There are many interesting technologies which have not yet found their way into the everyday operating system. The thought of combining these products/ideas, makes me feel like I am living in the dark ages of msdos™, even though my current operating system are FreeBSD-5.1™.
Files can have unlimited meta-information and attributes based on file type. For instance, if you have a .mp3 file, you can store lyrics and notes. This information can also have active effects. If the .mp3 is recorded at too low a volume, you can add a volume-bias-preset file, so that your musicplayer can play it with the right amplitude.
Or for example, having files with different tab sizes is not a problem. You just add a resource which says how much indentation you want for that file. When you copy the file to your friends computer, the resource follows and the file will show up, correctly indented.
Files are automatically indexed for searches. Files with visual representation can have small thumbnails created for fast visual scanning. Music files can also have "shorts" that play a few seconds when previewed.
File system provides transparent concurrent versioning. All files are tagged with data and time. Saving an edited file doesn't destroy the old version but just creates a newer version. Old versions can be purged as they age. Perhaps older versions can just be successive diffs of newest.
IO-Slaves can make a virtual view of the file system, on-the-fly. You can install as many IO-slaves that you want. Have a look at KDE's list of io-slaves.
The user can click on a PDF file and get info about the number of pages, papersize, see page#1 thumbnail, wordcount, the lix-index of the text. If the user clicks on a MPEG-Video file, it shows how long the movie lasts, refreshrates at common dimensions, subtitle-languages, quality, thumbnails, and so on.
Navigate archives like normal directories, "Tarball Transparency". For instance if you have a zipped file, you can change dir into it. The operating system will then extract it, temporarily in the background, completely transparent. It just feels like a normal directory.
For example, the proc directory found on unix systems is a directory of virtual files "containing" information on the current system status. Or when you plugin your usb camera, it appears as if it were a directory of image-files.
Remembering long unix-paths, e.g. /usr/home/neoneye/kode/ros/projects/book_of_ideas can be tiresome. In Ros you can make shortcuts, for instance can we make a ros: shortcut, which points at /usr/home/neoneye/kode/ros. All we have to rememer are simply ros:projects/book_of_ideas.
You can archive the same as Windows 'my documents', by creating a shortcut which points at you document folder. A sample configuration, could be like:
'documents' => [ '/home/username/docs' ] 'music' => [ '/home/username/music', '/home/friend/music', '/home/username/music/incomming' ]
This idea were originally pioneered on the Amiga™ platform. You could have df0:dopus, cd0:games/turricanII, docs:aguides/, etc. There is an article about how it works, Click Here.
Files are globaly accessible. You can access your files, even though you're at a friends place. If there's a file you want, then all you have to do is to drag the file to its destination (into your homedir!). When you get back home, you can easily access your friends files, because you are part of the same global-file-hierarchy.
Global namespace gives every file a unique identifier. Wherever a file goes or is copied it can be found by that identifier, irregardless of physical location.
Access Control Lists specify with great detail who is allowed to access your data. You can grant all of your friends read-only access to you music-collection. You can monitor what data they access (suspicious by nature).
AFS™ (Andrew File System), can do all these magical things. Further more it can do replication of volumes, so that you always have all your data backed up at your work place.