91–100 of 173 posts
Not the kernel but deployment of binary apps is almost impossible because of a fragmented platform and distros not providing a universal set of guaranteed, ABI compatible libraries.
How Linux freezes under high memory usage, Mac OS and Windows both handle such situations well without requiring a hard reboot.
Windows freezes, too and if you are a heavy multitasker with a program that hogs memory and you are not carefully it can happen wow frequently
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If that was the case, macOS and windows would own the server market because who would want to have a server that "freezes" under "heavy memory load". MacOS is virtually non-existent and Windows has a small share of the market and performs poorly comparison.
by "freezes", 'deeter72 almost certainly means that the user interface becomes unresponsive, which is not relevant for servers. windows has policies that prioritize maintaining user interface and foreground app responsiveness.
Kernel thread for interactive applications in focused window would then have higher priority than background applications improving responsiveness. I am not sure what manipulated the priority, but I assume Xsun (X Window server) did it.
How Linux freezes under high memory usage, Mac OS and Windows both handle such situations well without requiring a hard reboot.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you call changing APIs every other major release of Windows, then sure. Having your drivers in tree allows the developer changing said API to update everything in tree that depends on said API which they are changing.
> If you call changing APIs every other major release of Windows, then sure. Yet here I am, on windows 10, using printer drivers designed and released for windows vista.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once it becomes "about money" that controls the enterprise, even when it was originally about software. Sure there's some projects that avoided that but its a tar pit and I can't fault anyone for avoiding it.
Is it, though? I find a lot of security in the knowledge that Ubuntu has a self-sustaining financial model. It’s still close enough to the original love of software that Linus strongly approves. I really enjoyed your parent comment’s take on grant-writing. I do, however, expect that this is already taking place in the appropriate areas of Linux development more than is commonly realized.
Desktop Linux is another story though. On one end, you have GNOME devs who try to imitate macOS without the UX design knowledge and taste, and KDE that is buggy and crashes a lot. If these teams merged they could create something that will rival Windows. I guess fragmentation and lack of good desktops it is.
How Linux freezes under high memory usage, Mac OS and Windows both handle such situations well without requiring a hard reboot.
Windows freezes, too and if you are a heavy multitasker with a program that hogs memory and you are not carefully it can happen wow frequently
I don't know if this feature still exists in modern versions since memory has increased so much but I always found it to be neat that some developers thought about this.
Linux did everything right, if you want a kernel that looks and behaves like Linux. If you want a kernel that does something differently, see the other replies in this thread. All of these things (such as a stable driver ABI) would radically change Linux, and are probably very bad ideas.
> Or, if you have enough funding to write a new kernel, what would you do differently?
I'd make an open-source kernel inspired by the best parts of Windows NT. Not a direct clone of 30+ years of legacy APIs (ReactOS), nor an emulator trying to fit the square peg of Linux into the round hole of Windows (WINE).