Back To The Future?

Please forgive me a few very naive ramblings here: The earliest home computers held their operating systems in ROM. As well as speeding access (before the days of hard disks), this had the wonderful advantage that it could not be corrupted. The computer could always be returned to a pristine state by switching off and on. Programs were loaded from cassette tapes and couldn't be corrupted (only destroyed!). Many of the problems with modern home computers stems from storing the operating system and programs on hard disk, where they can easily be corrupted, either through bugs, user accidents, hardware glitches, or malicious software. How much do normal home users really need the flexibility that being able to modify the operating system provides? Yes, I know this is all extremely naive technically. One program's data file is another program's executable file (the most obvious example being compilers) and users most defintely want to be able to purchase and use programs additional to the operating system. But the current fragile house of cards, with DLL hell and almost weekly security nightmares, viruses, trojans, adware, etc is increasingly inappropriate for home users. So, has anyone thought about producing a computer with an operating system and programs which cannot be changed? I think there might be a huge market for such a device. - John

If the operating system can not be changed, in ANYWAY, then how are they supposed to implement the service packs (if any) ? 
    and, how are you supposed to install screen savers? They all go in the C:\Windows directory.

If the operating system was professionally tested and debugged before being released, it wouldn't need any updates. Obviously, I'm not talking about adapting Windows to work this way, that isn't feasible because of its fundamental architecture and its current early stage of development, with numerous bugs and design flaws still being discovered. I'm talking about something totally new. By the way, if you think about it, a lot of the security enhancements in SP2 are actually attempting to do exactly what I propose - protect the operating system against any unwanted changes. But, as I suggested in my original post, it would be far from easy to design a computer which combined unchangeable software and the power and flexibility that users, even home users, require. Some radical thinking would be required, starting with no assumptions. - John

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. I think the fact that OSs can be changed after install offers tremendous power. I mean first off, you have security issues which without the ability to update can not be fixed. No large OS is going to be perfect, currently there is no perfectly secure system that could even come close to doing that. Secondly what about bugs (general)?
 
This would also mean massive amounts of releases because you couldn't add functionality but applying an update or anything but would need to completely release a new ROM each time.

Lastly, this entire concept completely goes against the entire internet movement.

You do actually have an OS that can't be changed. It is run from a CD and called Knoppix. As it is readonly, security is not really an issue (as you cannot write to the CD). There are also other Linux live CD's that you can put into an old PC and use it as a firewall/router etc. For persistent data storage (i.e. firewall settings, cache files) you can still use a hard drive / floppy / usb disk. If the data is encrypted then it is no use if someone gets there hands on it as they still need to know the password to get the information.

That is another advantage of Linux - the fact that you can have CD's like this and copy as many times as you want without worrying about costs and security.

If a bug was discovered, or a security hole found then a new updated CD could simply be written.

john259 wrote:

If the operating system was professionally tested and debugged before being released, it wouldn't need any updates.

(Sorry about the long quote above; I can't get rid of it. Nor can I insert any line breaks.) I was only dreaming. And reminiscing how good it was to be able to switch a Commodore 64 off and on to completely reset it, in less time that it took for the monitor to wam up. It seems we totally lost the way somewhere back then, going to operating system loaded from disk. I know the concept probably isn't practical now (although Koppix sounds interesting). I was really hoping someone would respond with some clever and revolutionary ideas somewhat along the same lines. Just a thought though - where do games consoles load their software from? Can it be corrupted/updated? Could a computer system based on the games console concept be developed into a word processor and Internet browser, which is all the majority of home users want? Regarding making perfect software, that's easy. Just make sure that the developers have to take all the calls from irate users at two o'clock in the morning. It sure worked for us! John

I believe the XBox has pretty much what you're talking about. There's a minimal BIOS to get things booted, show a splash screen, let you change the date, etc. But the moment you put a game disc in, it boots the OS (a cut-down version of Windows) directly off that disk, followed by the game itself. This eliminates the DLL hell of different games putting different versions of core files on the hard disk - every game comes with its own "known good" copy of the OS.

Wait, XBox disks have a copy of the OS on the CD? Or did I misread that?

A BIOS booting an OS is pretty much how a normal PC works. Still most BIOS needs updates to fix minor things. Nowadays they can't even make a decent CD-burner without ten revisions to the firmware.
Even the old 8-bit machines had bugs. It just didn't matter much since it was a one user one program no network system. I do believe some of these bugs were actually turned into features in the hands of clever demo makers.

With the right configuration even the Windows 2000/XP systems components should be somewhat read only. There is a protection system in place that tracks the integrity of the core files.

The ROM based systems did have a few advantages. Startup speed is one. Knowing that every computer has the exact same environment is another. You have a point that just maybe it has become to easy to upgrade. When I buy a standalone DVD-player I expect it to work right away, and not after three revisions of the firmware. Mobile phones are going the same way. I guess it's time to market and just having to fix the bugs that are found that are the economic forces behind that development.

/Lars.

Yeah from what I understand, every XBox game has an operating system compiled in as part of the game. It's a very minimal OS that only runs one process and always in kernel mode so it can touch the hardware directly.

Of courser, you could release an OS to be installed on a eprom/flash memomry or something.. updates could then be implemented.. additional "modules" could be installed on a hard drive.. yes the modules wouldn't be as secure as the info on the rom, but you'd have them on CD.. so if things went awry, you'd just copy them back on without loosing the os.. you could even format the harddrive completely (1 drive/1 partition situation as an example) while still useing the system.

This would allow the flexability of modern OS's with some of the security of ROM..

Hmm.. 1gb Flashable Rom.. 1gb Ram.. and a hardisk..

Well, if you run Thin Clients, this is essentially what you have anyways:

You boot to a core OS (generally Windows from most major vendors, but it could just as easily be Linux), which then connects to a Citrix-type box which loads the actual OS, which is located on a server.

The user can change preferences for that session, and the data'll be held, but the core OS is protected as it's running off a virtual processor and system environment so that anything the user does is isolated (at a very, very deep level).

We have about 1,000 thin clients here, and as long as you can keep Citrix stable (ugh) it is great to manage, as patch management is much easier on 20 servers than it is 1,000 clients.

My school uses a program called "Deep Freeze"  (http://www.faronics.com/), which essentially runs on top of Windows (any version), and resets any changes when the computer is restarted. This can be disabled by an administrator for updates. Also, the local tech college uses a hardware based system. For school, we have network drives for data storage, and the tech college uses removable media.

In 1981 I bought my first computer-- the Radio Shack Color Computer, essentially Radio Shack's answer to the Commodore 64.  It used a ROM based operating system written by ... (drum roll) ... Microsoft.

Beer28 wrote:

john259 wrote: with DLL hell and almost weekly security nightmares, viruses, trojans, adware, etc is increasingly inappropriate for home users.

Yeah, I use MDK linux as my desktop and I haven't had a single incident of DLL hell, .NET blues, doomyourbutt.worm, IE highjacker or anything else you mentioned since I switched to 100% workstation usage.

To be honest, I never had those dll problems much on WinXP either, mostly on the 9X kernel systems, though the spyware and virii are certainly targeted at the windows system.

This idea would work very well if PC was more like a TV or a music player. But, if you want to use your PC like a PC you can't simply have the OS in a ROM.

Imagine if XP was a ROM chip which you have to fix in your motherboard. Then suddenly from nowhere you would hear that the XP has a huge security bug and microsoft is advising its users to throw away the XP chip and buy a new XP SP2 chip !!!

Well, there are OS like Knopix (Linux) but only a fraction of users use it. Even if it had bugs, the CD can be thrown away as Linux if free unlike windows.

shreyasonline wrote:

This idea would work very well if PC was more like a TV or a music player. But, if you want to use your PC like a PC you can't simply have the OS in a ROM.

Imagine if XP was a ROM chip which you have to fix in your motherboard. Then suddenly from nowhere you would hear that the XP has a huge security bug and microsoft is advising its users to throw away the XP chip and buy a new XP SP2 chip !!!

This is, in fact, how the Apple Macintosh used to (does?) work. It turned on extremely fast compared to other equivalent Wintel machines. The ROM had a program that would check a specific system folder for OS patches and updates, and applied them before loading the entire OS. Of course, this would let you apply the Mac counterpart of SP2, but you couldn’t upgrade for OS 9 to OS X. But, hey, nothing’s perfect….

Also, I don't know if I made this clear in my last post, but if any students mess with system settings, or even if the school gets a virus, the computer only needs to be rebooted to fix the problem. Deep freeze has saved a lot of  troubleshooting time.