True. Any task can take over the system and turn off multitasking so it is not secure but it is preemptive multitasking by definition. Responsiveness was traded for security.
... The AmigaOS is one of the best and most responsive OSs at multitasking (near real time OS made the Toaster possible). Code reuse and modularity are also top notch even today. The AmigaOS trades security for speed and ease of use.
... Compare the AmigaOS to the DOS+Windows, MacOS, RiscOS and the Amiga has less growing pains and more speed. ....
Nice thread & nice post.
Never thought that the ability to stop task switching for a while is one of the reasons why AOS has been so wickedly fast (responsive).
Instead of NG developments done behind closed doors I would love to see alternative kernels etc. and some recompiled apps for it, for user community to try, to see how they can behave.
When we now have Ghz instead of Mhz to play with, there should be room to take "slower" ways in use without being slower than the fastest multitasker and responder OS+HW of y1990.
++
Also... when thinking of multicore systems. IMO: server OSs (Linux, Unix, OSX, NT) have taken SMP in use without considering if it would give better responsives if some core is put to deliver the user experience (dedicated to it heavily, if not totally).
I'm thinking that if the SW that is responsible for user experience (responsiveness) would have very high priority on some core, it more likely has the data it needs on the L2 cache etc.... IMO, some OS need several cores at 2Ghz to say "tada", so focusing stuff on only one core might not be good idea for that kind of mammoth OS. But I think for some OS (that almost fits in L2 cache of a core) it might work better.