> In practice, we have watched Windows evolve in such a fashion with > respect to multiuser support, and, in effect, it has never really > gotten it. Microsoft started by hacking something on top of MS-DOS, > and by the time enough applications had enough dependancies on the way > that worked, it has essentially become impossible for them to migrate > properly to a multiuser model since applications are normally designed > with the myopic "this is MY computer!" model of the world.
Completely false. NT was a complete rewrite (1993ish) and was inherently multi-user with even the GDI running as a user level process (no longer however). The NT kernel was scalable and portable, running on the Alpha, MIPS, etc. However, you do have a point with applications...many win32 developers have a very bad habit about expecting their apps to install and run as root. However, this is generally not a problem with Microsoft stuff. In short, the problem is really people, not the technology. Merlin ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
