__/ [ Handover Phist ] on Tuesday 19 September 2006 19:19 \__
> Roy Schestowitz :
>> __/ [ Heidi van Wong ] on Tuesday 19 September 2006 18:46 \__
>>
>>> I've used Microsoft OSes since MS-DOS 2.11. Back then multitasking *that
>>> just worked* was the OS holy grail for home computers. I spent my
>>> precious time warezing Desqview to achieve this magic. I even bought
>>> GeoWorks (GEOS). Spent *lots* of time using, and envying, the Apple
>>> Macintosh computers my friends and colleagues used.
>>>
>>> Enter Windows 3.11. It promised to make multitasking easy. But you know
>>> what? I've upgraded through Windows 95, Windows NT, Windows 2000 and
>>> Windows XP and I *still* can't get my PC to multitask properly, 20 years
>>> later. If there's a speed bottleneck anywhere, it makes the whole system
>>> crawl. I could have a 5000-core liquid nitrogen-cooled 20GB RAM 90000Ghz
>>> FSB and it would edit 200 Notepad files just great, but try copying files
>>> from a CD-ROM or via USB cable and the system will become unusable.
>>>
>>> Will Vista change this?
>>>
>>> I want to boot up a Windows OS where I can copy from a CD, put songs on
>>> my MP3 player, manage my digital camera and burn a DVD while I play a
>>> graphics-intensive 3D game in a small window with _NO_ slowdown.
>>>
>>> Will Vista deliver this?
>>
>> You must be thinking about an augmented environment that exploits, e.g.
>> the notion of virtual desktops.
>>
>> Enter Linux.
>>
>> http://slated.org/xgl_on_fc5
>>
>> Best wishes,
>>
>> Roy
>>
>> PS - c**p. Only now do I realise it was crossposted wildly. [groups
>> reduced appropriately]
>
> Just this morning I'm reinstalling Windows on a computer for a client.
> Windows decided, why I dont know, that the system volume should be
> designated F:. After that even installing drivers became a pain in the
> ass since they were looking to decompress in C:\%SYSTEM%, which had been
> designated to a DVD drive. I couldn't change the designation of the
> system drive so I have to format and reinstall *again* as I know this
> situation will cause confusion for the client, and confusion for the
> client is to be avoided religiously in my shop.
>
> I much prefer the tree upon which filesystems are mounted paradigm to
> the drive-letter for each "volume" thing. It's so much simpler both for
> me and my clients.
I actually thought about it (by no means for the first time) some time this
morning. I also said it to people's faces. What sense does it all make?
Floppy is drive A? Why? Why is a hard-drive assigned a C? Where has B gone?
It doesn't make any sense, unless people are stuck on the 'Windows mindset'.
And then come to consider the CD-ROM, which can be D, or E, or F, or who
knows what? And I sometimes have people ask me a question like, "do you get
access to drive K?". How is that in any way self-explanatory? Why make
virtual aliases rather than mount locations using a sensible structure that
is separable from device names (e.g. /dev(ice)/cdrom, /dev(ice)/floppy)? It
would never make sense to me, but it did _at the time_. When I was using DOS
and Windows, that is...
I wrote about it after some meeting in London where I had an argument over
this...
http://schestowitz.com/Weblog/archives/2006/07/20/the-correct-abstractionmodel-of-a-computer/
Best wishes,
Roy
--
Roy S. Schestowitz | (S)oftware (U)nd (S)ystem(E)ntwicklung
http://Schestowitz.com | SuSE Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
7:20pm up 61 days 7:32, 7 users, load average: 0.26, 0.48, 0.51
http://iuron.com - Open Source knowledge engine project
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