If what you're using works for you there's little reason to switch. I have had certain consraints in how I use computers that motivated me to explore different alternatives that "do more with less". But as users demand smaller devices and more portability I'm beginning to wonder if these "unconventional" alternatives are not generally useful for others besides me.
Not only do I divorce the OS from the hardware, but I separate the OS from my personal data. Unless I have both wholly residing in RAM (which I find generally faster than HDD or USB/SD), they are not on the same media. As much as possible I try to make the OS read-only and the media used for data (e.g. RAM for short-term data storage or HDD for long-term data storage) read-write. Perhaps there are parallels to certain object file formats and their separation of code and data.
I've also thought a lot about and experimented with the use of separate, simplified, fast-booting OS's for different purposes. I am forced to use different OS's to perform certain tasks. But the popular all-purpose OS's are huge and often I only need a small fraction of their functionality.
What if we did not think in all or nothing terms about OS functionality? What if some OS's were small and only limited-purpose?
Rebooting is the slow step. But these limited-purpose OS's, being small and simple, can be very robust and responsive once booted.
The smaller the kernel and userland, the more RAM I have for storage.
Not only do I divorce the OS from the hardware, but I separate the OS from my personal data. Unless I have both wholly residing in RAM (which I find generally faster than HDD or USB/SD), they are not on the same media. As much as possible I try to make the OS read-only and the media used for data (e.g. RAM for short-term data storage or HDD for long-term data storage) read-write. Perhaps there are parallels to certain object file formats and their separation of code and data.
I've also thought a lot about and experimented with the use of separate, simplified, fast-booting OS's for different purposes. I am forced to use different OS's to perform certain tasks. But the popular all-purpose OS's are huge and often I only need a small fraction of their functionality.
What if we did not think in all or nothing terms about OS functionality? What if some OS's were small and only limited-purpose?
Rebooting is the slow step. But these limited-purpose OS's, being small and simple, can be very robust and responsive once booted.
The smaller the kernel and userland, the more RAM I have for storage.