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Date:      Sat, 7 Apr 2001 23:35:57 +0200
From:      Brad Knowles <brad.knowles@skynet.be>
To:        Dale Chulhan - Home <dchulhan@uwi.tt>, "chat@FreeBSD.ORG" <chat@FreeBSD.ORG>, My List <TheTechies@onelist.com>, The Trinidad and Tobago Microsoft BackOffice Users Group <mbug@listbot.com>
Subject:   Re: Win NT vs UNIX ( cross fire )
Message-ID:  <p05100109b6f50eeaf6ed@[194.78.241.123]>
In-Reply-To: <3ACF5BED.86A4FB58@uwi.tt>
References:  <3ACF5BED.86A4FB58@uwi.tt>

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At 2:26 PM -0400 4/7/01, Dale Chulhan - Home wrote:

>  Dick, Windows NT was based on VMS not UNIX. In fact UNIX and Windows
>  2000/NT
>  are very different. Windows uses a micro kernel architecture, UNIX uses
>  a
>  monolithic kernel.

	Micro kernels are not the be-all and end-all of OS design.  They 
can work well, or they can work poorly.  It all depends on the 
implementation.  Frankly, the implementation of Windows NT is by a 
bunch of poorly paid amateur programmers who were consultants 
"bought" and treated as little more than code-monkeys, put through 
the mill, and then when they got to whining too loudly about not 
being paid enough or being required to work too much overtime hours, 
they got their contracts dropped.  Having a revolving door of 
contractors that never stay there longer than a few months is not a 
really good way of developing an OS.

	It's not the fault of the programmers that Windows NT (and all of 
its derivatives) is so badly screwed up.  This is what Microsoft 
wanted, and they made sure to hire the people who were ignorant and 
inexperienced enough to do precisely that.

>                     That is why you have to recompile/reload the kernel
>  when
>  you add a driver.

	Most versions of *nix I am familiar with allow you to build a 
static kernel image with drivers included, or to dynamically load 
drivers as they are required.  There are advantages to both methods, 
and anyone that categorically rules out one or the other is simply 
doing so out of stupidity and ignorance.

>                    This is unlike Windows 2000 where drivers can be
>  loaded
>  and unloaded automatically. In fact, you can change IP Addresses on
>  Windows
>  2000 and you do not need to reboot. This is also very unlike most
>  versions
>  of UNIX.

	I do not know of a single version of *nix that has ever existed 
in the history of time (at least, those that have had an IP stack) 
that could not have the IP address of an interface changed and not 
require rebooting.

	To the best of my knowledge, this whole "change and reboot" thing 
is something that Microsoft invented with their OSes, because they 
always assumed that these things were done once and once only, and 
only on boot.  The fact that it's taken Microsoft this long to be 
able to handle changing an IP address without rebooting the machine 
(and that you consider this such an important issue) is a clear 
indication that you have smoked way too many recreational 
pharmaceuticals, as distributed and given away by certain people of 
questionable intent from Redmond.

>  The technology in the Windows 2000 Operating System is standards based,
>  not
>  stolen from the UNIX OS. IPSec, VPN, Kerberos are all technologies that
>  are
>  standards based.

	Indeed, these are all standard technologies.  They were designed 
and built on *nix OSes first, and only lately has Microsoft taken 
them up and tried to proprietarize them so as to make them work in a 
Microsoft way on only Microsoft OSes, and lock out the rest of the 
world.

>                    Have you ever heard of RFCs?

	Indeed, I have.  Do you know what "RFC" stands for?  Do you know 
the history of RFCs, and how the Internet was built?  Do you know the 
history of how Unix was invented?

>                                                 In fact, the Windows
>  interface
>  was a Xerox idea that Apple "borrowed" and was handed to Microsoft on a
>  silver platter.

	Xerox PARC definitely invented the windowing interface, with mice 
and all that.  Yes, indeed, that is true.  However, it took the 
Macintosh to popularize that interface and bring it to the rest of 
the world -- Xerox got their cut as a stockholder in Apple.

	Later, Microsoft realized how important the windowing interface 
was, and effectively put a shotgun to the head of Steve Jobs and said 
"We won't develop any applications (which they had a stranglehold on) 
or port BASIC to the Macintosh, nor will we continue to allow you to 
ship BASIC for the Apple II series, if you don't license your 
windowing technology to us".  This is a known and undisputed fact.

	Indeed, this was just the first widely recognized use of 
Microsoft's monopoly powers in an attempt to rape and pillage 
whatever technologies they wanted from whomever they wanted.  Later, 
Microsoft was even stupid enough to put down in writing things like 
this, and then have their sales representatives deliver those 
messages to the CEOs and CTOs of Fortune 100 companies.

>                  Do you know how long after that the first windows
>  version of
>  UNIX came up? In fact they even chose to call it X-Windows.

	Uh, no.  There were many windowing interfaces for versions of 
Unix back in the late 1980's and early 1990's, of which the X Window 
System was just one (MIT has a copyright on this technology, and they 
insist that you use either that term spelled and capitalized 
precisely as I have done, or you simply call it "X").

	I recall a presentation at the Winter 1990 USENIX technical 
conference on a windowing system called "W", which I believe was 
either a contemporary of "X", or may have been a precursor.


	You really need to research your facts before you spout off.

>                                                               Today, of
>  all
>  the mainstream Operating Systems, UNIX still has the slowest Windows
>  interface.

	In what context?  Do you have a windowing interface that will 
allow the program to run on one machine, allow the complex display 
portion to be run across the network on a different machine (perhaps 
halfway around the world), and have all that be controlled from a 
third machine that may itself be half-way around the world?  Do you 
even know where the concept for "thin client" came from, and what led 
to the development of "Windows Terminals"?


	Let me ask a question -- does Windows 2000 handle multiple users 
simultaneously logging into the same machine now?  Windows NT sure 
couldn't -- it may have had protected memory, multi-threading, and 
multi-processing (which it was really, really bad at), but it was 
still a single-user OS.

	Can you administer every aspect of the machine without being 
forced to log into the graphical console?  Just how many copies of PC 
Anywhere do you still need?

-- 
Brad Knowles, <brad.knowles@skynet.be>

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