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View Full Version : Why so much less different OS in the world???



sbasak
January 6th, 2006, 03:13 PM
When you go to market for buying

Cars - over 100s manufacturers and 10,000+ models
TV - over 1000s manufacturers and 100,000+ models
Clothes/shoes - over 10,000s manufacturers and 1,000,000+ shape/items
Computer - over 100s manufacturers and 10,000+ models

OS - less than 10 manufacturers and less than 50 versions!
In fact, for OS, its mainly 3 types - Windows, Linux or Apple

Why is so?????

Lord Illidan
January 6th, 2006, 03:23 PM
I disagree.
A car is a car is a car. Sure, it might be packaged differently, have slightly different engines, etc, but under the hood they are the same, usually.
Same goes for TVs and shoes.

When it comes to OSes, the internals are usually very different. Besides, you mentioned only the 3 main ones, what about FreeBSD, Unix, etc?

And don't forget the many types of Linux distros and types of Windows too. Windows XP, Windows Server, Windows CE, Windows Mobile Center, etc, etc..

sbasak
January 6th, 2006, 03:27 PM
Still then... just imagine how many car manufacturer's in the world and how many OS manufacturers!

More or less... all OS have to do same task, support some hardware, execute some instructions, offer some generic functionality etc.

dabear
January 6th, 2006, 03:31 PM
http://distrowatch.com/stats.php?section=popularity

there are 100 distros there, but I know there are a lot more.

Lord Illidan
January 6th, 2006, 03:32 PM
Cars have been out since the 1800s. The modern operating systems have been here for far less time.. And most have died out due to nobody using them, or have been bought up by bigger companies.

sbasak
January 6th, 2006, 03:49 PM
Cars have been out since the 1800s.
What about mobile phones then? :p

I think it is due to the fact that an OS is very difficult to develop compared to other products....

Lord Illidan
January 6th, 2006, 03:57 PM
What about mobile phones then? :p

I think it is due to the fact that an OS is very difficult to develop compared to other products....

True. It is the most complex piece of software one can develop.

awakatanka
January 6th, 2006, 04:26 PM
Still then... just imagine how many car manufacturer's in the world and how many OS manufacturers!

More or less... all OS have to do same task, support some hardware, execute some instructions, offer some generic functionality etc.
And all cars have to drive person from point a to point b, tv's have to show channels, mobile phones have to call etc.

But all things have different internals like a OS. There are enough chooses, some even think to much.

hillbilly
January 6th, 2006, 04:48 PM
Still then... just imagine how many car manufacturer's in the world and how many OS manufacturers!

More or less... all OS have to do same task, support some hardware, execute some instructions, offer some generic functionality etc.

Think about compatibility problems. Now when any killer app debuts, it would have to be ported to all the other OS's. And if that porting doesnt happen, then most probably the neglected OS would die out; unless it has a viable development model (which Linux certainly has ;)) !!

But you know, there would be OS's developed for different purposes, and we may not even know about them simply because it is optimized for that particular job. But even in this case, more often than not, instead of starting from scratch, they would most probably take an fundamentally strong open source OS and customize it to suit their purposes (again like Linux ;) ) !!

Or else the OS's should be developed on a common platform so that apps are compatible across them (Like having 100 distros based on Linux ;) ) !!

Man I think Linux is all set for world domination :d !