On 30 Nov 2002, James Rogers wrote: > On Fri, 2002-11-29 at 19:38, John Rose wrote: > > But if I were building > > a new PC-based AI design, just from my experience, I would jump all over > > Windows and it's offerings ... as well take a side glance at Lindows :)
At Cycorp, we switched from Symbolics Lisp Machines to Linux three years ago, and although we have a port of the Cyc knowledge base for Win32 we are now blocked by the memory model of Win32 which reserves 2GB of virtual memory for the OS. Linux reserves only 1 GB and because the Cyc KB is currently memory resident we cannot contain the full Cyc KB in Win32 (max user address space is 2 GB) but we can contain the full Cyc KB in Linux (max user address space is 3GB). Another problem with Win32 is price/behavior between desktop Win32 and Server Win32. In desktop Win32, the bias is towards fast Office application launch time and you will find server applications suffering in that memory paging occurs even if sufficient RAM exists. The Win32 server OS is much more expensive and still does not completely solve this performance problem. The main problem with Win32 is the total cost of ownership issue, when you multiply the total number of computers (desktops, laptops, servers, work-at-home computers) by the cost of Win32 server + MS Visual Studio, which must be upgraded every two-three years -- Compared to Linux in which upgrades are free and most required software is free. Of course some individuals may find Linux difficult to install for a particular computer, but Cycorp has sysadmins to overcome that problem and we purchase "white box" high performance computers with Linux installed to our specs. At Cycorp we put Win32 on the slowest, oldest computers (for non-technical tasks) and are still running Windows NT on most of those. We put Linux on the majority of our fast AMD boxes which run the Cyc KB best. The Cyc KB uses HTML as its interface so we do not get value from the Windows desktop, and we use java as the main interface language. I have Win2K and WinXP at home on two computers and Linux on my faster home servers. I expect that some year I will retire Win32 and convert mainly to Linux-64 at the rate at which Linux is improving. -Steve -- =========================================================== Stephen L. Reed phone: 512.342.4036 Cycorp, Suite 100 fax: 512.342.4040 3721 Executive Center Drive email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Austin, TX 78731 web: http://www.cyc.com download OpenCyc at http://www.opencyc.org =========================================================== ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
