new improvements are effectively open-source, so we're effectively raising the baseline of what every other distrib can do. The way to make people pay is by only providing their upgrades through authenticated PPAs, which means professionals will pay because it's easier, and hackers will redistribute versions on Torrent, which we don't mind, because hackers are a benefit for Linux. Besides, even hackers understand the value of funding open-source, so they might still participate. A lot of people would rather pay for open-source than closed-source.
I didn't execute on that wish, because I'm not an OS-level person, and I don't have the UX design background necessary for this endeavour. Nor the marketing know-how to execute at a high level. But I really wish someone would do it.