Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Well, I suppose you could rephase it that way. Either way, Windows 3.11 
> was no "operating system". It was an MS-DOS application program.

  Being launched by another system doesn't make an OS less of an OS.
(If that was the case then Windows XP, Linux nor basically anything
is an OS because they all are launched by the BIOS.)

  Not that Windows 3 was a true OS by any serious definition of the meaning.

> >> If you write Windows, you go back to DOS.
> > 
> >   What does that even mean?

> I meant to write "quit Windows".

  It still isn't any sign of Windows not being an OS. (And again, I'm not
saying it was. I'm just saying that the argument is flawed.)

> [I recall it used to be a Big Deal whether "extended memory" got enabled 
> or not. I knew a guy who even had a whole book devoted to "taking your 
> PC beyong 640KB". I don't know what the difference between "conventional 
> memory" and "extended memory" is or was, but this "problem" seems to 
> have entirely gone away now...]

  We are talking about 16-bit vs 32-bit Intel systems here. The 16-bit
Intel processors couldn't handle over 1MB of memory. (Well, the 286 had
some paging support built into it, but I don't know if any computer ever
used it.)

  Even today 32-bit Intel processors support running in 16-bit mode, with
all the same limitations. Back in the days of the 386 and 484 this
presented a problem: The processor would have supported a 32-bit mode,
but all the existing OSes and programs were 16-bit. How to get access to
the extra memory you could install in a 386, beyond that 1MB?

  The solution was ugly, awkward and in the past now, as all modern OSes
support fully 32-bit mode (and the best ones even 64-bit mode).

> >   But Windows 3 does support multitasking. Granted, it's not pre-emptive,
> > but it's still multitasking.

> AFAIK, it supports running several applications at once. Only one of 
> them can actually "do" anything at a time

  How exactly is that different from a regular pre-emptive multitaskin OS
running in a single processor?

  The difference between cooperative and pre-emptive multitasking is not
whether two programs can physically "do" anything "at the same time"
(because they can't; it's a physical impossibility imposed by having
one single CPU).
  The difference is that in cooperative multitasking programs have to
play nice and give CPU to others (through the OS), while in pre-emptive
multitasking the OS forces task switches (with the aid of the CPU).
The end result is basically the same (assuming all the programs "play nice"
in the cooperative system).

  It was perfectly possible to run several programs at the same time in
Windows 3 and have them run simultaneously. Even the Windows version of
POV-Ray was originally made for Windows 3, and it didn't lock the computer
during renders.

>, but you can have several 
> applications "started". (Demonstrated by, e.g., writing a short program 
> that prints out numbers, and then switching to another window and seeing 
> the first program stop printing until you switch back.)

  Windows 3 didn't multitask DOS windows. That's not really relevant.

> >> IIRC, Win95 and Win98 (and WinME?) are slightly thicker layers over the 
> >> top of MS-DOS
> > 
> >   That's debatable. While the boot process of Win95 and Win98 do indeed
> > run config.sys and autoexec.bat, as DOS did, it's a matter of definition
> > whether this is "booting to DOS" or simply "the booting process of Win9x
> > processes those two files at startup".

> Well, a PC that has Windows 95 also has MS-DOS, and you can freely 
> switch between the two...

  Well, my PC has Linux and Windows XP, and I can freely switch between
the two. That doesn't mean one is running on top of the other.

> >> and it was WinNT that finally replaced DOS with a *real* 
> >> OS with actual *features* such as security, multitasking, hardware 
> >> abstraction, etc.
> > 
> >   "Replaced DOS" in which context? WinNT was a completely separate
> > alternative, not an "upgrade". Why are you even comparing it to DOS?

> ...whereas a PC running Windows NT4 does not, usually, have MS-DOS at 
> all. Many people asked "where's the 'exit to DOS' button gone?" The 
> answer being "MS-DOS is a completely several OS and you would have to 
> reboot to exit WinNT to get to it".

  I'm not really getting your point. If I installed linux on a PC
I wouldn't have had any "exit to DOS" button either. So what?

> >   As for hardware abstraction, what was the basic difference between
> > the hardware management in NT and the one in Win98? Remember that Win98
> > already had DirectX (if I'm not mistaken even DirectX 9.0c will work on
> > Win98). You can't get much more abstract than that with respect to hardware
> > in Windows.

> Does Win9x run in protected mode? [This isn't rhetorical - I can't 
> actually remember.]

  Yes. (Sure, it didn't use all the "protection" offered by the CPU as
efficiently as it could.)

> Certainly WinNT introduced security. Win9x can be made to show a login 
> prompt, but you can just cancel it if you don't feel like logging in. 
> You then have unlimited access to every file on the local machine.

  Win9x was never even designed to be a multiuser OS. It's not all that
strange, really.

> Certainly on the Amiga scene, "installing" a program usually meant 
> putting the floppy into the drive and clicking an icon. A tiny few 
> programs required you to actually copy a font file to your system disk 
> or something, and usually had extensive and meticulous instructions 
> explaining exactly how to do this, in language even a 5 year old could 
> follow. Either that or the application got ignored in favour of 
> better-documented alternative apps...

  Since you so much fancy that, I find it really strange that you are
so prejudiced against the Apple Macintosh. It's exactly like that, but
on steroids.

  You constantly complain about current Windows/Linux systems for their
complexity and write utopistic memories about your beloved AmigaOS, but
when someone mentions the modern equivalent of the Amiga/AmigaOS, namely
the Apple Macintosh, you immediately start complaining about those exact
same things which were so great in the Amiga. (Closed hardware, OS tied
to hardware, niche market, whatnot. Just change "Mac" with "Amiga" and
the complaints are still exactly as "valid".)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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