Posted on 03/26/2006 4:49:30 AM PST by twntaipan
WindowsNT had a new kernel, but was still a legacy OS. I think the idea of a clean break is a completely clean break, like the move from OS9 to OSX: top to bottom, the guts are different.
Of course, what I'm really saying is that Windows needs a unix core...like that would ever happen.
One the main selling points of Windows OSs has been it's legacy compatiblity of older software hardware.
Of course, that does not mean an OS cannot be built from a new kernel from the ground up and provide an software emulator for older software and games.
What, and fundamentally change Microsoft's entrie business model?
(Sorry, couldn't resist the cheap shot...)
I don't want to sound like I don't think Vista is in trouble. But that "rewrite 60%" story can't be right. That would take years. I think perhaps what they meant was that 60% of the .dlls needed rewrites somewhere within them.
If Vista needs a 60% rewrite, Microsoft is profoundly in trouble.
Vista is going to be a "Friday" car.
Heh!
The fresh rumors are that the problems with Vista are in the multimedia end; and/or that the entire thing is a disaster barely cobbled together into a functioning beta.
The latest build has no digital audio.
Also of note, last night's twitcast had Leo Laporte reporting that Allchin had planned to retire at the end of 2006, after the release of Vista; but with Vista's release being pushed into 2007 sometime, Allchin is going to retire at the end of 2006 anyway.
Contrary to popular opinion, Gates hates shipping late. There comes a time when you gotta stop fixing bugs and just ship the product.
Which means that Vista probably still has some serious issues.
I read that whole thing a couple nights ago. Absolutely amazing stuff.
Does that mean the users can expect the first service pak to be a "Monday" car?
LOL
Today's NYT (I hope this excerpt isn't too big):
Remember that Steven P. Jobs came back to Apple because the company's effort to develop an ambitious new operating system, codenamed Copland, had failed. Mr. Jobs convinced Apple to buy his company Next Inc. for $400 million in December 1996 for its operating system.
It took Mr. Jobs and his team years to retool and tailor the Next operating system into what became Macintosh OS X. When it arrived in 2001, the new system essentially walked away from Apple's previous operating system, OS 9. Software applications written for OS 9 would run on an OS X machine, but only by firing up the old operating system separately.
The approach was somewhat ungainly, but it allowed Apple to move to a new technology, a more stable, elegantly designed operating system. The one sacrifice was that OS X would not be compatible with old Macintosh programs, a step Microsoft has always refused to take with Windows.
"Microsoft feels it can't get away with breaking compatibility," said Mendel Rosenblum, a Stanford University computer scientist. "All of their applications must continue to run, and from an architectural point of view that's a very painful thing."
It is also costly in terms of time, money and manpower. Where Microsoft has thousands of engineers on its Windows team, Apple has a lean development group of roughly 350 programmers and fewer than 100 software testers, according to two Apple employees who spoke on the condition that they not be identified.
And Apple had the advantage of building on software from university laboratories, an experimental version of the Unix operating system developed at Carnegie Mellon University and a free variant of Unix from the University of California, Berkeley. That helps explain why a small team at Apple has been able to build an operating system rich in features with nearly as many lines of code as Microsoft's Windows.
I think the words "software bloat" is not a strong enough a term for this.
Aw heck, that's a different article I think. A good one, though, from yesterday.
Your article is almost two years old.
Oh, yeah. I'm sure that 2 years have resulted in Linux getting less bloated. LMFAO! /SARCASM
Two years ago, they were using a much slower kernel, for one thing. Also, the hardware sufficient to run smaller OSes like linux distros is far more affordable now than then.
If you want to really have a good LMFAO!, just try comparing the bloat of Fedora to 50 MILLION LINES OF CODE.
Running Fedora is going to require at least 256MB. Running Vista is going to require at least 256MB of VIDEO RAM.
Go sell crazy somewhere else, nobody here is buying.
I gotta go with you on this the Indian provided code I have seen is fine sophomore level work but thats about it..
Oh, did I say Vista?
I'm sorry, I meant Windows XPsp4, also known as Windows 6.0 (or would that be Windows 5.3?).
I hate 'Operating Systems'!
Does that make me a bad person?
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