I thought of this in the past and who knows maybe we will see it one day.what about an operating system thats written to utilise cpu ram and run without need of unwanted background services.Just a bare bones system that DAW’s or video editing software can be installed on to utilise full power no need to do any tweaking or messing around.Able to accept component manufacturers drivers or maybe they write extra drivers to support? (There’s the tricky bit)
But how cool would that be? Probably cheaper no need to worry about going online and virus protection.Still have a connection and basic browser for updates ect.i use my daw with just windows fire wall for updates and never had a problem on trusted sites like here or plugin manufacturer sites.its hardly ever connected.and maybe because its not your standard os viruses probably wouldn’t be written to get in anyway?
As well as disk versions it could come on a SSD and use it duel boot style along side windows or apple os’s.
no need for loads of system folder’s and programs you hardly use just clean quick and fast.
and best of all DAW and plugin manufacturers would probably have better results writing their software with less bugs and give us more power.
I dunno just food for thought others might think this is a horrible idea?
But seriously…I recall in the halcyon days on Win 98 SE, when some guy came out with a stripped-down version of Win 98 along the very lines you refer to. It’s been so long, I don’t even recall what it was called, or how patent rights worked into the deal. I suspect someone here will remember. I bought and used it.
Today, however, I think we are well past that… I am loading stuff into Cubase projects, for example, that would have brought even a well-tweaked XP install to its knees not so long ago. But my understanding is that the days of worrying about IRQ’s and such are behind us –
BeOS was positioned as a multimedia platform which could be used by a substantial population of desktop users and a competitor to Mac OS and Microsoft Windows. However, it was ultimately unable to achieve a significant market share and proved commercially unviable for Be Inc. The company was acquired by Palm Inc. and today BeOS is mainly used and developed by a small population of enthusiasts.
The open-source OS Haiku, a complete reimplementation of BeOS, is designed to start up where BeOS left off. Alpha 4 of Haiku was released in November 2012> .
In the years that followed the demise of Be Inc. a handful of projects formed to recreate BeOS or key elements of the OS with the eventual goal of then continuing where Be Inc. left off. This was facilitated by the fact that Be Inc. released some components of BeOS under a free licence> . Here is a list of these projects:
BlueEyedOS: It uses a modified version of the Linux kernel which allows it to run Beos applications. It is free and open source software. There have been no releases since 2003.[17]
Cosmoe: A user interface for Linux that can run most BeOS applications. It is free and open source software. The last release was in 2004 and its website is no longer online.[18]
E/OS: short for Emulator Operating System. A Linux and FreeBSD-based operating system that aimed to run Windows, DOS, AmigaOS and BeOS applications. It is free and open source software.[19] Active development ended in July 2008.
Haiku: A complete reimplementation of BeOS not based on Linux. It is free and open source software. The first alpha release, “Haiku R1 / Alpha 1”, was released on September 14, 2009.[20] The second alpha release, “Haiku R1 / Alpha 2”, was made available on May 9, 2010,[21] and the third alpha release, “Haiku R1 / Alpha 3”, on June 18, 2011.[22] > “Haiku R1 / Alpha 4” was released November 12, 2012.[23] As of 2014, it is the only BeOS clone still under development> .
Of course, it is always possible to write something that is streamlined and does a very specific purpose very efficiently but then the target market is greatly reduced in size which means the price needs to be much (much, much, much) higher in order to make a return on investment.
Seriously… this is not a bad idea. I am from the age where windows did not exist, and cubase was still in it’s initial fase of atari developments. In that time period, hardware solutions were still much more powerfull in terms of integration. They were in fact leading the way for the software guys who have being copying those things from them. Hardware OS’s were build for a system. And they did not have (or very few) bugs.
Times have changed indeed since then, but even though…
A supported OS, even for a brand like microsoft, with a specific and limited implementation for a DAW is not that impossible to wish. They have a base for customers who even want to buy a license for it, if it is worth it.
I think it all depends on the way the OS builder is taking it’s customers in to account, or if it is taking it’s own developpers in to account.
For me, an OS is build for a customer, and the question by OP is legitimate.
Maybe this is a linux approach for an OS, but maybe Linux is showing the way to go, even for the too big to fail brands.
It would not be the first time that such an approach would be a good starting point
Certainly not when the internal devs are loosing their connection with the real world or thinking that a world needs to develop in the way they are thinking.
True. Techically it’s not a bad idea. I had my first MIDI sequencer running on MS-DOS (synced to 8-track reel-to-reel tape recorder), made my early experiments on music production with computers on Apple II and Commodore machines. And it was pure joy: OS was minimal and didn’t eat up the resources, software communicated with hardware directly without distracting virtualisation layers, etc. BUT (as you said):
At least 90% of DAW users want to run their DAW software under same OS as they do all the other stuff. They don’t want to loose the flexibility of their computers in the name of last 5-10% of efficiency.
It wouldn’t if OS’s like Windows or MacOS or Linux or (your pick here) were designed in highly modular way in order to support these kinds of “limited” editions. But they are not. Can you quess why? Well … it’s simple: modular design usually leads to less efficient system with lower performance. And golden rule in any software design is: make common case fast.
Result is: Operating systems are big mess. It’s nearly impossible to implement “limited editions” any other way than artificially limit functionalities. It’s little bit like with Cubase: “Pro” version is more or less the same as “Artist” version, but the license limits the functionality.
Yes they have, but:
How big this customer base is? Maybe at most 0.1% of all Win/MacOS users (1% of all users are DAW users of which 10% are ready to limit the fuctionality of OS).
How much it costs to develop this “limited edition” OS. Maybe 5% of total OS developement cost.
This leads to price tag 20 times of “standard edition” OS.
How many potential customers you have left when they hear about this price tag?
Summary: If there were enough demand for media production oriented OS, BeOS whould be here still alive and kicking. But there isn’t. General purpose operation systems are good enough. Nobody have ever failed to produce the #1 hit or the blockbuster movie because they didn’t have The Ultimate Operating System.
At least Microsoft etc could make their one-size-fit’s-all OS’s to where the user is able to better ‘thin out’ things for custom set ups like a DAW.
As it’s been, there have been many times where I deleted and disabled stuff right into non-operation. Years later using the same OS (Win XP) for my music machines, I’ve at least come to better know what I can disable these days.
Or, something like what a friend gave me years ago, an app called “XP Spy” where it had a boxed check list of things to disable, you simply checked that box, and those things were disabled from within the app…things that I would generally disable for my DAW in the 1st place. My music machines are never connected to the internet, so the “spy” aspect is non existent, but I still use it for it’s ‘disabling’ aspect.
If for every OS, there was an “XP-like Spy” ‘app’ that had a boxed check list, which disabled all the things that should be for the purpose at hand, like specialized for a music DAW. Maybe Steinberg could include an app like this in Cubase, and even have ‘presets’ for like those who only want to use their machine for Cubase only, or Cubase plus ‘something else’ etc, etc…and even ‘user presets’ all of which can be disabled & re-enabled at all, for when
Why would I want to sit in my music room to do my banking, billing, internet surfing, or who’s knows what other seedy internetting evils …I’d rather be in my home office for work where all my business related matters are located. When I’m in my home studio, I want to be doing music related things.
Oh what ever happened to LISP and Forth… I used to love programming in those languages.
I still to this day program one of my synths in 6502 machine code (it’s a 6503 CPU actually)- and not just with opcodes in an assembler, I have to type it all in using Hex!
