From: rafetmad@cheshire.oxy.edu (David Giller) Subject: Re: Linux vs. OS2, DOS, Windows, PCGEOS, etc. (convince me) Date: Fri, 19 Mar 1993 05:01:50 GMT
bsa@kf8nh.wariat.org wrote:
>In article <1993Mar14.071008.19228@nuchat.sccsi.com> kevin@sccsi.com (Kevin Brown) writes:
>>>Windows:
>>> Old technology. not true multi tasking. NICE GUI software
>>> available. decent prices. runs DOS apps in windows.
>>
>>But it looks like it's hard to write programs for it, inasmuch as (from
>>what I remember) you *still* have to deal with memory model limitations
>>and the like. It's not clear to me that programs written for Windows run
>>in 386 mode. Rather, I suspect that they run in virtual 8088 mode, which
>>is a bad sign (this reasoning is based on the fact that Windows will run in
>>real mode, which implies that the programs that run under it must also be
>>able to run in real mode). I'll have to look at the documentation to say
>>for sure.
>
>Windows 3.1 introduced a 386-mode interface ("Win32", which since has become
>the standard API for NT) and dropped real-mode capability.
Nope. Win32s doesn't yet exist, at least not in Win3.1. The 32-bit
support is in the form of a DLL which is infamously difficult to deal
with. Most serious Windows extenders ignore it completely. Yes, real
mode is gone. Good riddance.
>Windows programs (as opposed to DOS programs) are cooperatively multitasked.
>Guess what happens if one gets caught in an infinite loop?
Not much. Not much at all.
>> - The ability to run X *and* its clients, an ability that DOS users
>> and Windows users can only dream of (Desqview/X aside. Even that
>> might not allow you to run clients of any significance on the same
>> machine).
>
>You'd be surprised. DV/X runs X better in 4MB than Linux does... but Linux
>outstrips its performance in 8MB, and DV/X doesn't have consistent demand
>paging because VCPI doesn't support global demand paging. (Individual VCPI
>apps can page themselves, but if the system pages a VCPI app the system will
>generally crash. This is one reason for DPMI.) The lack of demand paging, of
>course, means that if you have a REALLY big application, Linux will run it
>very slowly, thrashing all the way --- but DV/X won't run it at all and it
>might even crash.
But DV/X is not really (efficiently) an X workstation. It's more an X
terminal with the ability to run local programs. (lets not get into a
quibble about this... I realize that it is a full DesqView environment
for multitasking DOS, but that's irrelevant to its X features, as DOS
X clients are a pretty silly idea, except for the simplest tools.) In
addition, I was never able to get DV/X to work on my machine. DV/X is
better for people who need X, but who really don't want to leave DOS.
Linux is better for people who want to do X to its fullest, locally
and remotely. DV/X is also better for those with limited hardware.
Note follow-up has been sent to poster. You can change it if you
like, but this really doesn't belong in comp.os.linux.
-Dave
-- David Giller, Box 134 | Q: How many Oregonians does it take to screw in a light Occidental College | bulb? A: Three. One to replace the bulb, and two to 1600 Campus Road | fend off all the Californians trying to share the Los Angeles, CA 90041 | experience. ---------------------------rafetmad@oxy.edu