Amiga.org
Operating System Specific Discussions => Other Operating Systems => Topic started by: ElPolloDiabl on October 09, 2010, 03:36:55 AM
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Do you think an operating system having twice the resource requirements of it's predecessor for only a couple of extra features is a step forward or a step backward?
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I answered Other:
If those few new features are resource demanding, of course, hardware requirements will obviously rise, and can easily double. The question in this particular case is if these new features are worth enough to justify that hardware requirement increase, and if that market can cope with that fact.
Anyway, the question is too generic, you should be more specific. :)
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I think there's a general tendency to simply throw more hardware at the problem, rather than make software run more efficiently.
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So would you prefer to patch and update Amiga OS 3.1 yourself for a lean system or would you just go with 3.9?
Alternatively should you be able to manually (in a user friendly way) unselect/disable certain resource hogs. Pop up help and a lot of background functions as an example. If Windows is a GUI based OS why do you need to use the 'run program x' to get at some of the options.
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No reason not to give the user the choice. Let me get rid of stuff I will never use, disable things I'll probably not use but want to keep around, and enable anything that fits my specific needs.
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I voted a step forward.
History shows that when new technology is available software will quickly develop to take advantage of it. I call this progress.
But i am also assuming the software is being used efficiently and not being wasteful.
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If Windows is a GUI based OS
Plainly it is.
why do you need to use the 'run program x' to get at some of the options.
To stop the headstickers from touching things they have no understanding of.
Back to the original question. The only realistic answer is "other" because it depends on what the OS is doing... Windows, Linux and OSX for instance offer more services out of the box than AmigaOS can offer period.
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The problem is that in the early days of home computing hardware resources were very limited and so the challenge was to write software that was incredibly efficient. More efficient programs could do more with the hardware that was available to them and improve the user experience, so it was extremely important to find efficiency where possible. This requirement for efficient programs remained into and through the Amiga days.
These days hardware resources are plentiful, and the programs written are far more complex. As a software writer, you have to make a decision. Is software efficiency your priority, or is software functionality your priority? If you're working on a platform that has plentiful hardware resources like those of home computers today, then inevitably software functionality will be deemed to be the priority. Your time as a programmer is better spent on introducing and improving functionality than it is on extracting the most efficiency from the program. The mindset of programmers has had to change.
For me personally, I still work with systems that have limited resources. Microcontrollers and embedded systems is my background and I regularly work with systems that have <256 Bytes of RAM! Yes that's Bytes, not Kilobytes, not Megabytes, and certainly not Gigabytes.
So for me, program efficiency is still a valuable use of my time as a programmer. But for modern day home computer programmers, extracting the maximum efficiency from your programs is not the best use of your time.
AH.
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On the subject of bloatware I don't agree. There are apps that take up 100 times the space, perform slower and only add eye candy over a much leaner app with the same or better functions. It is clearly just shoddy programming.
I do agree that you should be able to push the resources if appropriate.
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On the subject of bloatware I don't agree. There are apps that take up 100 times the space, perform slower and only add eye candy over a much leaner app with the same or better functions. It is clearly just shoddy programming.
I do agree that you should be able to push the resources if appropriate.
Using large amounts of ram does not necessitate the software running poorly. He clearly posted specifically that he would trade "efficiency" for features.
Elive 2.0 linux, it's an ultra slim distribution which pays particular attention to older hardware. On this system it ran for several months and at startup used around 150Mb of ram. After struggling to get it to play nice on this laptop I looked for a successor.
Kubuntu 10.04LTS was selected as it's replacement, at boot it uses around 400Mb or ram. Yet it boots quicker than Elive and is every bit as responsive.
Using less ram doesn't necessarily make your program efficient, it just means it uses less ram. Dismissing anything that uses more ram without bothering to learn why as "bloatware" is shallow, lazy thinking.
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High resource usage is not necessarily indicative of any bad practise. RAM, in particular, is a resource that if not used, is wasted. Areas that aren't presently in use by any application can be used for volatile caches and buffers to help speed up the system.
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On the subject of bloatware I don't agree. There are apps that take up 100 times the space, perform slower and only add eye candy over a much leaner app with the same or better functions. It is clearly just shoddy programming.
Ah, now... "bloatware" is a different thing altogether. What you're talking about it hulking great bloated applications that are stuffed to the brim with eye candy, poorly programmed and poorly implemented.
What I was talking about was a trade off between giving a programmer efficiency as a priority or program functionality as a priority. These days programs are very complex and it takes a long time to implement all of the functionality that you want. Since resources are plentiful, programmers will naturally choose functionality over absolute efficiency. That doesn't make them bad programmers, it makes them good programmers who make the best use of their time. The best use of their time on a resource plentiful system is to implement features, not to be pedantic over program execution speeds. It's not about being sloppy with your programming, it's about using your time wisely.
With regard to eye candy, the very first thing I do after I've installed Windows is I turn all the rubbish off. I want my system to be as functional and feature rich as possible, and I want it to run as fast as possible. That means turning off all the eye candy crap that Windows wastes resources on. I fully agree with you on that point. There's a difference between blatantly wasting resources and sacrificing absolute efficiency of program execution over the implementation of some cool new features.
AH.
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You know, looking at posts #10 and #11, they both essentially say the same thing.
However, poster #10 could still learn a thing or two from reading post #11.
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However, poster #10 could still learn a thing or two from reading post #11.
You are making the assumption that I don't understand the underlying technical reasons as described by Karlos.
You would be in error in this.
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You are making the assumption that I don't understand the underlying technical reasons as described by Karlos.
You would be in error in this.
I actually thought both posts 10 and 11 were good. But maybe understanding a concept and explaining it are 2 different things. Especially when it is about something complicated like computers.
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I actually thought both posts 10 and 11 were good. But maybe understanding a concept and explaining it are 2 different things. Especially when it is about something complicated like computers.
I just wanted to show a real life example of why looking solely at how much resource a given system uses isn't the only variable - how it uses those resources is at least as important.
It wasn't my intent to get into the technical side of the discussion, especially when there are people (like Karlos) who are better suited to that side of things.
I am curious as to why the pair of you brought this up as an issue.
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Just trying to keep the peace. Kinda sick of the in fighting :cool:
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You are making the assumption that I don't understand the underlying technical reasons as described by Karlos.
You would be in error in this.
I'm afraid it is your assumption that is wrong.
Perhaps my post was too subtle. Karlos comes across as a nice guy.
That help?
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I'm afraid it is your assumption that is wrong.
Perhaps my post was too subtle. Karlos comes across as a nice guy.
That help?
Ah, so it's tone trolling.
Suck it up.
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I'm afraid it is your assumption that is wrong.
Perhaps my post was too subtle. Karlos comes across as a nice guy.
That help?
Come now, that's unnecessary. I happen to know the_leander personally and can assure you he's a thoroughly decent feller. His humour is dry and quick and I dare say it is often misinterpreted.
We can all read too much into people's posting style.
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So would you prefer to patch and update Amiga OS 3.1 yourself for a lean system or would you just go with 3.9?
Alternatively should you be able to manually (in a user friendly way) unselect/disable certain resource hogs. Pop up help and a lot of background functions as an example. If Windows is a GUI based OS why do you need to use the 'run program x' to get at some of the options.
The problem with patches is that they are just patches, not final solutions.
AmigaOS 3.9 can be made as nearly as lean as 3.1 if you know how to manually remove (in an unfriendly way) those extra components. I have managed, as an example, to run AmigaOS 3.9 on a 68000, just by removing some extra stuff. So it depends if you feel fine with the downgrade from 3.9 -> 3.1 functionality.
Well, Windows is bloated, but then it is aimed at the user experience, not at being resource efficient, and its hardware architecture advances with such a speed, they really dont have any obligation to optimize their code.
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Most resource hungy OS... Has to be mac 0s9.2 what a mess.
Os 10 in comparison wa a hardware upgrade on a disc.
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Ah, so it's tone trolling.
Did someone say tone trolling?!
WINDOWS ROOLZ!
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Did someone say tone trolling?!
WINDOWS ROOLZ!
That's just regular brand... Needz moar exclamation marks though ;)
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Did someone say tone trolling?!
WINDOWS ROOLZ!
Needz moar exclamationz!!!!!!1111oneoneoneeleventyone
:D
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Come now, that's unnecessary. I happen to know the_leander personally and can assure you he's a thoroughly decent feller. His humour is dry and quick and I dare say it is often misinterpreted.
We can all read too much into people's posting style.
That's as may be, but I still think he could learn from your post.
At least I can still count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I have been called a troll on a forum. Amazingly I am not surprised that your "thoroughly decent" friend has joined a tiny few who have.
Must say, I had never heard the term tone troll before, so at least I learned something. Thanks the leander.
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That's as may be, but I still think he could learn from your post.
This is me not caring about what you think.
Yes.
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This is me not caring about what you think.
Yes.
And confirming what I thought.
Stay classy!
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And confirming what I thought.
Stay classy!
You just can't help yourself, can you?
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@ajlwalker
You are a mean person.
@thread
Sound and vision are perhaps the worst offenders. If we'd simply return to monophonic sound and monochrome displays, all our worries would be over. Let's ditch the fancy input devices as well. I'd much rather go back to systems that simply run what I tell them to run when I apply power.
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Sound and vision are perhaps the worst offenders. If we'd simply return to monophonic sound and monochrome displays, all our worries would be over. Let's ditch the fancy input devices as well. I'd much rather go back to systems that simply run what I tell them to run when I apply power.
None of that DMA rubbish either, also, what was wrong with simple CPU driven framebuffers eh?
And basic, it's gotta have basic!
:roflmao:
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There's many reasons that software requires more resources.
Choice of language, programming style, add in libraries.
How you add features is very important, do you:
1) Change the architecture of the app, refactor and integrate the new features
or
2) Just bolt it on
Answer 1 will lead to a more efficient system, but it'll take a lot longer to do.
In reality answer 2 is what you'll get pretty much every time.
Backwards compatibility often means option 1 is not an option so in adding features you may end up having to repeat things that are already there.
The availability of cheap fast hardware with oodles of memory means developers simply don't have to care about efficiency, there's so much computing power available you simply won't notice even if something is incredibly inefficient.
I can remember running BeOS with 32MB on my 120MHz desktop quite happily about 10 years ago.
You'll soon see dual core 1GHz phones with 1GB memory.
OTOH Sometimes it's just plain bad coding, in fact there's probably rather a lot of that:
I know of one (well known) application that was ported to mobile devices only to find it ran like a dog. The reason was it was doing some incredibly stupid things that were completely unnecessary. That app had to be rewritten.
This is likely to become more common, the mobile environment is not very forgiving of badly written software.
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I can remember running BeOS with 32MB on my 120MHz desktop quite happily about 10 years ago.
Thinkpad 390 with 233Mhz P1, 64Mb ram, Neomagic graphics chip here.
Ended up giving it to my sister, only to get a phone call about 3 weeks later to tell me that her puppy had chewed through the power cable :D
I actually got Windows 2000 to run on that laptop at one point, beyond taking an age to boot up, it was fairly snappy to use one it got going...
I know of one (well known) application that was ported to mobile devices only to find it ran like a dog. The reason was it was doing some incredibly stupid things that were completely unnecessary. That app had to be rewritten.
Oh come on! Name and shame :lol:
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And basic, it's gotta have basic!
BASIC!? That implies an interpreter, probably in ROM. If anything, it needs a mechanical switch to keep power away from the CPU until a punch card is inserted.
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Choice of language
My C compiler writes way better assembly than I do. ;-)
I can remember running BeOS
Sigh. One of several operating systems that could have (or rather, should have) been the next AmigaOS....
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None of that DMA rubbish either, also, what was wrong with simple CPU driven framebuffers eh?
And basic, it's gotta have basic!
:roflmao:
basic in ROM or GTFO :)
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When you have a look at MacOS X 10.3, 10.4 and 10.5 you may notice something interesting: Each of them added functionality but ran faster than it´s predecessor. The amount of RAM used was however increasing, but never doubling.
Clearly they were trading time for space, which is quite common, I believe.
So efficiency is a tradeoff in any case. But if an OS runs slower and needs more RAM and only adds features that aren´t noticed by the casual user ...
... I could´t justify recommending that, even if it was "modern" and "compatible".
I don´t mind eye-candy though. Most of the time it comes pretty cheap. Beautiful pixels take as much RAM as ugly ones.
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I voted "Other" since it really depends on why the OS bloated up. Is it doing 2 or 3 times what the original OS was capable of doing? If so, then I can't see a reason to complain. I'm sure most of us on AO probably started with booting their Amiga each time with a floppy in the drive and compare that to say Fedora Core 13 DVD. Very hard to compare the two, but each is capable of booting the OS into operation.
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Do you think an operating system having twice the resource requirements of it's predecessor for only a couple of extra features is a step forward or a step backward?
Seems that it would be hard for almost anyone (including Bill Gates) to answer 'step forward' to this question because of the way you worded it, IMO.
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basic in ROM or GTFO :)
Hehehe!
BASIC!? That implies an interpreter, probably in ROM. If anything, it needs a mechanical switch to keep power away from the CPU until a punch card is inserted.
Wow, we both got served here! :lol:
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Hehehe!
Wow, we both got served here! :lol:
We'll challenge him to a duel. Slide rulers at dawn!
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Do you think an operating system having twice the resource requirements of it's predecessor for only a couple of extra features is a step forward or a step backward?
Do you have any real life examples of an OS doubling in resource requirements for "only a couple of extra features?"
To me, it sounds like you are talking out of ignorance of what happens between major OS revisions.
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Do you have any real life examples of an OS doubling in resource requirements for "only a couple of extra features?"
To me, it sounds like you are talking out of ignorance of what happens between major OS revisions.
One word "Windows" on just about every revision.
To a lesser extent Linux and Amiga OS from 3.1 to 3.9 and then OS 4.0.
If I was able to do everything I do now on an 8MB Amiga OS3.1 install and 16MB Windows 95 install what features am I getting now that take up 1GB+ RAM and a much much greater processor. I don't mind current web pages with flash taking up RAM and CPU cycles, but why does it need so much CPU and RAM just to idle the OS when you are playing a game.
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One word "Windows" on just about every revision.
Right, so you're complaining about 20 years of continuous development, with all the differences and developments in both hardware and software? 'kay.
To a lesser extent Linux
Depending on what you want to do, you can still get Linux systems that are pretty damned small. A single floppy disk do for you?
Want a top end kde based desktop OS, with all the trimmings? You'll need a DVD, but you do at least get all your basic software (office etc) included in that.
and Amiga OS from 3.1 to 3.9 and then OS 4.0.
Cleaning out the assembler and BCPL made AOS slower. Adding new functionality made it bigger.
If I was able to do everything I do now on an 8MB Amiga OS3.1 install and 16MB Windows 95 install what features am I getting now that take up 1GB+ RAM and a much much greater processor.
Multi user support, memory protection, support for modern hardware, filesharing, network stacks, bluetooth, usb stacks, backwards compatibility with 15+ years of software in Windows case...
I don't mind current web pages with flash taking up RAM and CPU cycles, but why does it so much just to idle the OS when you are playing a game.
...
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I don't mind current web pages with flash taking up RAM and CPU cycles, but why does it need so much CPU and RAM just to idle the OS when you are playing a game.
What exactly do you mean, "idle the OS" when playing a game?
We aren't living in the days when hardware was completely taken over by a single application and the OS evicted from the system. These days, games are applications that obey all the same rules as any other application. They run under the OS and use it to provide all the services (HID/graphics/audio/network etc) they need in order to function. The benefit to the game is that it doesn't need to know or care which hardware you are using, the OS sorts all that out for it. The OS provides abstracted access to the hardware.
So, when you are playing a modern game, the OS is doing plenty of work.
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What exactly do you mean, "idle the OS" when playing a game?
I didn't want to turn this into a Windows bashing thread... The example I'm using is the minimum system specs printed on computer game boxes. They have one minimum spec for Windows XP and another minimum spec for Windows 7/Vista. It is nearly double the CPU and double the RAM for 7/Vista.
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I didn't want to turn this into a Windows bashing thread... The example I'm using is the minimum system specs printed on computer game boxes. They have one minimum spec for Windows XP and another minimum spec for Windows 7/Vista. It is nearly double the CPU and double the RAM for 7/Vista.
You're aware that Vista, despite offering a less agile UI, often offers better framerates than XP does on more recent hardware, right?
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I didn't want to turn this into a Windows bashing thread... The example I'm using is the minimum system specs printed on computer game boxes. They have one minimum spec for Windows XP and another minimum spec for Windows 7/Vista. It is nearly double the CPU and double the RAM for 7/Vista.
Sure, but then again, under 7/Vista you get DirectX11 support. There are two interlinked issues here. Firstly, the minimum requirements for the game always include the minimum requirements of the OS. So, let's put that in context.
XP is over a decade older than 7. The change in machine specs between the two are actually not so bad. Twice the CPU power and twice the RAM? That's nothing. in that 10 years, the average (per core) CPU power has gone up about 8 times and installed RAM has certainly increased my more than a factor of 2.
Second point to consider is that many games these days use 3rd party engines that are designed to scale across different hardware.
If you are running XP with DX9, the chances are you are also running it on older hardware. Game engines will restrict all kinds of performance sensitive features when they run on such a configuration. A side effect of which is that they now require also lot less horsepower to run. If you want to sell as many copies as possible, you are not going to restrict your sales by failing to inform owners of older hardware that it will in fact run in half the RAM and with half the CPU requirements of somebody sporting newer kit where they can crank up the settings past what your machine is capable of (but requires that extra power to do so). That would be very foolish.
Shove the same software into a system with windows 7 / DX11 and the engine is free to use much newer features, some of which require many times more processing power, be it on the CPU or the GPU, than an XP/DX9 class machine had available.
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One word "Windows" on just about every revision.
This just further proves my point. A "couple of new features," heh.