Interesting Article on Operating Systems

[Buck]

http://www.theinquirer.net/21050206.htm

[The JoJo]

Great read, thanks for the link Buck!

[Prof.Wizard]

"When are we going to get a decent operating system that switches on instantly and has proper media capability?"
I don't believe these problems can ruin your PC experience in our days...

Media capabilities are in a great level. We have a powerful format, MPEG (http://www.mpegif.org), that will eventually oust QuickTime, Real, Windows Media, and others and games are already in a breathtaking level of sophistication and graphics beauty.

Switching instantly? C'mon... how many times you switch in a minute, man? Give me a break...

[Prof.Wizard]

:(
Screwed the above MPEG link. Apologies.
http://www.m4if.org/

[Mercutio]

Another Bitter Amiga User (TM).

Bitterness that one's favored technology did not carry the day is all too common in the computing world. I've met Bitter VMS Users, Bitter OS/2 Users, Bitter Be Users, Bitter Novell Admins, even Bitter Apple II Users, not to mention the host of malcontents who have made Linux a "second choice" after one of the above faltered.

[cas]

I have been puzzled about something for a while. Why do people assume that BeOS was the greatest thing since sliced bread, that was defeated by an evil conspiracy? The author of the linked article is a technical writer that likely understands exactly zero about OS internals.

BeOS was heavily influenced by Unix, and was no more built from scratch than NT, which was developed at roughly the same time. Why then do so many whine about the loss of BeOS, while penning an article on NT?

It is ridiculous the number of people who assume that BeOS had the finest SMP support to be found, simply because BeBoxes came with two cpus.

I have studied BeOS is some detail, and read a number of papers, published by its original architects. Despite NT’s many architectural advantages over BeOS, the nostalgia continues.

[Tannin]

Let's face it Merc, everyone is bitter. Except of course, people who actually liked Windows, and they are morons. Better, on the whole, to be bitter.

[CougTek]

Let's face it Merc, everyone is bitter. Except of course, people who actually liked Windows, and they are morons. Better, on the whole, to be bitter.
You just have called our PeeWee a moron, Tannin.

[Tannin]

PS: I was never an Amiga user, never particularly liked them. But I have to admit, I have seem Amigas with 1MB of RAM do things that were not even worth thinking about on a 486 with 16MB. The multi-tasking ability of the Amiga OS was amazing to anyone used to the abilities of Windows.

[Bartender]

He has a way with words.

[Tannin]

Oh well, I've probably called him worse things in the past. And he me.

If the cap fits ...

[Cliptin]

I also like windows. :nono:

[Prof.Wizard]

LOL... remember our VESA (monitor refresh frequency) conversation last year, Tannin?

That has been our first "quarrel"... :P

[Tea]

Tannin seems to have slipped out for the moment, Prof. But I remember watching you two going at it hammer and tongs. I was laughing at the pair of you. :)

[Platform]

QNX is one of the fastest task-switching OSes available (i.e. -- an important aspect of multi-tasking pewrformance). But, that doesn't mean QNX is the best OS available.

http://www.qnx.com/

As for me, I always though the Amiga's GUI was a bit spartan, but effective. Multi-tasking performance was quite good for a consumer microcomputer during its time. Back in the late '80s, you could run a similar monochrome GUI on top of MS-DOS called GEM, which was a product from Digital Research (later, makers of DR-DOS). Digital Research, also inventors of the old CP/M OS, designed most of the original Amiga GUI.

By the way, is Prof.Wizard also known as "PeeWee" in an alternate universe? :D

[Tea]

I loved DR products: CP/M 2.2, I ran CP/M 3.0for years and years - I went direct from CP/M 3.0 to DR-DOS 6.0 to OS/2 2.1 on my main machine - and always admired the company.

But GEM was .... Well, Windows 3.0 was better. Hell, Windows ME was better.

And yes, depending on your choice of universe, PW = Prof = Prof. Wizard = PeeWee.

Now what planet is this again?

[cas]

One has to be careful when comparing embedded operating systems to general purpose operating systems on the basis of simple metrics. In particular, I suspect that it would surprise some to learn that embedded operating systems sacrifice throughput to reduce interrupt latency jitter.

For example, while the worst case response time for a general purpose OS is often much greater than that of an embedded operating system, the average response time is almost always lower.

Embedded operating systems are not built to be fast per se, they are built to be deterministic.

That said, QNX had been the front runner for one of the more recent Amiga revival fantasies.