User talk:Cpiral/Operating system/Draft

Why this draft here and now?
This draft is a result of many discussions at Talk:Operating system. There we start with article length problems, go through product-creep problems, and become snubbed by the French for being "unscientific". Hmmm. Some outlines are howled out of the air there, and reason is laid for our freedom to re-write. That reason is that most of information in the current version of Operating system is a waste of spacetime when it pretends to be technical, replicating a pale version of the excellent technical details Wikipedia offers in many hundreds of supporting articles.

I hope for an article about the phrase "operating system" as searched and found in the field. I want to use the term as many times, in as many ways as possible.

&mdash; Cp i r al Cpiral


 * According to WP:SUB, subpages have been disabled in the English Wikipedia. I've not investigated the history of this page, but would suggest it be moved somewhere more appropriate... --trevj (talk) 14:34, 29 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Moved per WP:USERFY. --Trevj (talk) 22:31, 24 June 2011 (UTC)

Removal of entire sections
Much work has been done that ensures that any removed sections (for now at least) did not result in any lost information for Wikipedia. From the copy of the March 18, 2010 version of Operating system, I made the following changes, per the discussion sections referenced at Talk:Operating_system:
 * Move Disk Access to File System
 * Removed the networking section for now. I imagine it becoming something under a section on the kernel, where it would summarize Network operating system. For similar reasons, the section Security will certainly, soon melt into a paragraph under Kernel.
 * Changed section title Graphical user interface to User interface
 * Changed section title File system support in modern operating systems to File Systems and merge Disk access and file systems into it
 * Removed the section Example of operating systems and all of its overgrowing subsections (that were product-titled sections).

&mdash; Cp i r al Cpiral

Outlining an overall approach
A section Evolution would be a story that ended at the entire cluster of related phrases of "operating system". Historically Microsoft would have it's own subsection, but... would it have one in Evolution? Only significant contributions to the development of the concept operating system need mention as determined by the the remainder of the article, and just a bit more in depth than an introduction's handling. A paragraph perhaps on a product? In an industry subsection of an evolution section, yes, but perhaps in another article.

Another section Classifications seems fitting. Toy and Zee classify all operating systems by Configuration (hardware/logic) and Application (software).

I see the next section with the universal concepts of all classifications of operating systems: abstraction/virtualization, modularization, management, sharing, layers upon layers of automation...

After that a section on the branches of the architecture would be beautiful to technicians. Algorithms are the best practices of genius, a perfect effort for Wikipedia to expose, and the implementation of an algorithm can be made in either hardware or software. I'm sure an architectural section would fan-out into subsections describing the hardware/software trade-offs that found a niche.

The more articles toward which we finesse (delegate) the technical details (utilizing searching) the more we can remain storytellers. Anything of this level of complexity, jumbo jets, operating systems, life, should be in the form of a story. Wikipedia articles should be readable in one sitting by a reasonably well educated person having a reasonable amount of time.

Operating system is too complex for a summary style article. The subject area is so broad, the supporting articles so numerous, that a comprehensive content and a consistent style would break the length requirements.

The draft when ready should not tempt the passions for anything but more knowledge, and better wording. But we should put out a draft that is comprehensive and the right WP:size. The structure of the article would seem as indicated to be from simple to complex, or story to teaching, or thought to action; you know, from a general theory to a detailed implementation, getting more and more technical, precise, detailed, and wordy&mdash;sort of bottom-heavy.

&mdash; Cp i r al Cpiral  07:38, 26 March 2010 (UTC)