On Jul 26, 5:42 pm, "DFS" <nospam@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Linonut wrote:
> > Rewriting your operating system every few years is no way to keep up
> > with Linux.
>
> huh? A different Linux idiot (than you) claimed Microsoft "hasn't written a
> new operating system in YEARS".
The other guy was wrong. Microsoft made some substantial improvements
to their kernel in Windows 2000, improving context switching speed by
a factor of 10 (from 100,000 instructions to 10,000 instructions, but
still not as fast as UNIX/Linux 1,000 instructions). They also
separated the GDI from the kernel (A major source of BSOD), and they
improved their buffering.
That was during Windows 2000. Switching from NT 4.0 workstation to
2000 workstation was a no-brainer. The big problem with switching
from NT 4.0 server to 2K server was a change in licensing policy and
how Concurrent Users were counted. The goal was to push people into
upgrading to Windows 2000 Enterprise or Data Center edition, which
could cost as much as $20,000 per CPU. With redundant CPUs, redundant
servers, and isolation of functionality, a simple 3 tier 3rd party
application (Apache, WAS, DB2) could for a public Web interface with
extended sessions, could require 6 servers with 4 processors per
server, for a total of 24 processors at $20,000 per processor.
For those who couldn't dodge the bullet, and had applications that
ONLY ran on Windows NT/2K/2003, the goal was to upgrade servers every
year to get as much bang for the buck from those horrendously
expensive licenses as possible.
The servers being replaced often became Linux servers.
Microsoft did try to take away some of the pain, offering to let you
use basic XP licenses if you only ran IIS on the front-end server,
giving you a discount if you ran SQL Server licenses on the back end,
and letting you use .NET applications written in C# or VB on the
"middleware" server, for a cheaper solution (The antitrust watch-dogs
completely missed or ignored this tactic).
In Windows XP and Vista many of their "improvements" back-fired. The
extra security checking on the TCP/IP protocol stack was inefficient
and awkward to manage, resulting in either an unusable system, or
inadaquate security. Most people used 3rd party firewalls because the
Microsoft firewall was so porous and/or disfunctional.
In Vista, Microsoft added ring zero control, extra kernel level
authentication, and other "Anti-Linux" technologies intended to
protect Vista from virtualization. This turned out to be a big
liability, but fortunately the "feature" can be disabled.
Vista still has severe driver related problems. In addition, there
are severe problems with lots of 3rd party software. It's almost like
Microsoft is trying to ban all 3rd party software from Vista, which is
one of the reasons that corporate customers (who depend on 3rd party
software for business critical functions) are rejecting Vista very
aggressively.
The irony is that none of this technology is new, it's not true
"Innovation", but Microsoft botched up their implementation so badly
that Vista on 8 billion instruction/second machines seem slower than
Windows 2000 on 80 million instruction/second machines.
Linux and UNIX have had Ring Zero kernel protection since the 1980s
(UNIX) and 1993 (Linux), and have had connection filtering (xinetd)
since the early 1990s. The Linux/Unix environment is much more
efficient at managing these capabilities (often less than 1/10th the
overhead of XP/Vista.
Vista still has horrible problems with heap management and garbage
collection, and the memory gobbling applications don't make the
situation any better.
Microsoft keeps thinking that "Bigger is Better", and tries to find
creative new ways to fill gigabytes of RAM and hard drive with easter-
eggs, help files, 3D animations, video clips, and other nonsense -
just to prevent 3rd party applications and operating systems from
having any room on their systems.
I think Microsoft thinks that this is an asset. They don't seem to
realize that by trying to Gobble up 4 gigabytes of RAM with useless
libraries, just so that there is no room for Linux, Lotus Notes,
OpenOffice, or FireFox, that they alienate both Retail and Corporate
customers who seem to be unwilling to shell out more gigabucks for
"slower but prettier" software.
Steve Jobs took a really good system (BSD Unix) and added Art to
create OS/X, but he did it efficiently, and got lots of bang for the
processor/memory buck. This is why people are willing to spend $2000
for an iMac even though they could get the same thing in a Vista PC
for about $500.
Steve Ballmer took a less than wonderful system (Windows NT), added
hideous and gawdy eye candy, and added a bunch of "competition
killers" and did all of that very wastefully, which is why a machine
that originally sold for $1500 is now selling for $300, even with
Moore's law upgrades. The ram and CPU "speed" have doubled in 18
months, but the price has dropped by over 80%.
My guess is that this is not making OEMs, Retailers, CIOs, or
goverment agencies terribly happy, especially when they are still
shelling out $40 billion/year for licenses as if everything were just
fine and dandy. While CompUSA and Gateway had to shut down,
Microsoft's profits on Windows went up 45% on volume increases of 20%,
most of which was upgrades to Vista Business Edition so that they
could downgrade to XP Professional.
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