
Ask HN: Why are there not more OS competitors? - andrewnc
Every other day I see threads lamenting the Linux experience, begrudging Apple changes, and hating on Windows&#x27; problems.<p>It seems there is a huge opportunity for disruption in the computing&#x2F;OS space. Why are there so few companies working on this problem? What are the main challenges?
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QueridoGuy
It’s not an easy task, especially since the OS competition has sailed long
time ago. You either create a linux distro with your flavor, or start over.
Starting from 0 is a very hard task and requires a lot of development time and
money. Also, even if we say you get to a level near the stability and support
of the current systems (which is near impossible considering the head start),
you need to bring people to it.

Just like how Mozilla phone OS failed and Microsoft Windows Phone and many
others. No one would go for a system that doesn’t offer their applications or
applications available on other systems.

Of course you will be able to get users interested in niche systems, but these
are very few. For example, i am running clear linux, which is “independent”
distro. It’s an amazing system for me, but i would never recommend it for
anyone due to the advanced setup

Unless of course.. you create a system that’s a breakthrough. A system that
would make a 20yr old dead machine 1000x faster than new machines.

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fortran77
There is! You can run Haiku, as many people do:

[https://www.haiku-os.org/](https://www.haiku-os.org/)

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badpun
Developing a new OS that's on par with Windows is a huge, multibillion dollar
task. And it's not even the hard part here, because when you have the new OS,
there will be zero software on it - you'd need to somehow convince vendors to
port their software to it. Essentially, I believe that the only body capable
of doing it would be a big government (US, Chinese, or the EU as a whole)-
they can say that will only run this new OS that they've developed in-house,
and, by being large enough client, they'd convince some vendors to port
crucial stuff (such as MS Office).

Unfortunately, shittiness of current OSes and productivity/quality of life
losses caused by it are not even on a radar of our politicians, so they'll
never invest any money in fixing the situation.

BTW, Johnatan Blow and Casey Muratori are ranting about it from time to time
on Twitter and YouTube and they have some interesting takes on the subject
(Casey was suggesting getting rid of OS altogether, and coming back to an
Amiga-like architecture).

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gitgud
> It seems there is a huge opportunity for disruption in the computing/OS
> space. Why are there so few companies working on this problem? What are the
> main challenges?

It is a huge opportunity... but at great cost...

A company/country may want to develop their own OS. They can either write the
Kernel themselves, which is an enormous task. OR they can just use the freely
available Linux kernel. So most companies just essentially fork Linux...

Developing an alternative Kernel is the main problem, and not really a problem
worth solving. The Linux Kernel is 15+ million lines of code now, and would
cost an enormous amount of effort to reproduce (re-solving the same problems
Linux faced).

Companies eventually come to the conclusion that using _Linux_ kernel is the
opportunity to develop an OS... which is why there's thousands of actively
developed Linux distributions [1] ...

[1] [https://distrowatch.com/](https://distrowatch.com/)

~~~
jolmg
> Developing an alternative Kernel is the main problem

I wonder if that's a bigger problem than a web browser that can compete with
Chrome and Firefox.

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Jemaclus
I've wondered this myself. It seems like one of the well-funded *nix distros
should be able to create something as clean-looking and plug-and-play as Mac
OSX. I've used several flavors of Linux in the last few years, but nothing
ever seems quite as smooth as Mac OSX. I get there's a money differential
there, but... surely they can hire some good designers and get some sort of
consistent UI/UX in place...

Anyway, I support the notion of a disruption in OS, but I agree with most of
the other commenters that it's probably not going to happen in awhile, mostly
due to money and resources.

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protonimitate
In addition to the other comments, don't forget that most of the criticism
about the current OS ecosystem is from the tech-adept demographic.

The vast majority of the OS consumer base is fine with OSX/Windows because
they work well and are familiar. It's hard enough trying to get "average
users" on linux, let alone a brand new OS.

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ourlordcaffeine
Well, Plan9 was good but overlooked. Feel free to contribute to it

There also was an attempt[1] to extend Inferno OS into a mobile OS

[1] [http://jfloren.net/b/2015/8/18/2](http://jfloren.net/b/2015/8/18/2)

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ScottFree
It's high risk and requires a much longer timescale than most companies and
VCs are comfortable with these days. It would take somebody with deep pockets
and a burning desire for a better computer to make it happen. Like Elon Musk
with Tesla.

~~~
folkhack
Agreed on the high risk - when you have such an established and entrenched
competition from day one you have to be sorta crazy to bite something this big
off. (and I mean "crazy" in a good way)

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howard941
Money? And you're talking desktop. Off the desktop there's plenty to choose
from. Android. NuttX is a thing. Amazon picked up freertos. Every firmware
engineer who's been around the block has written one or more executives.

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kgraves
Fuchsia[0] (an OS by Google) on a Chromebook is the closest to being a worthy
competitor.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Fuchsia)

------
thosakwe
The same reason there aren’t browser competitors - it would take forever to
write and test one, and even then, on a new OS, you’d have to write tremendous
amounts of user software to even be usable, let alone competitive.

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slipwalker
remember, remember:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082143](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13082143)

and there are also all those wonderful *BSD flavours....

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folkhack
The scope is huge and software is unavailable/incompatible.

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tokzco
my post on this topic from:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/dhpbml/anytim...](https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/dhpbml/anytime_someone_complain_about_windows/)

i still get lost once in a while but the cool thing about it is i have lots of
help online

to me that's the real big difference between say proprietary software and
opensource.

i grew up using Microsoft and even used to sell some of their small networks
'back in the day'

my boss was an Authorized Dealer held more certs than i can count so i've been
around M$

nobody has, but if you were to ask me what happened with M$ software i'd say a
few things:

when the cellular industry became the ISP that changed the motive of software
design and it

changed the business model for software companies. consider the fact win98 -->
win2000 was basically

a lean machine, not perfect but solid for the most part, again tho the
internet wasn't a big factor

heck even Bill Gates didn't think the net would do much

2\. when cellular carriers became the ISP this changed the business model, now
folks had the net in their pocket,

including a microphone, video camera and gps unit etc. metadata and dataminig
became the new wild west

this impacted the business model for software companies simply because they
were now in a position to lose money

if they did not add 'xyz feature' whereas when the net was basically just
getting off the ground revenue was

predominantly from tech support, service contract agreements and license
distrobution etc.

still the 'unseen' problem that not even M$ could forsee or anyone else really
was this:

before the net took off, if there was a problem with security, well the IOTs
wasn't as pervasive, meaning

stuff wasn't connected as much, a 'hole' was limited, and yet another thing to
consider - geeks weren't

everywhere back in the late 90s whereas today due to the rise of smartphones
and apps programming society

has put her 'tech boots on' so the average kid down the street might be a semi
pro 'hacker or programmer'

which translates into 'the security flaw can be a bigger problem'

3\. to add on to #2 proprietary software doesn't invite 'patching problems'
like opensource, when the net

wasn't boomen the last decent release was Win7, if M$ would have taken Win7,
polished it up, released the

source code, invited a community to harden it, patch it, it would have taken a
lot of pressure off of the

Microsoft employees, to ask any single company to basically be the end all for
an operating system's security

to fix all the problems including drivers is daunting, even on a good day,
even when things are going good

so that has an impact on the actual security of an operating system and that
is tied directly to the market

a company's value on the stock market, find a hole, report it, someone might
lose a contract, lose money

today the inherit value in an operating system is basically in the data that
gets mined, meaning the average

stock config of any mass produced computer say from walmart or amazon has a
lot of 'bloat' basically 'features'

that drill the customer to set up xyz accounts, once you tie your home network
and cellphones to the OS you just

increased the value of the data collected, so that's a problem for 'security'
because security now will go only

as far as it can stretch but not break any revenue streams 'built in' to the
OS, it's like home wifi is strong

enough to keep the local network traffic 'verified and aassist prosecution' of
a court case if you violate a law

it's not really there to protect you, privacy and security often means someone
is losing money one way or another

linux is not immune to any of this, i look at it this way, do the best you can
with the software you love because

that is really what the purpose of it is supposed to do, help us connect and
get stuff done, i think what M$ did

in the beginning along with apple and the early founders of linux is just
amazing, i really mean that, any company

that can and did survive for a few years did more right than wrong, to this
day i remember the first time i moved

a mouse on screen, i remember the first time i saw a video game and i could
control a square on the screen, i remember

the arcades, i'm still in awe of it today, so my hats off to all the
programmers and engineers out there

i hang out with the penguin today, i watched Revolution OS years ago and
instantly joined the cult

