Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

Recently, there has been constant discussion about the localization of operating systems. In the middle of the year, South Korea also broke the news of boycotting Microsoft and developing domestic operating systems. But in reality, there are very few operating systems that can really be applied to reality. Red Flag, a domestic operating system, fell into financial crisis last year and then sought to sell it at a base price of 18 million yuan.

In 2004, the Munich government announced that it would migrate government computers to Linux operating system, thinking that this move would reduce IT costs. However, ten years later, this "crab eating" experiment became a disaster. Recently, the Munich government has begun gradually reinstalling Windows on office computers.

As the foundation of modern people's digital life, the importance of operating system is obvious. Operating system is the translation between man and machine, he translates the language of the machine into graphics and words that people can easily operate. At the same time, it translates human needs into machine instructions for processing. All communication between people and computer hardware is handled through the operating system, the middleman.

People don't like to let a stranger control their own destiny, so there are many state agencies that have developed their own operating systems one after another. But true success is rare. The number of mainstream operating system vendors currently available on the market can be counted on one hand.

Why is it so hard to develop an operating system?

1. Extremely complex

Windows Vista, released by Microsoft in 2005, had 50 million lines of code. We print 30 lines on a sheet of A4 paper, and Vista's code prints out to 1.66 million pages.

Linux, another major operating system, also reached 10 million lines of core code in 2008. This is only the statistics of its basic system. If peripheral systems such as graphical interfaces are included, its code size will not be much less than Windows.

2. Expensive

Business Week once estimated Vista's development cost at more than $20 billion, equivalent to the Apollo moon landing, one of the greatest scientific projects in human history.

Although the times are different, we should know that Microsoft is a commercial company, and the Apollo Program is a scientific research project supported by the United States with the strength of a country.

Linux is an open source operating system, but free does not mean no cost. On the contrary, many organizations around the world have invested heavily in Linux development. In 2008, a Linux Foundation study estimated that Fedora 9, a Linux community distribution, would cost approximately $10.8 billion to launch. That's not much less than Microsoft's operating system costs.

3, need to have a large number of peripheral manufacturers support

Operating system is only the basis of computer use, outside the operating system, peripheral software and hardware support determines the success or failure of the operating system.

When Jobs returned to Apple, he borrowed $150 million from Microsoft and made Microsoft promise to provide Office for Mac for the next five years.

Since Office is almost the most important business productivity suite, a Mac without Office is almost impossible to get used at scale. That promise has helped Apple put its excellent operating system back on track for a renaissance.

iOS is also successful because it was the first to establish a complete software ecosystem in the industry. By the end of 2013, Apple's App Store had surpassed 1 million apps.

4, strong network effect, the new system is difficult to break through

The more complete the ecosystem of an operating system, the more software and hardware vendors it supports, the greater its value, and the more people it uses (so-called network effects). This network effect creates high replacement costs, which are so high that even the original manufacturer of the system has difficulty convincing users to switch to the new operating system.

Many enterprises and individuals have accumulated a large amount of software and data on the old operating system. Migrating to the new system is likely to lead to software failure and data loss. If there is no need to push, it is difficult for users to have the motivation to replace the system.

WinXP is one such example. The system was so successful that XP became Microsoft's biggest competitor to future systems. The Chinese and South Korean governments also considered developing their own systems because Microsoft stopped updating XP.

When Apple CEO Cook visited the Apple factory, the iMac of its production line actually ran Windows, which was criticized by netizens. The reason for this is also because the Windows installation base is too large, many industrial software only provide Windows version of the control software. If you want to change to Mac, it is estimated that the entire production line will have to be replaced.

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