The Userland Driver
I've been reading the book Operating System Concepts
which is a college book for computer science majors.
I have been really enjoying the insight this book is
giving me into my career. When you think about how an
operating system handles communication between the
various parts of the computer, it isn't a far stretch
to view the "user" as another part of the system that
needs a driver to interface properly. What makes a
good userland driver is a subject of many debates.
It's unreasonable for the user to have to adapt to
the computer. I think the solution is to retrain how
the companies developing operating systems think
about the interface. The mentality seems to be that
we will use what ever they produce because we have no
choice. I think that someone should do research and
begin developing a system for relating to a computer.
You know what size shoes you wear, you know what size
your clothes are, why not have a computer interface
number. Something that would translate on all
systems. I could log in to a system at a new job and
punch in my number and instantly my new account on
the system would get set up with preferences like, "I
only like working with files in lists, not with
icons". Many people who are not considered computer
savvy probably have issues with the way they are
required to interface with the computer and would get
much more use out of it, if the computer had to adapt
to them. This is something that would require a
massive amount of work due to the diversity of
peoples needs. The task is one the open source
community could tackle if they had the backing of
science institutions to provide guidance.
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