Date: Mon, 14 Nov 2005 15:21:32 -0800 From: "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com> To: "Michael Vince" <mv@roq.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: RE: Status of 6.0 for production systems Message-ID: <LOBBIFDAGNMAMLGJJCKNCEMHFCAA.tedm@toybox.placo.com> In-Reply-To: <43753039.4040505@roq.com>
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>-----Original Message----- >From: Michael Vince [mailto:mv@roq.com] >Sent: Friday, November 11, 2005 3:59 PM >To: Ted Mittelstaedt >Cc: gayn.winters@bristolsystems.com; freebsd-questions@freebsd.org >Subject: Re: Status of 6.0 for production systems > > >Ted Mittelstaedt wrote: > >>>Admittedly if Microsoft were trying to make Windows XP run well >>>on a 486 >>>it wouldn't be nearly as a likable OS it is today. >>> >>> >>> >> >>That's not true either. If Microsoft were trying to make it work on a >>486 it >>would run a lot better on bigger hardware because they would have to >>prune >>all the fat off it. >> >>Haven't you ever noticed with Windows that the user interface speed is >>still the same today, with brand new hardware, as it was 10 years ago >>on older versions of Windows? >> >>Try running Windows 98 one day on brand new hardware - it is almost a >>religious experience. Open a window and Bang - it's there, completely >>drawn in, so fast you can't even see it draw. THAT is how >it's supposed >>to be. The problem is the stupid consumers don't understand that every >>year that they buy newer and faster hardware it just helps Microsoft to >>make their stuff slower. So they never get ahead. >> >> >Windows 98 is what made MS famous for instability The only people that say that don't know how to run Windows. Windows 98 is a very stable OS if you know what you are doing. I've had both stable and unstable Win98 systems, and I've learned from the unstable ones what to to do make the system stable. Just because you haven't doesen't make it an unstable OS. >and its not even a >comparable OS in terms of stability of Windows XP. Windows XP is better, however part of the reason people think this is that XP will not run on older hardware because it's too slow. Back in the good old days there was a lot more shoddy PC hardware than there is today partly because there were a lot more manufacturers than there are today. If Win XP is installed on the system minimums, and you are patient enough to spend the 24 hours necessary waiting for it to finish jacking off or whatever it does during installation, then the result would be a lot less stable. Your either arguing that FreeBSD should be made more stable by modifying it so that it will only boot on 1 year old or younger hardware that is more stable than older hardware is in general, or your arguing that only new hardware is stable enough to field really stable OSes on, I can't figure out which. >I believe most tech people have thought the same way in terms of every >new versions of MS windows needs a faster PC, and it has a good side of >MS as far as I am concerned because without the demand for faster CPUs >to run MS Windows the CPU industry would still be sitting >around Pentium >2 performance today. > This is a very naieve argument. For starters all machine designs no matter what will ultimately hit the law of diminishing returns. Take the automobile, there have been 80 years of trying to make the internal combustion engine more efficient so as to get better gas mileage and the end result is we are abandoning that design and going to hybrids, because it's impossible to make it more efficient than it has been for the last 40 years. The mpg of a typical car rolling off the line today is no better than one built in 1960 the only difference is it pollutes less. The computer industry is much younger than the automobile industry but it will eventually hit this ceiling too. Then the only way around it is to make the software more efficient or to chuck the existing computer design and go to something different. Maybe photon chips or something else, who knows. If the computer hardware industry only made pentium 2's for the last 20 years then we could still see speed increases if Microsoft made a better windows. And as I already pointed out, the observed interface speed of a P4 under XP is no better than a P3 under 2K or a P2 under w98, so I think by your "p 2 performance" yardstick we are still no better off under Windows today. So why is this a good side of MS pray tell? >Its the same for the Internet if Gates had not put a 'get on the >Internet now' icon on all those win95 and 98 during the pc boom days to >trigger peoples interest the Internet it wouldn't be as cheap >or as fast >as it is for end consumers. That's fine except that there was not a mass migration to Win95 in 1995, the year that the Internet exploded in terms of ISP growth. You probably never heard of trumpet winsock? Connecting Win31 systems to the Internet was going great guns well into 1997. What put the Win31 systems out of the Internet game was the browser wars between MS and Netscape. But MS supported Win31 up until IE4 as did Netscape. MS even included a dialer and winsock in their Win31 web browser issues. The Internet exploded before MS got into it, not as a result of MS getting into it. MS actually pooh-poohed the Internet, and later on in around 1999 Gates was quoted as saying that was a big mistake of theirs. The original Win95 did not even contain a web browser unless you deliberately selected IE during installation. That was win95 OEM which came out a year later (win95 version A) you are thinking of. >And if web pages had been only made for dial up to keep modem users >happy broadband wouldn't exist or be nearly as cheap. > Illegal movies and music downloads drove broadband not web pages. Web designers still design to dialup speeds unless they are making pages for porno sites where they expect that people are broadband due to the content, or if they are handing out free content that is designed to drive the user to somewhere else like a TV set. (like cnn.com ,etc.) Why do you think that google and ebay output on dialup-speed friendly pages? Broadband penetration is still only something like 35% of Internet users. What has happened with all the dialup users is they all went to netzero and other cheapo providers who can't afford to do television advertising constantly, so you forget they are out there. Ted >>>AMD64/EMT64 appears to be the mainstream high performance future and >>>should get the most support, although some technologists are >>>saying that >>>Itanium is going to make a come back believe it or not, check out the >>>latest anandtech article for example >>>http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=2598 >>> >>>If theres some guy who uses a 386sx 25mhz to run his water gardening >>>sprinkler system he should let go of demanding 6.x work on his system >>>and just use what he needs such as 4.x >>> >>> >> >>6.x will not boot on a 386, the math coprocessor emulator is not in >>the generic kernel anymore. >> >I know I used it as an example. > >>>And if he needs say the latest perl 6 to control his sprinkler system >>>and its not available in 4.x any more then he should just use NetBSD, >>>NetBSD is for all types of hardware and is a fine OS. >>> >>> >>> >> >>That is not a FreeBSD issue, that is an issue with the Perl development >>team and what -they- choose to support. You frankly sound >like you have >>never compiled anything from scratch. >> >I used it as another mere possible example in the future. > > > > >-- >No virus found in this incoming message. >Checked by AVG Free Edition. >Version: 7.1.362 / Virus Database: 267.13.0/167 - Release Date: >11/11/2005 >
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