Quoting "Peter G. Viscarola" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, on Mon 24 Dec 2007
06:09:58 AM PST:
>>
>> There's nothing speculative about it. We need to leverage the technical
>> superiority of Linux while accommodating the massive market inertia of
>> Windows.
>>
>
> Both Windows and Linux are essentially 1980's technology operating
> systems, with little to differentiate them at the level of base
> architecture.
>
> Calling Linux "technically superior" to Windows is capricious,
> inflammatory, and not technically correct.
I concur...
It's more a difference in development and distribution philosophy.
Under the hood the kernels work in fairly similar ways (interrupts,
drivers, preemptive scheduling, etc.) The differences are largely in
the user interaction layer.. Windows is fairly "user event" driven..
"which process fields that mouse click", although in the server world,
it's somewhat less so. I'd say that since the original WinNT kernel
displaced the older DOS "CP/M single thread" model it's been pretty
conventional multi task operating system. A file system, a scheduler,
some form of memory pool management, virtual memory/swap files,
loadable device drivers, etc.
Often, too, folks sort of congeal all of Windows, including the
applications, into one conceptual bundle. One should not tar the
underlying kernel and OS with the sins of PowerPoint, for instance.
{And yes, there's no question that MS actively seeks to cram
applications stuff into the OS.. embrace and extend and all that.. but
at least for the last few years, it's been pretty well partitioned
into user space, and is configure-out-able..}
Windows also bundles a whole raft of (non-kernel) stuff together and
encourages the use of it in applications (i.e. DDE, OLE, etc,
Microsoft Foundation Classes, the GDI API, .NET these days, etc.). In
the *nix world, the tendency is to keep all the bits and pieces
separate, and let the developer figure out which pieces to keep and
which to discard.
They BOTH have all sorts of configuration management problems (.dll
hell for Win, glibc versions, etc. in Linux), most of which are
addressed by some subsequent packaging tools (make autoconf?)
Therefore, you can probably build a smaller Linux image, because it
does provide the ability to strip out big chunks, while Windows,
targeting a more mass distribution market, tends to take a "the masses
will mostly need all this, so lets keep it one big hunk" approach.
And, there's a whole horses for courses thing. Windows is clearly
targeting the consumer media market, and to go there, they need fairly
robust digital rights management, something that the Linux user world
is not clamoring for.
WIndows (obviously) is doing a halfway decent job targeting their
market. Linux likewise. Neither is going away any time soon.
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