On 6/11/07, Paul G. Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Sun, 2007-06-10 at 20:30 -0700, Tracy R Reed wrote:
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> Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
> > Unix was always the toughest to get working on a new microprocessor.
> > Windows was always the easiest.
>
> I'm confused. If this is so then why does Unix run on so many different
> processors? It was even ported for free by hackers over very short
> timeframes. And Windows so few?
>
Because the statement is incorrect? There are many, many systems that
Windows will not run on, and probably never will. I remember the many
issues we had with it on the Alpha while I was at DIGITAL (BSOD was the
norm, actually running something useful was a bonus!). It's a huge
behemoth that is a piece-meal of many other parts of other stuff
acquired by M$ over the years (I wonder how much of it they actually
wrote?). It was no designed to be mutli-threaded, let alone to support
preemptive multi tasking as UNIX was. It was and still is based upon a
consumer (toy) OS. To this day it can't handle interrupts worth a damn.
Windows doesn't support preemptive multitasking? It's kernel designer
didn't design threads into it?
If you were talking about Windows 3.1, 95, 98, Me, sure. But NT, 2000,
XP and Vista do in fact have preemptive multi tasking and threading at
a kernel level by design. This is fairly well known and easy to
observe.
I'm sorry you've had so many problems with Windows, but with a message
like this you cross the boundary from "Microsoft detractor" to
"Microsoft FUD generator".
Btw the first search for "Windows interrupts" yields "Microsoft
Windows Vista includes enhancements to the Windows interrupt
architecture. These enhancements include support for new and extended
features." at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/bus/PCI/MSI.mspx
I haven't studied the enhancements in detail so I'm not rendering an
opinion on them, but Microsoft does in fact make improvements in
response to feedback as seen in kernel improvements, .NET
enhancements, Visual Studio enhancements and so no. I've used Visual
Studio 2003 and 2005 and although they have some quirks I didn't spend
more time fixing them than writing software... or even 1% of my time
fixing them.
-Chuck
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