251–260 of 384 posts
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Is Tanenbaum going to have the last laugh?
Marginally off-topic, but Minix 3.3 runs the (almost) complete NetBSD userland now. To use X11 you have to compile the development branch, however. It's a real, POSIX-compliant, reliable microkernel that can run useful things now.
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I've got a windows 10 machine with a pretty fast NVMe SSD. It takes 10 seconds to get to the login screen, and another three minutes to load up all of the services that are set to run on login. I'm convinced that the NTFS driver must be a nightmare of blocking I/O.
That's definitely not the norm. On both my Windows 10 machines the desktop becomes usable within seconds after login. Might be worth having a look at what's taking so long on your machine... As far as I remember there is even a Microsoft tool that highlights startup jobs that are slow to run, isn't there?
there are good reasons why linux dominates the backend space, and windows dominates user space. linux caters very well to the power user and is discoverable with a lot of research - the kind power users will do. windows caters acceptably to the casual user and is so well known they needn't bother advertising (but continue to do so anyway...).
the one problem that is bigger than anything listed here, imo, is that the linux development community is building something they want rather than what others want and then not selling it to anyone especially well.
there have been great strides in this area, but its still not enough. ubuntu is a joy to install and use compared to linuxes of old. (i remember well struggling with 'red hat for dummies' in the 90s).
but... its not advertised in the mainstream or known about as an alternative - why its worth using etc. and appears that it might suffer the classic problems for regular users that put them off alternative platforms - things like "doesn't have MS Word which I (think) I need for work (because I've never even heard of OpenOffice or LibreOffice etc. let alone tried such things)"
its great to see that Dell offer it as an option these days, at least. but until more people know about it and understand that it won't prevent them from doing what they want, they just aren't going to use it.
i am turned off when the criticisms towards windows, whilst valid, typify the out-of-touch-with-reality-ness of many linux fanboys. real world users do not notice, much less care about these issues, nor want them fixed, nor would their user experience be significantly improved by addressing them. along similar lines they barely notice that linux exists at all. there are good reasons why linux dominates the backend sp…
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QNX4 is high throughput, mister. Other contenders include eMCOS and FFMK, though those are obscure. That said, I don't even understand the logic. HPC clusters where single-percentage overheads really matter are an extremely specialized use case, so of course COTS u-kernels might not cut it. Where's the shocker here? Response to added: Not necessarily with message passing properly integrated with the CPU scheduler. Re…
"QNX4 is high throughput, mister." Ok then, show me the server farms... I'm not even really talking about HPC, just the massive datacentres that run everyone's lives. All for the most part running monolithic kernels. I doubt the thousands of engineers who work on such systems consider the "huge monolithic kernel" "undebuggable". And I don't see examples of microkernel OSs that are able to cut it in these circumstance…
You're getting all red in the face using some really dubious arguments to back you up here.
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OK, if it's in cars (even if only one CPU per car, or even only in high-end cars), then yes, that certainly is "widely used". (In terms of numbers shipped, not necessarily in terms of "design wins" - but then, Windows doesn't have that many "design wins" either.)
So now you're moving the goalposts with "design wins". Just what are the design wins of a SysV Unix clone like Linux, pray tell? It's hard not to be on the offensive when you seem to beg for it. Where did the Windows comparison come from? The design wins, of course, should be obvious to anyone willing to do a modicum of research.
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I don't think this is about self-disparagement, but about holding ourselves to a high standard. I love Linux, and have been using it without major problems for some time now (mainly Ubuntu-based distros). Especially if you are into programming, I'd say it beats MS hands down. However, I do acknowledge that there are still many problems that bar Linux from being an operating system "for the masses" (i.e. all those peo…
> But let's not pretend that "it just works, right out of the box!" It does though. Get an Ubuntu laptop from Dell, it works. Get a Chromebook from Google and friends, it works. Yes, install Linux on a random 5 year old laptop, and you may have problems. Ever built a 'hackintosh'? Same deal. Ever install Windows? It's a pain. As for shell commands, Windows has that. So does OSX. Linux also has GUIs that can install p…
This is in fact the opposite of reality. Old hardware works relatively well. New hardware can take quite a while to get support because it's not a priority for vendors, especially GPUs which the article harpes on, is a very risky gamble - even if it works "works well" is misleading - it's always behind Windows performance wise and very often power management is inferior too.
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QNX4 is high throughput, mister. Other contenders include eMCOS and FFMK, though those are obscure. That said, I don't even understand the logic. HPC clusters where single-percentage overheads really matter are an extremely specialized use case, so of course COTS u-kernels might not cut it. Where's the shocker here? Response to added: Not necessarily with message passing properly integrated with the CPU scheduler. Re…
"QNX4 is high throughput, mister." Ok then, show me the server farms... I'm not even really talking about HPC, just the massive datacentres that run everyone's lives. All for the most part running monolithic kernels. I doubt the thousands of engineers who work on such systems consider the "huge monolithic kernel" "undebuggable". And I don't see examples of microkernel OSs that are able to cut it in these circumstance…
(As an aside, I'll grant that even a high-throughput microkernel seems likely, to me, to have a lower throughput relative to a more tightly-coupled monolithic kernel. That's just one of the architectural trade-offs involved here.)
As I see it, there are technical (e.g. hardware drivers, precompiled proprietary binaries) and social (e.g. relative lack of QNX expertise = $$, proprietary licensing) reasons for many people to choose one of the more popular OSes, running monolithic kernels.
I can't say what's technically superior, but even if QNX was, nobody's a dumbass for choosing something else -- and I don't think the fellow you're replying to was saying so. There are, of course, reasons and trade-offs.
An OS's adoption is a social thing, and proves nothing technical about it. If it wasn't for licensing (a social problem), BSD might have taken off, and Linux been comparatively marginalized.
Just sharing my perspective here.