ideal OS

[agvares]

thar may seem a bit philosophical, but for your opinion what does it take a perfect OS to have and how can Mint come closer to that requirements?

[hellfire695]

Interesting question.

For me its has to completely customizable on every level, also has too have great hardware support and be light on resources, and I like having tons of cool software and games a click away. so mint is already great, just needs to cut down on the bloat and increase stability. I have lmde now and love it

[agvares]

being "user friendly" and customazible are the opposite properties to the point.

so i guess the ideal OS should have different levels of customization available to the user (from houswife to hardcore programmer) within itself, not the distro stuff.

also, being able to use hardware more efficiently is the crucial point (specially when it comes to laptop power consuming which is kinda a weak point of Mint now)

and what is really needed is something like a in-built tutorial system which can turn a noob into an casual user in several days.

[nomko]

Interesting question.

For me its has to completely customizable on every level, also has too have great hardware support and be light on resources, and I like having tons of cool software and games a click away. so mint is already great, just needs to cut down on the bloat and increase stability. I have lmde now and love it

Agree!
However, there's no such thing as an ideal OS. Which OS (either Windows or Linux or MacOS) is the best depents entirely on the personal wishes and demants of the user. One can find a certain application very good while another finds it absolutly terrible. It totally depents on yourself which OS you find the best to suit your wishes and demants. After 5 years of Ubuntu, which i really like, I can't find myself using Ubuntu with Unity due to the fact i really dislike that "cheap" netbook look-and-feel desktop. So, there are alternatives for me: Debian, Mint, Suse, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Sabayon, etc. Up till now Linux Mint gets the closest to my wishes and demands. So, at this point, Mint is for me the best OS.

[squeezy]

...(specially when it comes to laptop power consuming which is kinda a weak point of Mint now)...

Not to nit-pick, but that's not a Mint problem. It's a Linux problem in general, kernel power management regressions. To be fixed in the 3.4 kernel from what I've read.

[agvares]

...(specially when it comes to laptop power consuming which is kinda a weak point of Mint now)...

Not to nit-pick, but that's not a Mint problem. It's a Linux problem in general, kernel power management regressions. To be fixed in the 3.4 kernel from what I've read.

sure thing but if we compare some OS with each other all drawbacks should be taken into consideration

[agvares]

Interesting question.

For me its has to completely customizable on every level, also has too have great hardware support and be light on resources, and I like having tons of cool software and games a click away. so mint is already great, just needs to cut down on the bloat and increase stability. I have lmde now and love it

Agree!
However, there's no such thing as an ideal OS. Which OS (either Windows or Linux or MacOS) is the best depents entirely on the personal wishes and demants of the user. One can find a certain application very good while another finds it absolutly terrible. It totally depents on yourself which OS you find the best to suit your wishes and demants. After 5 years of Ubuntu, which i really like, I can't find myself using Ubuntu with Unity due to the fact i really dislike that "cheap" netbook look-and-feel desktop. So, there are alternatives for me: Debian, Mint, Suse, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Sabayon, etc. Up till now Linux Mint gets the closest to my wishes and demands. So, at this point, Mint is for me the best OS.

no matter what are the needs there are some criteria which the OS should meet anyway, and then there are some optional features which posses the potential to personalisation within themself.

[squeezy]

...(specially when it comes to laptop power consuming which is kinda a weak point of Mint now)...

Not to nit-pick, but that's not a Mint problem. It's a Linux problem in general, kernel power management regressions. To be fixed in the 3.4 kernel from what I've read.

sure thing but if we compare some OS with each other all drawbacks should be taken into consideration

I agree completely with that sentiment. However, the way it was worded made it sound like it was a Mint-specific issue, which it is not.

[agvares]

ok.. i wonder what is the potential limit of power consumption? i mean linux theoretically consume way less energy than windows?

[DrHu]

You must mean perfect OS for me or perfect OS for a small group of believers, since any other OS will not satisfy enough of the population to avoid complaints about its imperfection

And I always thought perfection or perfect something was only an ideal that could never be reached, for if one person says "ain't so" then it ain't so..

In conclusion
There is no perfect OS, not even any that come close, and I include all Linux distributions in that, as well as Apple, Microsoft and Google (Android) etc..
--the indication of lack of perfection in any OS, are the annoyances or what some people will call bugs (as a generic term), and the traffic on forums, asking for fixes or help..

[agvares]

despite there's no perfection as a final condition but anything that is in a process of development can come closer or further from is accepted as the criteria of perfection.

i.e. if i suppose that a perfect OS shouldn't lag, freeze all the time, get slower and slower eventually and so on, then i can clearlly say that Windows isn't moving in the proper direction.

[xenopeek]

I think there will be no description of an "ideal OS" that will satisfy everybody. As you already mentioned yourself;

being "user friendly" and customazible are the opposite properties to the point.

What properties constitute a "ideal OS" for me, will be for most points be opposite of what is an "ideal OS" for somebody else (just thinking about different age groups, different experience levels, different uses, and so on). You can only describe what is an "ideal OS" for yourself I would say, and the easiest definition is the "ideal OS" is the one that lets you do with your computer what you need it to do without getting in your way (IIRC that is a Linus Torvalds quote BTW.)

There is not one OS that would be everything for everybody

[agvares]

I think there will be no description of an "ideal OS" that will satisfy everybody. As you already mentioned yourself;

being "user friendly" and customazible are the opposite properties to the point.

What properties constitute a "ideal OS" for me, will be for most points be opposite of what is an "ideal OS" for somebody else (just thinking about different age groups, different experience levels, different uses, and so on). You can only describe what is an "ideal OS" for yourself I would say, and the easiest definition is the "ideal OS" is the one that lets you do with your computer what you need it to do without getting in your way (IIRC that is a Linus Torvalds quote BTW.)

There is not one OS that would be everything for everybody

i guess you'll agree that a customazible OS posess a bigger potential to satisfy the significantly bigger amount of users rather than uncustomazible one.

[Habitual]

The "ideal OS" for me would be one that FIXES broke stuff before carrying on the Microsoft-method of "new" trumps broken.
Forced obsolescence just alienates your user-base.

Keep the "new" crap.
...Where's my Slackware 2.0 CD? I can still get support for that.

[agvares]

tbh, that's the least annoying problem in Windows

[hellfire695]

Interesting question.

For me its has to completely customizable on every level, also has too have great hardware support and be light on resources, and I like having tons of cool software and games a click away. so mint is already great, just needs to cut down on the bloat and increase stability. I have lmde now and love it

Agree!
However, there's no such thing as an ideal OS. Which OS (either Windows or Linux or MacOS) is the best depents entirely on the personal wishes and demants of the user. One can find a certain application very good while another finds it absolutly terrible. It totally depents on yourself which OS you find the best to suit your wishes and demants. After 5 years of Ubuntu, which i really like, I can't find myself using Ubuntu with Unity due to the fact i really dislike that "cheap" netbook look-and-feel desktop. So, there are alternatives for me: Debian, Mint, Suse, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, Sabayon, etc. Up till now Linux Mint gets the closest to my wishes and demands. So, at this point, Mint is for me the best OS.

no matter what are the needs there are some criteria which the OS should meet anyway, and then there are some optional features which posses the potential to personalisation within themself.

I agree with both of you as well as the general sentiment of this thread. Operating systems are a bit like shoes, everyone has different feet, and different tastes, and do different activities. so the idea of one shoe to fit everyone comfortably and meet everyone's needs sounds a bit ridiculus, kinda like wearing sneakers in a canadian snowstorm because they dont buy boots in the U.S (which they do of course). yet this is what windows and mac osx try to do. In the world of GNU/linux we dont do that, we make different shoes for different people. thus I say GNU/Linux is the ideal os. because there is an os for everyone with gnu/linux. needless to say I dont like the closed source approach.

[vandamme]

... laptop power consuming which is kinda a weak point of Mint now...

Not to nit-pick, but that's not a Mint problem. It's a Linux problem in general, kernel power management regressions..

I boot LMDE, Ubuntu 11.04, Bodhi and Windows 7 for old time's sake, on a low-end HP laptop. Right now on LMDE the fan is churning away as usual. On the other OS's, it runs half this speed if at all. I thought I was imagining this but I'm sure of it now. The mic picks it up annoyingly on voip conversations. The Ubuntu and LM run the same Gnome and linux kernel versions, about the same memory and CPU time. Right now my knees are getting uncomfortably hot. Fortunately I keep it plugged in most of the time, but what's going on? Did I get a hot pepperMint?

[akavir]

Pretty sure Mint fits my definition of the ideal OS. It's easy to install and use. It's very easy for windows converts. It makes software a breeze to install. With Wine 1.4, almost every windows app i've thrown at it, just works out of the box now. As I've said it past posts the only things I'd like to see in the linux ecosystem is a unification of software packages. No more DEB vs. RPM. Needs to be one standard. Cause even with those "standards" they don't always work. An Ubuntu DEB might not work on Debian, a Red Hat RPM might not work on Suse. It would be awesome if some major entity with the time and money could come up with some kind of easy to use autocompiler for source code! But in the end, as all OS's stand I think Mint has all the other beat, for now!

[bimsebasse]

For me, Mint meat and potatoes developing and community, Elementary design (or of that quality) and Arch documentation.

Melarch!

[agvares]

Pretty sure Mint fits my definition of the ideal OS. It's easy to install and use. It's very easy for windows converts. It makes software a breeze to install. With Wine 1.4, almost every windows app i've thrown at it, just works out of the box now. As I've said it past posts the only things I'd like to see in the linux ecosystem is a unification of software packages. No more DEB vs. RPM. Needs to be one standard. Cause even with those "standards" they don't always work. An Ubuntu DEB might not work on Debian, a Red Hat RPM might not work on Suse. It would be awesome if some major entity with the time and money could come up with some kind of easy to use autocompiler for source code! But in the end, as all OS's stand I think Mint has all the other beat, for now!

as for me, the "alien" stuff always worked when i had to deal with rpm packages

and Mint has to improve yet to become an ideal. right at the time it crashes too much, has several lags and so on. but even in this condition it's way better than windows