The underlying principle of AwaOS is based on two beliefs, which are that one, the vast majority of home PC users do not need the advanced computer power of recent PC hardware, and that two, the standard desktop + start menu model is not the ideal user interface model for the average home user.
Based on these two beliefs, the principle behind AwaOS is that the standard hardware/software usage and consumption model is, for the home user, wasteful in both resources and effort invested.
While advanced computing capability is certainly necessary to, say, watch a blu-ray disc on a PC, or to play the latest cutting edge 3D computer game, neither of these two tasks are necessary or even relevant to a huge number of novice users throughout the world.
While the standard desktop with multiple applications running concurrently in multiple resizable windows may allow for advanced computing tasks for the power user, the average home user is less likely to use multiple applications in tandem to perform a single task.
In comparison, it may be suggested that many home users would be more than satisfied with a much simpler computer model, such as a smartphone with a desktop sized screen and external keyboard and mouse.
AwaOS aims to fill this niche.
Reasoning
It is commonly understood that commercial operating systems are based on the concept of designed obsolescence. Once the market is saturated, the commercial developer must encourage existing users to upgrade to newer versions of their operating systems for a fee in order to maintain revenue growth. In some cases, this policy of encouraging upgrades can be effectively enforced such that the user must upgrade or risk the continued use of a system which is no longer supported, is not compatible with modern online services, and is fraught with security weaknesses. The developers attempt to mitigate this burden by providing discounted upgrades which try to find a fair balance between return on investment in development versus financial burden on the user. However, such operating system upgrades tend to be oriented toward a more advanced hardware specification than existed at the time of the release of the earlier version of the operating system. Thus, the user is commonly required to upgrade or replace their computer hardware in order to install and run the new upgraded operating system. This hidden cost in OS upgrading is further exacerbated by the occasional need to upgrade other software to make it compatible with the new OS and even the hidden environmental costs of the manufacture of the new hardware and the disposal of the old hardware.
What users of commercial operating systems often do not realize is that, with restrictions and caveats, their hardware is usually perfectly capable of supporting modern online services and other recent desktop computing developments now and for years into the future, often until the hardware physically ceases to function, if only the user is willing to try their hand at installing, learning, and using free alternative operating systems such as GNU/Linux or FreeBSD.
However, GNU/Linux, for example, is still not a viable option for a PC user of limited skills for several reasons, with the assumption made here that it is common for PC users of limited skill to use older hardware for a longer period of time because they use their PCs for often narrowly defined goals (email, web browsing, the occasional text or spreadsheet document).
First, while modern GNU/Linux distributions provide a user experience highly similar to commercial operating systems in many respects, from the beginner’s perspective, “everything is slightly different”. These “slightly different” aspects create a formidably sharp learning curve for a user of limited skills. It was hard enough for them to learn to use the previous OS and they don’t want to start over.
Second, the focus of GNU/Linux has changed a great deal over the years. It began as an attempt to create a free alternative to UNIX, the operating system of computing professionals. It then grew to become the operating system of choice for servers running important web based services. Only in recent years has it began to focus also on providing an alternative desktop experience for the average PC user. While it has grown in that area in leaps and bounds, the primary focus within that area for many popular distributions seems to be to copy the standard desktop idiom used by Windows and Mac OS X in such a way that experienced and learned users of the former can somewhat easily switch to GNU/Linux. As a result of that focus, while the minimum system requirements for recent versions of popular GNU/Linux distributions tend to be far lower than the latest versions of Windows or Mac OS X, they still highly encourage using newer hardware, and the requirements tend to grow steadily with each new version even though the requirements of the base system (the Linux kernel) do not grow at the same pace. Thus, in most cases, using the latest version of a given GNU/Linux distribution is not recommended or possible on older hardware.
Given these understandings, there have been several promising developments in the world of personal technology in recent years, namely the smartphone and the netbook.
In Japan, where AwaOS was conceived, there is a high degree of aversion to the QWERTY keyboard due to the difficulty of typing the Japanese language. Thus people who do not need to use a PC on a daily basis in their jobs commonly do not own PCs and may have never used one, a trend particularly noticeable in rural areas. However, people of all ages and backgrounds have become comfortable with using email and browsing the web using smartphones, which became popular in Japan long before similar technology was available in the US. Thus the problem here is not with computing itself but with the interface to use it.
The second important trend is the netbook. Before the netbook, personal computers were expensive devices often with far more computing power than the average user would ever be able to fully harness. In the case of laptops, such power came at the cost of carrying weight and battery life. As mobile computing became more popular and web based services became more advanced, a demand developed for lightweight, low end devices built specifically for accessing the web, and the “netbook” was born. As the earliest netbooks had very limited screen space and small, hard to operate input devices, new desktop idioms were developed to provide a smoother user experience. These new designs were very similar to the user interfaces of the latest smartphones available at the time such as the iPhone. Namely, rather than being presented with a “desktop” often covered in file icons and other user accumulated detritus with applications launched from deeply nested menus located at the far edges of the screen or from icons lost amongst the desktop detritus, the user was instead presented with an application launcher that filled the entire screen, and each launched application would also use all available screen space (the window would be maximized) so that the user would be able to operate the device smoothly with the limited input devices (for instance tiny netbook trackpads or rubber pointers).
After observing novice PC users in rural Japan trying to operate laptops using standard desktop/menu based GUIs, I developed the idea that the netbook/smartphone GUI model would be a far more intuitive solution for such users.
Further, observing that these users were running very old hardware under unsupported obsolete operating systems but lacked the financial resources or interest in purchasing new hardware, I determined that a custom GNU/Linux distribution geared toward older hardware was needed.
As no single distribution solved both requirements in precisely the manner I envisioned, I determined to create AwaOS.
What are the goals of AwaOS?
- To bring an alternative option from Windows/OS X to first time PC users or PC users with limited skill or experience.
- To bring an alternative option from Windows/OS X to users of old hardware who cannot or do not want to spend money to upgrade said hardware in order to gain the benefits of more recent versions of said operating systems without requiring them to become familiar with the nuts and bolts of Linux.
- To provide these users with a computing experience which is minimalist in approach but at the same time covers all the requirements that the modern Internet/Web environments impose.
- To provide these users with a computing experience which is user centric and task centric rather than desktop and application centric.
What makes AwaOS different from other lightweight versions of Ubuntu such as Lubuntu, Xubuntu, #! Crunchbang, or Mint 9 LXDE, or other light weight Linux distros such as Damn Small Linux or Puppy Linux?
- AwaOS is geared towards first time PC users or PC users with limited experience.
- For this purpose, AwaOS presents a desktop based on recent Netbook oriented Linux distributions and borrowing from the minimalist computing experience introduced by smartphones.
- AwaOS recognizes that the Netbook/smartphone idiom that commonly uses a full screen application launcher and gives the appearance of being single-tasking by allowing applications to launch maximized is a far more intuitive idiom for first time or beginner computer users than the standard, Desktop+start menu based multitasking resize-able window idiom that is the norm.
- In order to provide a reasonable experience on low RAM computers (128MB or more) AwaOS attempts to select applications and tools which use less RAM and that are written in C or C++ for speed, trying to focus on those which use GTK+ as much as possible. Applications which use Python are avoided for its heavy RAM use and slower operation. GTK+ is chosen over QT for the slight footprint advantage and availability of applications, and over other graphic libraries for international language support. Applications using modern frameworks such as Mono and other applications with a large number of dependencies, particularly additional background processes, are avoided whenever possible.
- While the ideal goal is to avoid the use of any Gnome applications to reduce unnecessary dependencies, some sacrifice is made to provide compatibility with modern web technology, such as choosing Epiphany as the default browser rather than Dillo or other lightweight but reduced function options.
- For background processes and functionality which a beginner user is never likely going to need to adjust, command line tools pre-configured at install time are selected.
- By basing this project on Ubuntu rather than, say, a lighter weight distro that uses busybox, the user retains the option to add to their system limited only by their skill and the capacity of their hardware using the vast array of options provided by the Ubuntu repositories and countless Launchpad PPAs. Bottom up light weight distros seem to focus on a reduced user experience with a very low disk footprint (often running entirely in RAM), and they are typically a challenge to use for those with limited PC experience. AwaOS assumes around 8 to 10GB of disk space and thus sacrifices the disk space used by a Ubuntu minimal install and some extra wasted RAM in favor of the latest kernel and unlimited expandability Ubuntu provides.
What makes AwaOS different from Netbook oriented distributions such as the Ubuntu Netbook Remix?
- AwaOS assumes lower system requirements. Most netbooks run on modern low power but fast CPUs with ample memory and hard disk space, and thus netbook oriented distributions are designed to take advantage of the extra resources available, often geared toward providing a visually attractive experience in way that requires graphic hardware acceleration.
- AwaOS is designed for older desktops and laptops. Some netbook distributions are tweaked specifically for the netbook hardware (such as the Via/ARM processors) and should not be used as is on a desktop or standard laptop.
- The GUIs of netbook oriented distributions are also commonly designed for the typical wide screen netbook LCD and can behave unpredictably on standard 4:3 aspect desktop LCD monitors with larger resolutions.
- While some netbook distributions offer a “my first desktop” style simplified GUI, this is not because they are oriented toward beginners but rather to make optimal use of limited screen space. AwaOS is rather geared specifically toward beginners, though it currently utilizes a launcher designed for netbooks.
What are the system requirements of AwaOS?
- 128MB of RAM
- 8GB of hard disk space
- Pentium III or greater CPU, 700-800Mhz minimum, or a PPC G4.
- Compatible with PPC hardware.
- The existing installation typically uses 40-50MB of RAM without running applications (counting cached free memory as free). I would ultimately like to support systems with as little as 64MB RAM by
- Reducing memory usage of the base system
- Overcoming the memory requirement hurdle of the current Ubuntu command line installer (it fails on anything less than 100MB RAM).
- Figuring out how to enforce limitations on the number of concurrently running desktop applications along the lines of single tasking smart phones.
Where does the name AwaOS come from?
- I live in rural Japan on the south end of the Chiba peninsula, just across Tokyo bay from the better known destinations of Kamakura and Yokohama. The southern tip of the Chiba peninsula was once an independent state called Awa-no-Kuni (the Awa Nation), a name established by immigrants from the Island of Shikoku who came in ancient times from an area also called Awa. The name Awa is still used today to refer to the region in a casual context. Thus, AwaOS means an operating system for the Awa region.
- The English phonetic pronunciation of “awa” also matches the typical Japanese person’s pronunciation of the English word “our”, so for the Japanese, the name AwaOS has a double meaning of “Our OS”.
