Date: Tue, 22 Jul 1997 17:02:51 -0700 From: "Michael L. VanLoon -- HeadCandy.com" <michaelv@MindBender.serv.net> To: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com> Cc: dennis <dennis@etinc.com>, Alex Belits <abelits@phobos.illtel.denver.co.us>, isp@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD and NT Message-ID: <199707230003.RAA04041@MindBender.serv.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of Tue, 22 Jul 97 17:46:48 -0600. <199707222346.RAA10262@rocky.mt.sri.com>
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>> >I'm just using NT for web browsing and mail and I need to reboot
>> >it every other day or so (just gets real slow)...It MIGHT be easier to
>> >set up (I dont think it is....), but if something stops working you have
>> >to reinstall to get everything to work right again...its certainly much mor
e
>> >difficult to fine tune.
>> I would guess that you have software doing something stupid, or you
>> have something badly configured.
>Or using NT as a developer.
>...
>> NT by itself (and NT with tons of development tools and such open)
>> runs for weeks at a time without reboots, for me, and thousands of
>> others.
>I once believed that. Recently I installed NT on a P6-200 box, and I
>can crash it almost at will. Also, Explorer misses files (which can you
>see exist with the DOS window), screen updates are lost, graphics
>updates are obnoxious, basically it's *NOWHERE* near as stable as the
>FreeBSD that used to run on it. :(
>
>I started asking around some of my 'NT' expert friends, and if you do
>'development' on an NT box, it's *very* unstable. Normal users can take
>it out doing development, which *never* happens under unix. These folks
>have been doing NT development with pre-NT 3 betas, so are not new to
>this. But, the 'market' is in NT, so they stick with it and reboot
>their machines 3-4 times/day, which has been typical behavior for M$
>OS's since time began.
So what you're saying is I, and the thousands of people using NT for
serious development, without crashing it, are imagining things?
I'm willing to accept that there is a buggy driver(s) which is biting
many people, and causing them lots of instability. Moving the
graphics subsystem into the kernel was probably one of the dumber
moves they made. And that alone also invalidates experience with
pre-NT4 on the same hardware, since the same hardware may have been
using a driver in NT3 which was outside the graphics subsystem, which
has been changed to run inside the graphics subsystem. In other
words, just having a marginally supported video card could be your
problem.
However, the fact that many many people are able to do serious
development on NT without crashes attests to the assertion that it is
not NT by itself that is the problem.
>> Modern NT servers (as opposed to "workstations", which you
>> described) are every bit as stable as Unix servers, with months of
>> uptime. FYI...
>*Bwah, ha, ha ha* I'll bet (I know) you work for M$, but that's the
>funniest thing I've heard in awhile.
Nevertheless, it's true. And I've witnessed it with my very own eyes
on many occassions.
Actually, I no longer work for Microsoft as of last week.
>ps. NT 4.0 Workstation, ServicePack 3, + Java/Visual-Depth patch.
My experience is NT 4.0 Server with SP3.
Where is this Java/Visual-Depth patch located?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael L. VanLoon michaelv@MindBender.serv.net
--< Free your mind and your machine -- NetBSD free un*x >--
NetBSD working ports: 386+PC, Mac 68k, Amiga, Atari 68k, HP300, Sun3,
Sun4/4c/4m, DEC MIPS, DEC Alpha, PC532, VAX, MVME68k, arm32...
NetBSD ports in progress: PICA, others...
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