nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> [-- text/plain, encoding 8bit, charset: iso-8859-1, 25 lines --]

> Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> > nemesis <nam### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> > > Your definition is the Tanenbaum one, right?
> >
> >   I tried to google material about that, but I couldn't find anything
> > relevant. Do you know of any page about that subject? I would be interested
> > (if for nothing else, to be able to answer your question).

> Oh, please!  Andrew Tanenbaum!  You sure know the man!

  I didn't ask who Andrew Tanenbaum is.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
> > and a memorable flamewar with Linus Torvalds in the beginning of Linux over bad
> > design choices:
>
> It's always fun to go back and read what influential people wrote a long
> time ago about the future of things that have lasted for a decade or two.

Indeed, it's fun to watch arguments about obsolete techs flying around with so
much positive vibe. :)

BTW, according to Tanenbaum in that very thread, MS-DOS is definitely an OS.  So
I guess Tanenbaum is definitely not the basis for Warp's OS definition...

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Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
> >
> > It's always fun to go back and read what influential people wrote a long
> > time ago about the future of things that have lasted for a decade or two.
> >
>
> Yep. The disgussion nemesis linked is very entertaining to read, thanks
> of that for him :).

heh, I thought you all knew about it. ;)

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nemesis wrote:
> BTW, according to Tanenbaum in that very thread, MS-DOS is definitely an OS.  So
> I guess Tanenbaum is definitely not the basis for Warp's OS definition...

Yeah, I was kind of curious what definition Warp was using, given that 
Merriam-Webster, Wikipedia, the people who coined the term "operating 
sytem", and the people who wrote MS-DOS, all seem to agree that MS-DOS would 
be an operating system.

Of course, we all know what it does and doesn't do, so exactly what it's 
called isn't very relevant, methinks.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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nemesis wrote:
> 
> heh, I thought you all knew about it. ;)
> 

We all aren't *that* old in our nerd-age :p.

-Aero

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Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
> >
> > heh, I thought you all knew about it. ;)
> >
>
> We all aren't *that* old in our nerd-age :p.

By 1992, I didn't have a computer and was off playing a Super Nintendo. :)

But it's such a memorable piece of Linux lore that I heard about it many and
many times even when I first got into it by 2001...

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nemesis wrote:
> 
> By 1992, I didn't have a computer 

I^HMy parents actually had one, but no internet connection. Nor any
other connection - IIRC my mom bought a modem for us somewhere around
1995. Anyway, me being 13 at the time didn't make me too much intrested
in coding.

> and was off playing a Super Nintendo. :)

I bought my SNES in 2008. 15 euros, containing 2 games. Much cheaper
than in 1992.

OTOH I also bought my Wii in 2008. ~400 euros, containing 2 "real"
games, Wii Play, 2 controllers and a loading station for 2 controllers.

> But it's such a memorable piece of Linux lore that I heard about it many and
> many times even when I first got into it by 2001...
> 

It surely is. I can actually wonder how no-one has linked it for me
before...

-Aero

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On Sat, 03 Jan 2009 13:24:46 -0500, Warp wrote:

>  Yeah, MS-DOS had great support for managing memory, network connections
> and the like. In your dreams maybe.

INT2F redirection provided resources for redirection needed for network 
connections.  And it included memory management routines.  It didn't do 
memory protection well, but that's more a sign of the times than anything.

>   MS-DOS was nothing but an application launcher, which kept some
>   routines
> in memory for the application to call if it wanted. After the
> application launched, it had absolute control of the machine. Basically
> the application became the de-facto "operating system", if we can call
> it that.

Nonsense.  The kernel itself included a large amount of functionality in 
the ISRs used for accessing all aspects of the machine.  It wasn't a 
preemptive multitasking operating system, but the ability to multitask 
isn't something that defines an operating system - or didn't at the time.

One could argue that TSR programs actually gave the system the ability to 
multitask, but it was more like task switching than multitasking.  You 
could conceivably stretch (but it woudl be a stretch) to nonpreemptive 
multitasking, but I don't think I'd go that far.

The fact that I've got several books on DOS operating system programming, 
interrupts, and functionality would seem to counter your argument that 
DOS is just an "application launcher" or anything like GRUB.

Jim

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On Sat, 03 Jan 2009 15:36:06 -0500, Warp wrote:

>> The fact that GRUB is no longer around once it has loaded the program
>> means it's probably not actually an operating system.
> 
>   Sound pretty much like MS-DOS to me.

Then you don't understand how MS-DOS works, because it doesn't terminate 
from memory when you launch WordPerfect.  It stays resident.  GRUB 
doesn't stay resident.  At all.

Jim

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On Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:10:29 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Xen is an OS

I don't know that I'd agree with that.  A hypervisor is a hardware 
abstraction layer, messing about with the various memory rings in the 
system in order to make the OS running within the hypervisor believe it's 
running in Ring 0 when it's not in order to take advantage of memory 
protection features in the hardware without tripping the native hardware 
up when a child domain bombs out.

Jim

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