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Vendor-purpose-OS.md (2762B)

    

  1. ---
  2. date: 2020-06-26
  3. layout: post
  4. title: "General-purpose OS, special-purpose OS, and now: vendor-purpose OS"
  5. tags: [rant, operating systems]
  6. ---
  8. There have, historically, been two kinds of operating systems: general-purpose,
  9. and special-purpose. These roles are defined by the function they serve for the
  10. user. Examples of general-purpose operating systems include Unix (Linux, BSD,
  11. etc), Solaris, Haiku, Plan 9, and so on. These are well-suited to general
  12. computing tasks, and are optimized to solve the most problems possible, perhaps
  13. at the expense of those in some niche domains. Special-purpose operating systems
  14. serve those niche domains, and are less suitable for general computing. Examples
  15. of these include FreeRTOS, Rockbox, Genode, and so on.
  17. These terms distinguish operating systems by the problems they solve for the
  18. user. However, a disturbing trend is emerging in which the user is not the party
  19. whose problems are being solved, and perhaps this calls for a new term. I
  20. propose "vendor-purpose operating system".
  22. I would use this term to describe Windows, macOS, Android, and iOS, and perhaps
  23. some others besides. Arguably, the first two used to be general purpose
  24. operating systems, and the latter two were once special-purpose operating
  25. systems.  Increasingly, these operating systems are making design decisions
  26. which benefit the vendor *at the expense* of the user. For example: Windows has
  27. ads and excessive spyware, prevents you from making a local login without a
  28. Microsoft account, and aggressively pushes you to switch to Edge from other web
  29. browsers, as well as many other examples besides.
  31. Apple is more subtle from the end-user's perspective. They eschew standards to
  32. build walled gardens, opting for Metal rather than Vulkan, for example. They use
  33. cryptographic signatures to enforce a racket against developers who just want to
  34. ship their programs. They bully vendors in the app store into adding things like
  35. microtransactions to increase their revenue. They've also long been making
  36. similar moves in their hardware design, adding anti-features which are
  37. explicitly designed to increase their profit — adding false costs which
  38. are ultimately passed onto the consumer.
  40. All of these decisions are making the OS worse for users in order to provide
  41. more value to the vendor. The operating system is becoming *less* suited to its
  42. general-purpose tasks, as the vendor-purpose anti-features deliberately get in
  43. the way. They also become less suited at special-purpose tasks for the same
  44. reasons. These changes *are* making improvements for one purpose: the vendor's
  45. purpose. Therefore, I am going to start refering to these operating systems as
  46. "vendor purpose", generally alongside a curse and a raising of the middle
  47. finger.