Amiga.org
The "Not Quite Amiga but still computer related category" => Alternative Operating Systems => Topic started by: ptek on November 01, 2006, 04:00:39 PM
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Hello,
Multitasking seems to be a hot matter these days.
For who use a lot Linux and Winblows (XP, 2000, NT) could please tell us what OS does best multitasking and why. Amiga still does it better than the others ?
And I was forgetting MacOS ...
Please justify your claims :)
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AmigaOS.. I am no expert on the multitasking in windows and linux, but it does seem to give a smoother experience when multitasking under amigaos.
BeOS multitasking also seemed to work in a similar way to AmigaOS.
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So, the Amiga is better at multitasking than Linux ?
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ptek wrote:
So, the Amiga is better at multitasking than Linux ?
From how it feels to me, then yes. But i can only talk from a user perspective.
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IMHO AmigaOS performs better than Windows XP & Linux because it features a more modern microkernel.
Windows NT/2k/XP/2k3 started out as a micro kernel, but was evolved into a hybrid.
OS X shares the same fate, but to a much lesser degree.
Nearly all Un*x flavors use a monolithic kernel that actually caused Linux to scale very badly when it came to SMP some years ago.
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For who use a lot Linux and Winblows (XP, 2000, NT) could please tell us what OS does best multitasking and why. Amiga still does it better than the others ?
Linux and XP or NT. Windows 95 already equals with AmigaOS.
In AmigaOS multitasking stops when high priority process decides to busy loop. In Linux and Windows you can kill process at will.
MacOS and Windows 3.x dont have multitasking at all. They only pretend so.
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In Linux and Windows you can kill process at will
haha! Welcome to Fantasy Island. That works like maybetwo times out of ten. Its almost always a reboot. If I had a dime for every time I've had to reboot windoze I could retire rich, about 10 times over.
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@OP
AmigaOS multitasks better becuase it uses a flat memory model. XP and Linux have to switch MMU registers for the localized memory maps of each app. MacOSX uses a microkernal but still requires the localized memory map for each application so it's still slower than the equivalent Amiga (if such a machine exists).
@Itix
Oh and incidently Windows 9x didn't multitask either. It just ran background processes while waiting for mouse clicks and keystrokes. While the foreground task was running, it hogged the processor. At least the AmigaOS multitasks preemptively for equal task priorities.
You're right about a busy-loop in a higher-priority process though.
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1. Linux
New 2.6 kernels have nice nice O(1) scheduler and kernel pre-emption.
2. Mac OS X
BSD scheduler basically, tried and tested solution.
3. Windows
I have no firm details how windows scheduler works, but I believe it's BSD variant, or at least acts very close to it. Whether other parts of the OS are very efficient is separate issue (for example Windows memory paging is quite horrible, well... memory is ultracheap these days :-)). In general, Windows scheduler works fine.
4. AmigaOS
Very limited and aged round robin scheduler. Only pre-Windows 95 and classic Mac OS are worse. Tasks running at higher pririty hog all CPU time from lower pri tasks. Task running at same priority don't have fair CPU time sharing. Executive helps a bit by giving BSDish features. AmigaOS and typical applications are very light, which makes the system very responsive. On the other hand there is single global memory map, no resource tracking, memory protection or swap, making the system faster but more vulnerable and prone to crashes.
PS. I am talking about technical merits and qualities here.
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SamuraiCrow wrote:
@Itix
Oh and incidently Windows 9x didn't multitask either. It just ran background processes while waiting for mouse clicks and keystrokes. While the foreground task was running, it hogged the processor.
Not true. Windows 3.1 did cooperative multitasking, and Windows95 did preemptive multitasking (like AmigaOS). Lousy deceptive marketing strategy it was of M$ to call Windows 3.1 just 'multitasking', suggesting it's being equal to any other multitasking OS.
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Piru wrote:
Very limited and aged round robin scheduler. Only pre-Windows 95 and classic Mac OS are worse. Executive helps a bit by giving BSDish features.
But then, try formatting multiple floppies at the same time on a PC, or something alike. :-)
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@Speelgoedmannetje
That's more due to ISA legacy HW, rather than windows. Playing with floppies is equally painful under linux IMO... ;-)
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stopthegop wrote:
In Linux and Windows you can kill process at will
haha! Welcome to Fantasy Island. That works like maybetwo times out of ten. Its almost always a reboot. If I had a dime for every time I've had to reboot windoze I could retire rich, about 10 times over.
Hmmm... maybe a hardware issue? I shut down errant processes all the time, and aside from the occasional momentary hang, it's fine. Come to think of it, I don't think I've had to reboot windows due to a (software) crash in years.
Edit--
MacOS X on the other hand, is a completely different issue. I've managed to crash it many, many times (mostly buggy apps like Safari)... of course, it may have gotten better in the last year since I gave up on it.
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Piru wrote:
@Speelgoedmannetje
That's more due to ISA legacy HW, rather than windows. Playing with floppies is equally painful under linux IMO... ;-)
I know. But also, Commodore initially chose also SCSI because it was better usable for multitasking purposes (or so I read somewhere). I mean, Amiga is multitasking in every nerve, so to say.
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@Speelgoedmannetje
SCSI because it was better usable for multitasking purposes (or so I read somewhere).
At that point of history IDE HDDs and controllers were all PIO, that is polled by the CPU. Reading or writing something required full CPU attention. SCSI on the other hand was DMA, freeing the CPU for other tasks.
However, IDE soon gained DMA aswell. These days (with modern HW) it makes little difference from CPU usage perspective which you have. Certain specific ultra high speed applications might require SCSI still, otherwise SATA-II and RAID built with SATA devices has replaced SCSI pretty much.
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Ah, thanks for clarifying :-)
There was a kinda similar (off-topic) discussion about this in this (http://www.amiga.org/forums/showthread.php?t=25150) thread.
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Hmmm... maybe a hardware issue? I shut down errant processes all the time, and aside from the occasional momentary hang, it's fine. Come to think of it, I don't think I've had to reboot windows due to a (software) crash in years.
Congratulations. You own the only reliable Wintel box on Planet Earth. I'm not talking about just one box that I own, I'm talking about literally thousands of different servers and workstations that I've worked on. I do Field support work (15+ yrs) for a very well know storage systems company -- robotic tape libraries, disk arrays, etc.. In my experience, when customers report hardware problems (tape drives not being recognized, LUN mapping problems, unable to initialize robotics, unknown path to host, storage unit unavailable, etc, etc, etc...). I could go on for days.. But the problem is almost always software, in spite of what Microsoft or anyone else says. My experience is mostly with Veritas (sorry, Symantec) NetBackup, Legato, Tivoli TSM, Comvault, BackupExec, Amanda, and some non-public proprietary storage applications. Netbackup on a lean unix box is the best of many bad choices (read: windoze/linux).
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MacOS and Windows 3.x dont have multitasking at all. They only pretend so.
I think he meant Mac OSX...
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The big thing that the Amiga had and in a way still has over any windowz OS is that it can multi-task very smoothly and effectively. Yes modern day windowz machines have more raw horsepower but they need it to do multi-tasking as well as they do. Another member on here memtioned this in another thread but I have also done this, on the Amiga you can format more then one drive/partition at the same time. Try doing that on a PC. :-D
The Mac OS has done well in this department and is leaps ahead of the PC in this regards.
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Not true. Windows 3.1 did cooperative multitasking, and Windows95 did preemptive multitasking (like AmigaOS). Lousy deceptive marketing strategy it was of M$ to call Windows 3.1 just 'multitasking', suggesting it's being equal to any other multitasking OS.
No, win9x used cooperative multitasking, which was also the case with later version of classic mac os.
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Piru wrote:
In general, Windows scheduler works fine.
In one specific case, Windows' scheduler doesn't work fine and that's in the case of multiple processors/cores. It just strips off the top priority tasks and assigns them to cores and lets the last core deal with all of the lesser tasks.
Of course AmigaOS doesn't support multiple processors yet but this is one vulnerability in XP. Vista will probably be better but few would want to put up with the DRM contained in it. :lol:
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Tomas wrote:
Not true. Windows 3.1 did cooperative multitasking, and Windows95 did preemptive multitasking (like AmigaOS). Lousy deceptive marketing strategy it was of M$ to call Windows 3.1 just 'multitasking', suggesting it's being equal to any other multitasking OS.
No, win9x used cooperative multitasking, which was also the case with later version of classic mac os.
Then why can I play music, play a game and download something at the same time on my old pentium 200 with windows 95?
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Just for clarity, windows 95/98 does indeed support pre-emptive multitasking. However, it only uses the scheduler to make context switches if the running program supports pre-emptive multitasking as well. So, windows 9x is more of a pre-emptive/cooperative hybrid.
My understanding is that this is for backward compatibility issues, but I may well be wrong, it has been years since I've bothered looking at any of this stuff.
I do know that in my years as a windows systems coder under 95-2000, never once did I have to directly initiate a context switch.
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@Tomas
Windows 95 introduced preemptive multitasking to Windows family of OSes. Earlier Windows versions used co-operative multitasking.
See Wiki: Pre-emptive multitasking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-emptive_multitasking) and Wiki: Co-operative multitasking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-operative_multitasking#Cooperative_multitasking.2Ftime-sharing).
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Then why can I play music, play a game and download something at the same time on my old pentium 200 with windows 95?
You may not notice but the download is not a steady stream nor will the game play full smooth frames as it will pause many times as other things are going on. Yes it is multi-tasking but its not "true" multi-tasking.
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Then why can I play music, play a game and download something at the same time on my old pentium 200 with windows 95?
You could do that on win3.1 as well. It just does not work as efficiently.
But i might be wrong... I read around and i find conflicting info, some say that win9x is cooperative while some says it has half implemented preemptive support. So i guess Wain is right..
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@tonyvdb
You may not notice but the download is not a steady stream nor will the game play full smooth frames as it will pause many times as other things are going on. Yes it is multi-tasking but its not "true" multi-tasking.
Well by that definition AmigaOS isn't true multitasking either.
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Tomas wrote:
Then why can I play music, play a game and download something at the same time on my old pentium 200 with windows 95?
You could do that on win3.1 as well. It just does not work as efficiently.
Nope you can't. You can switch between programs, but they pause if they 'run' in background. Believe me, I tried :-)
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The one thing in windows 3.1 was if you ran more than one application that required the clock timing it would crash. I used a program on 3.1 that required it and had to ve very cautious not to open other programs I could open other windows but as soon as I ran a program it would lock up the entire computer and had to reboot.
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Piru wrote:
@tonyvdb
Yes it is multi-tasking but its not "true" multi-tasking.
Well by that definition AmigaOS isn't true multitasking either.
In a way your right but I'm sure you would agree that the Amiga will be far more efficient at it. And as I mentioned before try formating more then one drive at the same time on a PC
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tonyvdb wrote:
on the Amiga you can format more then one drive/partition at the same time. Try doing that on a PC. :-D
So what? How often do you actually do that? I don't exactly think that's a good test of how good an OS is at multitasking.
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moto
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So what? How often do you actually do that? I don't exactly think that's a good test of how good an OS is at multitasking.
Its merely one example. And why isn't a good test?
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motorollin wrote:
tonyvdb wrote:
on the Amiga you can format more then one drive/partition at the same time. Try doing that on a PC. :-D
So what? How often do you actually do that? I don't exactly think that's a good test of how good an OS is at multitasking.
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moto
I disagree.
It shows how it manages it's resources.
(/me rants how many times he had some read/write error with winblows because of lousy disk management)
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I'm not sure how much of this is done by the Newtek cards but still running a video project in the switcher involves running a ton of processes at the same time. The Amiga does just fine doing that. There is no way a windows machine with as little ram and CPU speed could even dream of doing that even today.
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So I ask :
Is there a perfect multitasking machine on this planet :) ?
The multitask theory seems well defined, but is there a perfect implementation of it ? Or the current implementations on Linux and Winblows NT based get close to it, but loses from unefficient resource managment/memory swap effects ?
As I can read on
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
the Amiga has pre-emptive multitasking ... Is this wikipedia entry wrong ?
Is the pre-emptive multitasking the perfect multitasking ?
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The multitask theory seems well defined, but is there a perfect implementation of it ?
Apart from programs wich are programmed by me, there is no perfect program in the world so there's not a perfect implementation of multitasking either.
the Amiga has pre-emptive multitasking ... Is this wikipedia entry wrong ?
No it isn't wrong.
Is the pre-emptive multitasking the perfect multitasking ?
No.
It's just multitasking. Co-operative multitasking can rather be called program switching rather than multitasking.
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@tonyvdb
I'm sure you would agree that the Amiga will be far more efficient at it.
I don't see much difference from technical point of view.
And as I mentioned before try formating more then one drive at the same time on a PC
And as I said already, it's more the sucky floppy controller and it being ISA HW (cpu polled crap), not software.
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@tonydvb
I'm not sure how much of this is done by the Newtek cards but still running a video project in the switcher involves running a ton of processes at the same time. The Amiga does just fine doing that. There is no way a windows machine with as little ram and CPU speed could even dream of doing that even today.
I have to disagree really. Assuming you had the equal functionality in the software and hardware, I see no reason why equally specced windows box couldn't handle it. Windows itself requires larger memory footprint, but other than that it should be fine.
But why would you want to limit your video editing to something like the old amiga solutions? Or why would you deliberately want to run something like video editing on 10-15 year old PC?
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@Speelgoedmannetje,
But pre-emptive is better than co-operative multitasking, right ?
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Piru wrote:
@tonydvb
But why would you want to limit your video editing to something like the old amiga solutions?
Because it works fine? :-)
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@Piru
As far i understood, tonyvdb was refering to HD drive formatting, not floppy.
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@ptek
But pre-emptive is better than co-operative multitasking, right ?
Well, you can't find any co-operative multitasking OSes around anymore, does that answer your question? :-)
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ptek wrote:
@Speelgoedmannetje,
But pre-emptive is better than co-operative multitasking, right ?
Definately. As I stated, co-operative multitasking can hardly/not be called multitasking.
But pre-emptive multitasking comes also in multiple flavours, like Round Robin.
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As far i understood, tonyvdb was refering to HD drive formatting, not floppy.
I have never seen ANY problems with that, the performance is just fine. Formatting HDD is hardly CPU bound, the CPU usage is 1-2% when formatting anyway.
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Piru wrote:
@tonydvb
I'm not sure how much of this is done by the Newtek cards but still running a video project in the switcher involves running a ton of processes at the same time. The Amiga does just fine doing that. There is no way a windows machine with as little ram and CPU speed could even dream of doing that even today.
I have to disagree really. Assuming you had the equal functionality in the software and hardware, I see no reason why equally specced windows box couldn't handle it. Windows itself requires larger memory footprint, but other than that it should be fine.
No it's not fine. Windows is tied and glued together, not designed with these features. I have had too many problems with Windows to call it fine.
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just to report what piru said at first (and to me seems one of few persons that knows what we are talking about)...
1. Linux
New 2.6 kernels have nice nice O(1) scheduler and kernel pre-emption.
2. Mac OS X
BSD scheduler basically, tried and tested solution.
3. Windows
I have no firm details how windows scheduler works, but I believe it's BSD variant, or at least acts very close to it.
4. AmigaOS
Very limited and aged round robin scheduler. Only pre-Windows 95 and classic Mac OS are worse.
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Well, you can't find any co-operative multitasking OSes around anymore, does that answer your question? :-)
:lol:
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@chsedge
4. AmigaOS
Very limited and aged round robin scheduler. Only pre-Windows 95 and classic Mac OS are worse.
So, from you answer we may conclude that the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga
entry saying that the Amiga has pre-emptive multitasking is wrong ?
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@Speelgoedmannetje
Amiga hardware provided very efficient and cheap way of implementing video, but that's no OS feature. If you compare the OS multitasking (which this thread is about), pretty much all Windows since NT4 beat the crap out of AmigaOS. Thus, given equal hw features, Windows would be better.
Feel free to disagree. ;-)
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Piru wrote:
But why would you want to limit your video editing to something like the old amiga solutions? Or why would you deliberately want to run something like video editing on 10-15 year old PC?
Amiga hardware provided very efficient and cheap way of implementing video, but that's no OS feature.
There was defiantly OS involvement with video on the Amiga.
Its not a mater of limiting myself to a 15 year old machine but moreso the fact that spending another $12,000 or more on a new PC based system that will do the same thing is very pointless. All the software only video editing systems suck on the PC the new Newtek VT is one of the best products out there but why replace my Amiga when it is very capable of doing video editing all real time ( The Amigas ability to do what it does with Multi-tasking was way ahead of its time)
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stopthegop wrote:
Hmmm... maybe a hardware issue? I shut down errant processes all the time, and aside from the occasional momentary hang, it's fine. Come to think of it, I don't think I've had to reboot windows due to a (software) crash in years.
Congratulations. You own the only reliable Wintel box on Planet Earth. I'm not talking about just one box that I own, I'm talking about literally thousands of different servers and workstations that I've worked on. I do Field support work (15+ yrs) for a very well know storage systems company -- robotic tape libraries, disk arrays, etc.. In my experience, when customers report hardware problems (tape drives not being recognized, LUN mapping problems, unable to initialize robotics, unknown path to host, storage unit unavailable, etc, etc, etc...). I could go on for days.. But the problem is almost always software, in spite of what Microsoft or anyone else says. My experience is mostly with Veritas (sorry, Symantec) NetBackup, Legato, Tivoli TSM, Comvault, BackupExec, Amanda, and some non-public proprietary storage applications. Netbackup on a lean unix box is the best of many bad choices (read: windoze/linux).
Well dude I'm not saying Windows is flawless, or that I love it, but what I am saying is that in my experience, if it's setup properly and maintained on good hardware it's a pretty stable OS... I don't think it's a fantastic multitasking OS, but as far as handling errant programs it's leagues better than Amiga OS (and Mac OSX, IMO). I don't work in the industry per se, but I maintain all of our work machines as well as constantly setting up various builds for friends and family, and no one I know is having continuous crashes and reboots unless there's a software configuration problem or hardware failure. Personally I spend about 99% of my time using my PCs and maybe 1% fixing problems. Obviously, as a tech, you will be dealing with problems all day, but it's kind of along the lines of the "if the Ford garage is full of Fords does that mean Ford is a bad car" analogy... On the other hand, I don't see any reason why your home rig should be rebooting and crashing all the time unless there's a problem somewhere, beacause "by nature" Windows just isn't THAT bad.
edit--
Come to think of it, in the five or six months since I setup the new rigs at work, there hasn't been ONE crash or reboot yet.
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@ptek
It's not wrong.
AmigaOS is has pre-emptive scheduler with equal priority tasks being alternated with round robin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round-robin_scheduling) method. It's pretty much the simplest form of pre-emptive scheduler you can have.
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For me the question posed in this topic requires answers only from coders, and the ones who at least had been through an operating systems exam at university or have studied how to build an os...
comments from user perspective on the multitasking are useless as wikipedia (we can start a topic about wikipedia too)
ps:
anyway I'm the lucky owner of the second wintel stable system in the world, just running xp since 2003 with no reinstall and no crashes on an 'old' celeron.
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@tonyvdb
There was defiantly OS involvement with video on the Amiga.
Care to detail the involvement?
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OK I was not familiar with the round robin thing :)
tnx Piru
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Piru wrote:
@Speelgoedmannetje
Amiga hardware provided very efficient and cheap way of implementing video, but that's no OS feature. If you compare the OS multitasking (which this thread is about), pretty much all Windows since NT4 beat the crap out of AmigaOS. Thus, given equal hw features, Windows would be better.
Feel free to disagree. ;-)
Since a simple workbench fits on one disk, (880 kb), and since at avarage, 1 of 2000 rows of code contains bugs, how many more bugs do you think you have with a stripped compiled version of windows (wich is still a lot more megabytes) compared to a smaller workbench?
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@Speelgoedmannetje
Since a simple workbench fits on one disk, (880 kb), and since at avarage, 1 of 2000 rows of code contains bugs, how many more bugs do you think you have with a stripped compiled version of windows (wich is still a lot more megabytes) compared to a smaller workbench?
Not enough to tip the balance over to Workbench. In fact, I haven't seen my XP install crash, except when the HW was malfunctioning. Windows is remarkably stable these days.
But since I've found dozens of bugs from AmigaOS, I guess it means bad things for Windows. ?-)
Windows has free (except network connectivity) updates, too. Any bugs found from Windows have chance of getting fixed, at least.
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Piru wrote:
Care to detail the involvement?
Outside video sourses no, but the video toaster for example uses the Amiga's video and NTSC capabilities in some sort of way otherwise it would not be able to display switcher or Lightwave screens on the Amigas monitor. All the software is run from the Amigas internal hard drive on Workbench. I many times will go onto my workbench as the toaster is running something and run other programs.
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@tonyvdb
Since displaying genlocked video requires 0% CPU or system resources, I'd hardly call this AmigaOS feature.
Any OS with the equal HW could do this and provide equally good multitasking at the same time.
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Piru wrote:
In fact, I haven't seen my XP install crash, except when the HW was malfunctioning.
Well, I did. And there wasn't any hardware malfunctioning.
Yet I haven't seen my Workbench (1.3) crashing.
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@Speelgoedmannetje
Yet I haven't seen my Workbench (1.3) crashing.
It clearly means you must sell your Windows boxen and replace it with A500 running WB 1.3.
Or even better, replace it with C64 running GEOS. It has even less code that can have bugs.
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being a very simplicist minded but unpractical person, I feel Amiga multitasks better compared to other operating systems. Switching between programs performs much better (instant?) compared to my 800mhz p3 which I suppose is faster than my 060-50. This must be because of Amiga not using virtual ram. If Pc didn't need VR maybe Win XP could do better. (NOT)
But when using Warpup applications, they seem sluggish under heavy CPU load (must be the context switches)
We can all accept that AmigaOS handles a few tasks much better than Windows does. But Windows handles lots of tasks (which it does so badly) better than AmigaOS. (all these valid given similar environments) (s*** I hate trying to explain things that I am clueless about) (but I try)
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Not enough to tip the balance over to Workbench. In fact, I haven't seen my XP install crash, except when the HW was malfunctioning. Windows is remarkably stable these days.
Agreed. I've found Windows to be very stable indeed if you treat it right. Most 'windows' crashes are just marginal hardware or buggy drivers.
To anyone who thinks Windows is unstable I'll pose these questions: how often have you gone to an ATM to draw out money? So many times you can't give a number? Same for most of us. Now, when was the last time you walked up to one and found it had crashed?
I've seen one crashed ATM in the past 5 years.
Guess what OS most of them are running? It begins with 'W' and ends with 's'...
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Windows is good at multitasking stuff. Just think of all the crap svchost.exe's you have running in the background :)
Although I'd guess linux multitasking is more stable. I dunno, though.
Amiga is crippled by having all the apps share memory - but it's also one of its strong points.
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Nope you can't. You can switch between programs, but they pause if they 'run' in background. Believe me, I tried
Can it even be defined as having cooperative multitasking then? I used win 3.1 in the old days, but cannot recall that it was this bad. But then again that was many years ago.
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To anyone who thinks Windows is unstable I'll pose these questions: how often have you gone to an ATM to draw out money? So many times you can't give a number? Same for most of us. Now, when was the last time you walked up to one and found it had crashed?
I've seen one crashed ATM in the past 5 years.
Guess what OS most of them are running? It begins with 'W' and ends with 's'...
This is getting a bit off topic, but I MUST reply to this.
I have seen ATMs crashed about 12 times in the past 3 years. You know why? It is specifically BECAUSE they switched to Windows. I know this because the company I work for did consulting work for all the major banks in Canada and they ALL had problems after switching. In the entire 16 years before they switched to Windows I had never once seen a single crashed ATM.
(back to the regularly scheduled topic...)
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About multitasking, what's best : AmigaOS, Linux, or Winblows XP ?
All three OS multitask just fine. Which is "better" is probably too much of a pejorative question to answer. Perhaps "which, to scale, has the lowest task switching latency and overhead" is a more valid one?
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I can not hold off posting any longer.
I love Amigas, but I am not so blinkerd to think that AOS3.9 outperforms my WinXP64 PC, or my WinXP 500mhz pnetium 3 laptop for that matter.
AOS is a great smallfoot os, and was good for its time.
but the reason is seems so resposive, is because the applications are also of a small footprint.
I use diff versions of windows all day in work, and at night, and to be honest, I can do so much more with thme, for a fraction of the cost, I paid for my miggy stuff
TBH i do not even switch on my ppc miggy, if i want a blast of amiga, i just use my amiga forvever cd
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Nope you can't. You can switch between programs, but they pause if they 'run' in background. Believe me, I tried
Can it even be defined as having cooperative multitasking then? I used win 3.1 in the old days, but cannot recall that it was this bad. But then again that was many years ago.
Windows 3.x had co-operative multitasking. Programs had to call a system function to let system do rescheduling. This is why it is called co-operative. Non-co-operative programs didnt multitask :-)
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Well dude I'm not saying Windows is flawless, or that I love it, but what I am saying is that in my experience, if it's setup properly and maintained on good hardware it's a pretty stable OS... I don't think it's a fantastic multitasking OS, but as far as handling errant programs it's leagues better than Amiga OS (and Mac OSX, IMO). I don't work in the industry per se, but I maintain all of our work machines as well as constantly setting up various builds for friends and family, and no one I know is having continuous crashes and reboots unless there's a software configuration problem or hardware failure. Personally I spend about 99% of my time using my PCs and maybe 1% fixing problems. Obviously, as a tech, you will be dealing with problems all day, but it's kind of along the lines of the "if the Ford garage is full of Fords does that mean Ford is a bad car" analogy... On the other hand, I don't see any reason why your home rig should be rebooting and crashing all the time unless there's a problem somewhere, beacause "by nature" Windows just isn't THAT bad.
You're right about garage analogy. Its a good point. I'll be the first to admit a personal bias against Windows simply because I have to live with it and all its nuances and flaws for 50-70 hours per week -- flaws which tend to be minor in a home environment but which can have a huge impact in a production server environment and just drive one to drink. When I get home, the last thing in the world I want to see is a PC. My Amigas are my sanctuary so forgive me if I get a little defensive about what the OS can and can't do, etc.. :)
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@Piru
Which will be the MorphOS position if we include it on the poll?
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stopthegop wrote:
Well dude I'm not saying Windows is flawless, or that I love it, but what I am saying is that in my experience, if it's setup properly and maintained on good hardware it's a pretty stable OS... I don't think it's a fantastic multitasking OS, but as far as handling errant programs it's leagues better than Amiga OS (and Mac OSX, IMO). I don't work in the industry per se, but I maintain all of our work machines as well as constantly setting up various builds for friends and family, and no one I know is having continuous crashes and reboots unless there's a software configuration problem or hardware failure. Personally I spend about 99% of my time using my PCs and maybe 1% fixing problems. Obviously, as a tech, you will be dealing with problems all day, but it's kind of along the lines of the "if the Ford garage is full of Fords does that mean Ford is a bad car" analogy... On the other hand, I don't see any reason why your home rig should be rebooting and crashing all the time unless there's a problem somewhere, beacause "by nature" Windows just isn't THAT bad.
You're right about garage analogy. Its a good point. I'll be the first to admit a personal bias against Windows simply because I have to live with it and all its nuances and flaws for 50-70 hours per week -- flaws which tend to be minor in a home environment but which can have a huge impact in a production server environment and just drive one to drink. When I get home, the last thing in the world I want to see is a PC. My Amigas are my sanctuary so forgive me if I get a little defensive about what the OS can and can't do, etc.. :)
LOL, no worries :pint: I'm the same way, the LAST thing I want to think about in my free time is anything work related. (And BTW, I certainly don't envy your job. It WOULD drive me to drink.) Amigas (and lately the old 8-bitters) are a bit medicinal for me too. Lots of fun.
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Piru wrote:
Windows 95 introduced preemptive multitasking to Windows family of OSes. Earlier Windows versions used co-operative multitasking.
Actually, that's not accurate either... It used a process called multithreading. Something M$ didn't want you to know. Along with 99.975% of the OS being 16 bit, "thunking" in BOTH directions, not just from 16 to 32 bit tasks.
I was trained to support win95 by M$ trainers before it was released.
Oh, and as for my vote of best multitasking OS, that'd be IRIX.
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Not enough to tip the balance over to Workbench. In fact, I haven't seen my XP install crash, except when the HW was malfunctioning. Windows is remarkably stable these days.
But since I've found dozens of bugs from AmigaOS, I guess it means bad things for Windows. ?-)
Windows has free (except network connectivity) updates, too. Any bugs found from Windows have chance of getting fixed, at least.
@Piru
Windows really should be stable these days giving that Microsoft has a zillion dollars... In my opinion the free unices (Linux and the BSDs) is the most stable OSes for personal users. This is based on own experience using them for both desktop (different Linux distributions) and servers (FreeBSD and Linux).
It's funny learning about the AmigaOS. Ok, it's dated, without modern memory management that would make it a lot more stable and using 80-s state of the art technology (like pre-emptive multitasking using the round rubin scheduling algorithm), but it makes me wonder that one of the DragonFly BSD (Matt Dillons baby) design goals is to make the BSD architecture more Amiga-like.
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but the reason is seems so resposive, is because the applications are also of a small footprint.
Responsiveness in AmigaOS is also linked to the fact that it's a micro kernel architecture with a message-passing system. Passing messages on the AmigaOS is just passing pointers (very fast). This is why it's hard (or impossible) to implement full memory protection on the Amiga.
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stopthegop wrote:
Hmmm... maybe a hardware issue? I shut down errant processes all the time, and aside from the occasional momentary hang, it's fine. Come to think of it, I don't think I've had to reboot windows due to a (software) crash in years.
Congratulations. You own the only reliable Wintel box on Planet Earth. I'm not talking about just one box that I own, I'm talking about literally thousands of different servers and workstations that I've worked on. I do Field support work (15+ yrs) for a very well know storage systems company -- robotic tape libraries, disk arrays, etc..
I do Win2K/XP system and application programming in C/C++/ATL/MFC/COM/Win32. My Wintel system is stable enough for rouge (user land) application crashes.
In my experience, when customers report hardware problems (tape drives not being recognized, LUN mapping problems, unable to initialize robotics, unknown path to host, storage unit unavailable, etc, etc, etc...). I could go on for days..
These are not normal desktop applications. Are they multitasking issues?
Note that, Windows NT runs into issues if the application crosses user/kernel space divide.
But the problem is almost always software, in spite of what Microsoft or anyone else says.
Depends on third party software's architecture.
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mr_a500 wrote:
To anyone who thinks Windows is unstable I'll pose these questions: how often have you gone to an ATM to draw out money? So many times you can't give a number? Same for most of us. Now, when was the last time you walked up to one and found it had crashed?
I've seen one crashed ATM in the past 5 years.
Guess what OS most of them are running? It begins with 'W' and ends with 's'...
This is getting a bit off topic, but I MUST reply to this.
I have seen ATMs crashed about 12 times in the past 3 years. You know why? It is specifically BECAUSE they switched to Windows. I know this because the company I work for did consulting work for all the major banks in Canada and they ALL had problems after switching. In the entire 16 years before they switched to Windows I had never once seen a single crashed ATM.
(back to the regularly scheduled topic...)
What type of crash e.g. BSOD or terminate application dialog box?
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AmigaOS.. I am no expert on the multitasking in windows and linux, but it does seem to give a smoother experience when multitasking under amigaos.
hey is there any other way that counts??
the user is what computers are all about. anything
else is just geeks fogging up thier glasses over a
system that is meaninless to real life! :lol:
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@FrankBrana
Which will be the MorphOS position if we include it on the poll?
MorphOS ABOX scheduler is similar to AOS one, however, it has plugin interface to allow finer control of rescheduling. By default it functions the same as AOS, that is simple round robin.
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@tormedhammaren
In my opinion the free unices (Linux and the BSDs) is the most stable OSes for personal users
I agree 100%, being debian user. Windows isn't as horrible as it used to be, however.
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Piru wrote:
@Speelgoedmannetje
Yet I haven't seen my Workbench (1.3) crashing.
It clearly means you must sell your Windows boxen and replace it with A500 running WB 1.3.
Or even better, replace it with C64 running GEOS. It has even less code that can have bugs.
You very well know what I 'm talking about (the KISS-approach)
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Piru wrote:
@tormedhammaren
In my opinion the free unices (Linux and the BSDs) is the most stable OSes for personal users
I agree 100%, being debian user.
Running in a CLI in Linux is simply perfect; nothing goes wrong whatsoever. However, kde is a complete disaster (haven't worked much yet with gnome or xfce).
Windows isn't as horrible as it used to be, however.
Indeed.
But when things go wrong things go really wrong.
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I don't know if it was mentioned before but another difference between AmigaOS and Windows is that in AOS things like windows handling (moving, resizing, also redrawing in most apps) and basic gadgets handling is done by Intuition in its input handlers. In Windows, this is done by the app. That's why you can't move windows of busy apps or change their main windows if any other is opened. This makes the AmigaOS multitasking to feel better.
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Warning - potential long winded opinated post...
Interesting thread, with some nice POV's being expressed.
But, the original question needs a tweak. Instead of asking which OS is best at multitasking, perhaps it should be which OS is best for a given task requirement.
Why? Because we are comparing an OS that hasnt been developed - really - in, what, 15 years? (I dont really call WB3.5 and 3.9 major developments over 3.1, and the ROM hasn't changed at all), and a hardware platform that hasn't changed in terms of horsepower or capabillity in just as long.
On the other side, we have Windows, which can trace a heritage back to VMS, but is "only" 4 years old, and Linux that is, well, constantly developed and comes in a zillion flavours. And the hardware platform that can be 10 years old or 10 weeks...
And thats before we take into account the custom chipset that the Amiga has, which allows the OS to offload tasks from the CPU. Not only is the OS different, but the hardware is completely different. The PC OS expects the CPU to do everything, AmigaDOS doesn't. Ok, so the PC has GPUs... these didnt really come of age until, say the advent of the Nvidia G-Force Yes, I know there have been grpahics accelerators for the PC since the 80s, but these really relied on optimised CPU drivers. One could argue that is still the case, as a driver is still needed for the latest video card or physics processor, there is no native OS support in the kernal/HAL for graphics off-loading. Why- because the architecture "floats"; the PC I buy or build is different to yours, so the modular approach has to be taken. An Amiga is an Amiga is an Amiga. A PC isn't, well, not to the same degree.
Its like asking which car is "best"; this Datsun 380ZX from 2002, or this one from 1987. Put them in a straight line race, and the older car wins. But is that best? best at what? best fuel economy? Comfort? value for money (however the heck one measures that highly subjective phrase!), and so forth. Now add in BMW M3s from the 80's, 90's, and lastest series, and ask a BMW fanatic which is best... Oh, and maybe Hamman M5/450 for interest (540 series with a 5.5l engine from an 8 series shovelled into it...)
See what I'm getting at? There is no single reference point to make a comparison.
Theoretical discussions about the elegance of a particular OS approach to multitasking fall flat when hardware is factored in. In turn, that isn't an absolute statement, but one which works pretty well in the real world.
AmigaDOS and OS2/3 is "better" than XP? it may or may not be, (lets say it is). But on what hardware platform? It can beat XP into a crooked hat on paper, but I'd rather be using XP on a dual Opteron with a few gigs od RAM than an A500 with 1mb and a single floppy... the time saved between the two systems booting is wiped out in the time spent using Final Writer to type a letter than Word. And I can play MP3 on the XP box at the same time... cant on the A500. Yes, I could have protracker or wahtever running, but I doubt I'll find my music in that format.
Ok, so I use an A4K with PPC/060. Final Writer runs a bit faster. ProText runs quicker, but a character based WP on a GUI system... nope, still give me Word.
Yes, I do believe that AmigaDOS does multitask "better" than XP, and have used the floppy format analogy often. I've also used, as a challenge to annoying peeps that boast they have the fastest&meanest rig that my computer can do a task quicker than theres, and I'll stake my rig on it; the task is to write and print a letter. I'm using a Commodore64 with Easyscript cartridge.... its "fast". But I wouldnt use it for a mail merge! (why? ever doen mail merge from a very slow floppy drive! Yes, I could add a REU and HD, but the expenditure outweighs the benfit of a few simple text only letters. Adding GEOS in, it gets s.l.o.w again)
The theory is fine. But like all theory, it cannot take into account that wonderful thing called the real world. You have to take into account the hardware, and what one actually wants to accomplish.
In a way, its linked to the "polls" one used to see in printed Amiga magazines, "what would you like to see in a new Amiga". Well, when you look at many of the answers, what you end up with is not an Amiga.
Examine what one wants to do, then decide what apps offer the fucntionality to achieve that, which decides the platform.
AmigaDOS is still best. even though I cant use multi-monitor display, have no simple IP stack, slick browser, decent email client, slick graphical UI... otoh, Pagestream 3 rocks! I'm not even looking at PS on the PC...
just my long winded tuppence.
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@_yak_
In AOS things like windows handling (moving, resizing, also redrawing in most apps) and basic gadgets handling is done by Intuition in its input handlers. ... This makes the AmigaOS multitasking to feel better.
Very true. But it also sucks if it is taken to extremes: Reaction does very complex rendering from within input.device task context at priority 20, blocking anything lower priority.
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Tomas wrote:
ptek wrote:
So, the Amiga is better at multitasking than Linux ?
From how it feels to me, then yes. But i can only talk from a user perspective.
I can quantify that:
try multitasking in a graphical environment, in a low power (by modern standards) system:
AmigaOS: A1200 030 at 25MHz with 8MB ram OS3 (any of em!)
Linux: same setup, but one of the m68k builds, I tried BSD (couldnt get X working) and debian 2.something m68k build.
you will find that linux is dog slow even just running X! ok, thats cheating a smidge, cos I was trying to use X on AGA, but the point, I believe, is made.
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Are you are talking about things at the low-level or the high level?
High-level multitasking depends on the quality of the shell/GUI system. A really, really good OS can be totally crippled by a bad GUI. I feel that every time I try a new Linux distro and have to endure endless KDE garbage. KDE was designed to look and feel a lot like Windows, and it shows.
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@Agafaster
try multitasking in a graphical environment, in a low power (by modern standards) system:
AmigaOS: A1200 030 at 25MHz with 8MB ram OS3 (any of em!)
Linux: same setup, but one of the m68k builds, I tried BSD (couldnt get X working) and debian 2.something m68k build.
you will find that linux is dog slow even just running X! ok, thats cheating a smidge, cos I was trying to use X on AGA, but the point, I believe, is made.
I don't think the Linux slow performance in these case matters for the multitasking question ... The slow performance seems due to hardware limitation (linux makes use of virtual memory) and as we know the Amiga HW (HD access - maybe with a real SCSI HD would be better - , memory BUS among and others things) are really outdated, so even the multitasking as Linux is pre-emptive and not round robin, in the Amiga hardware the system crawls due to HD limitations (like trying using the AGA achitecture on a X based chunky display)
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Is there a perfect multitasking machine on this planet :) ?
Mainframes do a pretty good job...
and they go all the way back to when they were little more than ZX Spectrums in terms of horsepower/RAM...
the philosophy of mainframes is still there, but now they have terabytes of RAM, and even more disk/tape space.
mind you, they also have multiple processor cores.
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ptek,
I take your point: Debian is fine on my A1! (800MHz G3 now, instead of 25MHz 68030/68882)
but then, I tend to use Sawfish, and steer well clear of KDE.
OS4 is good too, it seems to allow more time for non-os things than debian does. I will quantify:
Playing non-protected DVDs is smoother in DVPlayer on OS4 than on Xine/mplayer on debian.
(I only ever watch movies on debian if they are WMV, and even then, not all are supported there!)
but that could be any number of things, and not necesarily down to the actual scheduler.
-edit-
its also worth pointing out what they are:
AmigaOS (even version 4) is essentially a single-user single core multitasking system, and debian (indeed any linux) is a multiuser multicore multitasking system.
note: by single/multi core I mean capabilities, not requirements!
linux takes care of every eventuality - dealing with lots of users, lots of sessions, and (potentially) 1-to-lots of cores.
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@Piru
Reaction does very complex rendering from within input.device task context at priority 20, blocking anything lower priority.
True, but you can keep simple rendering to the input.device task and offload the complex rendering to your process context, giving the best of both worlds if you do it right.
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The multitasking in AmigaOS was ok for it's time, but most modern linux distributions, and the later versions of Windows kick it's ass thoroughly.
As for stability, well, I've had far mroe Gurus than BSOD's the last few years.
Actually, Windows Vista is incredibly stable. I haven't managed to crash it yet, unless I do something stupid, like crowbaring the wrong video driver into the system.
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See what I'm getting at? There is no single reference point to make a comparison.
I disagree. I think the fact that we're even having this discussion is proof that the Amiga is something very special. I mean this is a hardware platform that hasn't had an update since before win95! I haven't seen anyone talking about how badass Windows 95 was.
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You can argue the technicalities till the cows come home. But from a non techie point of view to a guy who just uses the machines. The feeling of quality and rock solid'ness of the amiga multitasking has never been matched by windows for me. Thats one of the reasons why after all these years i STILL want my Amiga OS back and to ditch my windows XP machine.
Theres so many nuances with windows that i've come across over the years, but i've just learned to live with them, because i've not had a choice. But it drives me nuts on a daily basis because i remember how good the Amiga once was. Simple things like if you sit and watch the clock on the date and times properties on ANY windows box, with NOTHING running in the background except system tasks. You tell me that that second hand doesn't keep jerking and stopping every few seconds. And this applies to everything, from flash animations in web pages, to video. I NEVER had that with the Amiga, the Amiga was rock solid and consistantly smooth. Thats the sign of quality.
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You know, I would have to agree with neon32's assessment. (Piru does make some very good points though.) I can't stand seeing video jerk and pause when I adjust the volume on my work system and it brings up a green bar. Too many similar examples to boot. I do not think the poor floppy controller comes into the picture at this point. (I'm using a dual-core, Media Center Edition Sony VAIO.)
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Windows and Mac are top heavy with software. Its really just that simple. To quote one of my favorite books on hardware, "How to Control Your World with Your Computer":
"I've always believed the best software programming language is solder".
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neon32 wrote:
You can argue the technicalities till the cows come home. But from a non techie point of view to a guy who just uses the machines. The feeling of quality and rock solid'ness of the amiga multitasking has never been matched by windows for me. Thats one of the reasons why after all these years i STILL want my Amiga OS back and to ditch my windows XP machine.
Theres so many nuances with windows that i've come across over the years, but i've just learned to live with them, because i've not had a choice. But it drives me nuts on a daily basis because i remember how good the Amiga once was. Simple things like if you sit and watch the clock on the date and times properties on ANY windows box, with NOTHING running in the background except system tasks. You tell me that that second hand doesn't keep jerking and stopping every few seconds. And this applies to everything, from flash animations in web pages, to video. I NEVER had that with the Amiga, the Amiga was rock solid and consistantly smooth. Thats the sign of quality.
While I agree with it mostly, I get the idea you use a system-hungry virus scanner. :-)
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stopthegop wrote:
"I've always believed the best software programming language is solder".
I can't agree more :lol:
I strongly believe ,considering todays software/hardware capabilities, a new computer needs to be designed from scratch.
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Speelgoedmannetje wrote:
While I agree with it mostly, I get the idea you use a system-hungry virus scanner. :-)
No, like I said, with no other tasks running in the background, except system tasks. :-)
Either way, it shouldn't make a difference. It's just validating my point - CPU or disk-based intensive tasks shouldn't make everything jerk around painfully. It never did on the Amiga.
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Click here if you think Windows is stable! (http://daimyo.org/bsod) :-D
Actually, most of these appear to be from earlier versions of Windows. I don't think I've ever had a BSOD with Win2K, XP or the Vista betas.
- Ali
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Actually, most of these appear to be from earlier versions of Windows. I don't think I've ever had a BSOD with Win2K, XP or the Vista betas.
I have sadly... and then they are usually worse than the standard crash and usually means i have to reinstall the OS.
Last time it happened was when installing a device using microsoft certified drivers.. I got bsod during boot and it would not even boot if i removed the device or booting in safe mode.
Another time i had a program freeze up the OS which meant i had to use the reset button.. Upon boot some file was missing/corrupted so that meant i had to reinstall again. People say that ntfs is pretty much safe from data loss on hard reset/power loss, but that is sadly not true in my experience.
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I can quantify that:
try multitasking in a graphical environment, in a low power (by modern standards) system:
AmigaOS: A1200 030 at 25MHz with 8MB ram OS3 (any of em!)
Linux: same setup, but one of the m68k builds, I tried BSD (couldnt get X working) and debian 2.something m68k build.
you will find that linux is dog slow even just running X! ok, thats cheating a smidge, cos I was trying to use X on AGA, but the point, I believe, is made.
DUH. of course. When you build a operating system to run optimally on a bare bones 7mhz, 68k processor with 512megs RAM, then you slap on a accelerator, OF COURSE IT WILL RUN FASTER.
If we all designed a operating system to run on a 286 and ran it on a 3ghz machine it would feel GREAT.
Linux > AmigaOS.
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the only os ive never run extensively is macos- classic or osx. and i have programed for several systems, including dos, windows 9x and (very little) linux.
the best, smoothest, most capable, and most flexible preemptively multitasking system i have ever used is os/2 warp 3 and 4. i used warp for at ibm for quite a while, and warp 3 on my own personal machines.
i have never seen a warp machine crash, im sure they do but ive put several through torture and they never blinked.
i have preemptively multitasked, dos, windows3.x and os2 programs simultaniously with no slowdown and no comflicts even with the occasional dos hack crash.
fine tuning how you want specific programs to work makes it even better, and os/2 has an interprocess com like amigaos called rexx
so does any of that matter, do i run os/2 because it is so smooth and stable, no i use windows9x and xp. why?
because i use an os to run programs i dont run a computer just to run some really cool os. windows has better support than any other os both from ms and 3rd party.
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I still like using the Amiga the most and not being an expert om multitasking, I think they all do a fine job. Widow, Linux, Macs or the Amiga. :-D
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If we all designed a operating system to run on a 286 and ran it on a 3ghz machine it would feel GREAT.
Not true. It would still be just plain old DOS. Just faster. I could drop a 400 small block into Grannie's station wagon, but you'd still have...grannie's station wagon.
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InTheSand wrote:
Click here if you think Windows is stable! (http://daimyo.org/bsod) :-D
Actually, most of these appear to be from earlier versions of Windows. I don't think I've ever had a BSOD with Win2K, XP or the Vista betas.
- Ali
That's cute. Many were the times when I'd flip to "the channel channel" (local cable TV running a "now playing" software package on an A500 with genlock) only to see a guru meditation flashing up on the screen.
Damn confusing the first time it happened. I looked over at my 500 on my desk...looked back at the TV...looked over at the 500 on the desk...looked back at the tv...:-D
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stopthegop wrote:
If we all designed a operating system to run on a 286 and ran it on a 3ghz machine it would feel GREAT.
Not true. It would still be just plain old DOS. Just faster. I could drop a 400 small block into Grannie's station wagon, but you'd still have...grannie's station wagon.
Wrong.
He said "let's design..."
There's other OS's than DOS that'll run on a '286, y'know.
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It's not fair really, to compare AmigaOS to linux or NT.
I'm on a Windows XP box right now, that I picked up from the bargan bin at circuit city 2 years ago for 400 dollars. It's a 2GHz P4 with 768MB of ram and 80gb of storage. I have three monitors on this machine, 2 monitors at 1280x1024 and one at 1600x1200 all in 32bit color mode.
At any given time i have a dozen instances of firefox, several ssh sessions, excel, codewarrior 9, napster and NSBasic running, along with a dozen or so other apps. I switch between them all day long. Going from any app to another app is instant. My machine gets reset maybe every 2 to 3 months, because of software updates or power glitches. Occasionally firefox goes nuts and eats up all the memory or spirals out of controll, no problem, pop up the task manager and kill it. The system keeps chugging along. I use this system 14 hours a day constantly.
I just plain can't do that with the Amiga. I use my a300 lightly, and it gurus all the time.
Comparing AmigaOS to WindowsXP is like comparing a model T to a honda accord. Sure, they both get you to where you need to go, but the Accord will run for 120,000 miles before anything serious goes wrong.
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I just plain can't do that with the Amiga. I use my a300 lightly, and it gurus all the time.
Comparing AmigaOS to WindowsXP is like comparing a model T to a honda accord. Sure, they both get you to where you need to go, but the Accord will run for 120,000 miles before anything serious goes wrong.
The reason your A3000 crashes on you is because, conciously or not, you're probably trying to use the Amiga in the same way you use your wintel box. If your Amiga had unlimited memory, a faster system bus, and updated chipset all those "queen-size" applications would run much better and more efficiently than on a PC simply because the basic architecture (of the Amiga) is superior. Amiga's don't have the brute power that brand new PCs have, but they don't really need it because they get such better mileage from what they do have. Big windoze applications -- bloated, resource hogs that they are -- run "well" on PCs because of sheer horsepower of the hardware. They run in spite of XP, not because of it. I see no elegance whatsoever in Windows, and especially not in Linux. MacOS doesn't count unless you like the feeling of working in Crayon while simultaenuously being insulted with dumbed-down system nags. .
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so if the amiga crashes is the user's fault. if happens on the pc is only windows xp fault. then you're talking about a imaginary computer that's in your head and you're sure that this dreamy amiga would run application (which ones then, today or 85's apps) better (obviously it will be surely more efficient) than xp, mac, linux.
it's so bad that today at a lower cost you can have better technology, but it's so useless because if surely there's a way to do it better.
Let's say Windows XP, MAC, Linux are reality. AMIGA is today a concept, an idea...
Today applications require much more than 20 years ago, there are new things involved with the inner working of a PC that simply didn't existed back in 80's or 90's, and that Amiga don't have.
In terms of elegance, are you a OS designer, do you know how an OS works? Have you written or do you know an OS that performs tasks better than Linux, XP or MAC (I'm talking about real OS that runs today applications in the todays' environment)?
Yes your 10 month PC is obsolete, the AMIGA obviously not. The AMIGA is the only computer that will never be obsolete...
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Aw fer f00k's sake!
There is more to multitasking than the responsiveness.
AmigaOS feels far more responsive than most other OS'es out there. No wonder, it fits in 512 Kb of RAM and is designed to run on an ancient 7 MHz CPU.
If multitasking was all about the system feeling responsive, while running several apps, then yes, AmigaOS would be among the best there is; however, there is much more to it than responsiveness. AmigaOS lacks virtual memory (and I'm not just talking about swapping stuff to the HD here) and a proper scheduler, making everything choke when you get a heavy application with high priority, and then screw up totally, if another application hang, randomly writing bits'n bytes to memory belonging to the OS.
Yes, under optimal conditions AOS is excellent at multitasking small applications at the same priority, without getting unresponsive; however, it does not multitask well, and all it takes is a single rouge application, and the OS will go down. Beleive me, you won't be able to do that with Windows XP or MacOS X (at least not that easily :-))
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AmigaOS lacks virtual memory (and I'm not just talking about swapping stuff to the HD here)
Ehm, where would you otherwise get that memory from? :-?
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whabang wrote: Beleive me, you won't be able to do that with Windows XP or MacOS X (at least not that easily :-))
Well, I had such multiple times with both X-P as well as several Linux distributions.
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Virtual memory is neccesary for memory protection, and stops applications from accessing parts of memory that they aren't supposed to be able to access.
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Ah, in that way.
Yes I agree that the lack of memory management/protection is a major drawback of the AmigaOS, it should have been in the design. Also, guru's should have been dealt with more properly.
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The good old virtual memory/memory protection discussion! Can't get enough of it. :-)
I wonder how responsive AmigaOS would be on a 7 MHz 68000 with memory protection? It would be slower (cause then message passing wouldn't be just passing pointers, but data). So, it's really not a drawback, but a design choice giving that the OS should run fine on 7 MHz 68000s.
CAOS (the original AmigaOS project) was to provide better memory managment than AmigaOS does (based on TRIPOS). Read here: http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html.
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that link appears to be broken
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I wonder how responsive AmigaOS would be on a 7 MHz 68000 with memory protection?
68000 doesn't have MMU nor possibility to use external MMU 68851.
Thus 68000 can't have memory protection.
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that link appears to be broken.
Just remove the period. Like this:
http://www.thule.no/haynie/caos.html
68000 doesn't have MMU nor possibility to use external MMU 68851.
Thus 68000 can't have memory protection.
Yes, I know (didn't think twice before posting) but what if it was designed for 68010s with MMU instead (and virtual memory and memory protection capabilities) instead?
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Yes, I know (didn't think twice before posting) but what if it was designed for 68010s with MMU instead (and virtual memory and memory protection capabilities) instead?
IIRC the 68010 couldn't use external MMU either, only 020 and later, but I could be wrong. 68010 did have some way to expand the memory map however (different pages, sort of).
However, if it would work, it'd be damned slow, as one can expect from 7Mhz chip (not to mention to ultraslow medium from that era, even SCSI sucked eggs...).
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The 68010 was especially designed to be used with the 68841 MMU - but the MMU would have put an additional wait state on the memory. Plus the additional overhead needed for memory protection would've made quite a bit of a difference (context changes are far more extensive).
Message passing could've been done by allocating 'public' memory and then passing a pointer - of course this would have caused one tiny bit of less memory protection. ;-)
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system resources and resource usage is a circular type of thing. the more you have the more you want etc.
and that goes for developers too. back when the pc first came out i believe it was bill gates who said who would ever need 640k or something like that. at the same time there were probably programmers thinking i know what i could do with 640k.
an os designed for todays hardware that was designed to be small and efficient would be great. but to do what we do with computers today you would have to add so many 3rd party apps it would be as large as xp. but it wouldnt be made by one developer so it would be a mess.
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It looks like Billie boy actually never made the claim:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.folklore.computers/msg/99ce4b0555bf35f4
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And thats before we take into account the custom chipset that the Amiga has, which allows the OS to offload tasks from the CPU. Not only is the OS different, but the hardware is completely different. The PC OS expects the CPU to do everything,
The statement "PC OS expects the CPU to do everything" is wrong.
For example, refer to cache coherent DMA issues with AmigaOS 3.x/Classic Amiga HW, AmigaOS 4.0/A1 HW vs modern PC HW/mainstream OS.
Unlike AmigaOS3.x/4.x, both Linux X86 and Windows expects the hardware to do cache coherent DMA functions transparently.
AMD K8’s integrated Northbridge can speculatively pre-fetch data without OS or CPU’s intervention. This is also true for nVidia’s nForce 2 Northbridge (for K7).
AMD's hypertransport links operates transparently in X86 OSes without specific hypertransport support.
In "pure" DX8 and DX9 PC HW, Vextex and Pixel Shaders are programs for GpGPU. CPU may intervene for JIT shader re-compile. Think of it like a JIT SIMD/MIMD re-complier for GPU’s SIMD/MIMD shader engine i.e. for maximizing specific GpGPU features and frame rates.
We all know the results of CPU driven DX 3D 7/8/9 Reference Render vs DX 3D 7/8/9 HW render in regards to frame rates.
AmigaDOS doesn't. Ok, so the PC has GPUs... these didnt really come of age until, say the advent of the Nvidia G-Force Yes, I know there have been grpahics accelerators for the PC since the 80s, but these really relied on optimised CPU drivers.
They are not CPU drivers. In basic Windows API accelerators, line draws is offloaded to 2D accelerators.
One could argue that is still the case, as a driver is still needed for the latest video card or physics processor,
Gfx's driver maps to Windows API.
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The reason your A3000 crashes on you is because, conciously or not, you're probably trying to use the Amiga in the same way you use your wintel box. If your Amiga had unlimited memory, a faster system bus, and updated chipset all those "queen-size" applications would run much better and more efficiently than on a PC simply because the basic architecture (of the Amiga) is superior.
Run AmigaOS3.9 in WinUAE 1.3 on a modern PC with 2GB of dual channel DDR-2 800 ram. A "userland" application can still crash(reboot) the AmigaOS environment.
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chsedge wrote:
(SNIP)
Yes your 10 month PC is obsolete, the AMIGA obviously not. The AMIGA is the only computer that will never be obsolete...
Depends on the “PC”.
My two year AMD64 laptop PC with 1GB ram and a Radeon 9600 mobile GPU can still run Vista X64/WinXP X64 edition and IA-32/X64 applications.
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also depends on how you define obsolete.
i never liked the term personally
of course i have an amiga 3000 and an athlon classic both of which get much more use than the pIV mobo gathering dust on a shelf.
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The reason your A3000 crashes on you is because, conciously or not, you're probably trying to use the Amiga in the same way you use your wintel box. If your Amiga had unlimited memory, a faster system bus, and updated chipset all those "queen-size" applications would run much better and more efficiently than on a PC simply because the basic architecture (of the Amiga) is superior.
I don't use my A3000 like I use my pc because that would be impossible. It has no network interface and no fancy 400 dollar video card. (I have a better chance of meeting Jesus than running into a picasso IV) I sure won't be pimping any mp3s or divx videos on my stock 25MHz a3000. No web browsing, no email, no blender, and no snatching frames from my firewire video camera.
I use it to play games from time to time mostly, and editing text files and screwing around in dpaint. It gurus. Even if you cranked it up to 3GHz added 2gb of ram and a terrabyte of storage, it would still occasionally guru when switching from microemacs to dpaint4.
Amiga's don't have the brute power that brand new PCs have, but they don't really need it because they get such better mileage from what they do have. Big windoze applications -- bloated, resource hogs that they are -- run "well" on PCs because of sheer horsepower of the hardware. They run in spite of XP, not because of it. I see no elegance whatsoever in Windows, and especially not in Linux. MacOS doesn't count unless you like the feeling of working in Crayon while simultaenuously being insulted with dumbed-down system nags.
Every single day on Amiga.org somebody pops up with a question regarding their system that requires some obscure or arcane fix. Patch this, edit these files, goto aminet and preform these 10 steps on the cli and somehow this is all considered elegant.
The following would make the amiga unhappy, but it wouldn't phase linux or NT:
unsigned char * lol = 0 ;
for(int i=0;i<8192;i++){*lol++=0;}
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unsigned char * lol = 0 ;
for(int i=0;i<8192;i++){*lol++=0;}
Just tried it with the free compiler lcc on my Dell Laptop with XP. Gave me a blue screen. Which is why I'm writing this post from Ibrowse on my Amiga..
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stopthegop wrote:
unsigned char * lol = 0 ;
for(int i=0;i<8192;i++){*lol++=0;}
Just tried it with the free compiler lcc on my Dell Laptop with XP. Gave me a blue screen. Which is why I'm writing this post from Ibrowse on my Amiga..
You are a liar
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koaftder wrote:
stopthegop wrote:
unsigned char * lol = 0 ;
for(int i=0;i<8192;i++){*lol++=0;}
Just tried it with the free compiler lcc on my Dell Laptop with XP. Gave me a blue screen. Which is why I'm writing this post from Ibrowse on my Amiga..
You are a liar
Better yet, i'll give you $100 if you can demonstrate crashing NT kernel by writing zeros to address 0x00000000 through 0x00002000 from userspace.
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You are a liar
wrong again
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I just tried running the same program on my HP Jornada w/ Windows CE and it returned fine. I think the registry is corrupted on my XP box which is why it crashed. Actually, I already knewthe registry was corrupted. :) But the registry being corrupt kind of underscores my whole point about the problem with software OSs in general, especially in a networked world, and especially Windows OS. The registry is totally vulnerable, yet Windows is completely and utterly dependent on it to work. That is a bad design.
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I don't understand what you just "proved". You conceded that knew your machine was in an unhealthy state, and you claimed that stressing that state resulted in a system crash. OK, fine, whatever. How do you draw the conclusion that the OS being dependent on a certain data store is "bad design"?
Before you answer, yes, Microsoft does happily admit that mucking about in the registry may cause serious issues. Any KB article that references registry keys carries this warning. This is clearly "by design". But why whould this be a "bad design"? What would be a "good design" (that doesn't also stop a legitimate owner of the machine from configuring the system however they seem fit)?
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We already know that the XP registry can make the system unstable, if meddled with, but that doesn't magically make AmigaOS better.
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stopthegop: The reason your A3000 crashes on you is because, conciously or not, you're probably trying to use the Amiga in the same way you use your wintel box.
Ah, the old Macintosh excuse. Even after the switch to real MMU-capable CPUs, people were still placing the blame on system extentions rather than the poo that was MacOS.
whabang: If multitasking was all about the system feeling responsive, while running several apps, then yes, AmigaOS would be among the best there is
Until you run a process that gives itself max priority and the rest of the machine locks up. Remember trying to print something when the printer wasn't turned on, and no matter how many times you clicked "Cancel", the system would try to print infinitely, slowing down everything in the background? Oh, God... the horrible memories.
Then again, the PowerMacs at school wouldn't even multitask at all when printing. It was fun waiting 20 minutes for Netscape to stop loading web pages, too, no matter how many times you clicked "Stop".
stopthegop: I think the registry is corrupted on my XP box which is why it crashed.
Ah, the old Windows excuse. I haven't seen a registry corruption on any Windows machine since Win98.
Before I upgraded to XP (finally) I hadn't re-installed my Win2K system for more than five years. My secret? Good hardware with proven drivers, and no virus scanners. Bad drivers will bring any OS to its knees, and virus scanners poke around at the system level and will destroy your OS faster than you can say, "Why do I need a 'protected' Recycle Bin?"