Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: About multitasking, what's best : AmigaOS, Linux, or Winblows XP ?  (Read 20313 times)

Description:

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline whabang

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Mar 2002
  • Posts: 7270
    • Show all replies
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.
Beating the dead horse since 2002.
 

Offline whabang

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Mar 2002
  • Posts: 7270
    • Show all replies
Re: About multitasking, what's best : AmigaOS, Linux, or Winblows XP ?
« Reply #1 on: November 03, 2006, 10:49:51 AM »
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 :-))
Beating the dead horse since 2002.
 

Offline whabang

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Mar 2002
  • Posts: 7270
    • Show all replies
Re: About multitasking, what's best : AmigaOS, Linux, or Winblows XP ?
« Reply #2 on: November 03, 2006, 12:17:40 PM »
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.
Beating the dead horse since 2002.
 

Offline whabang

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Mar 2002
  • Posts: 7270
    • Show all replies
Re: About multitasking, what's best : AmigaOS, Linux, or Winblows XP ?
« Reply #3 on: November 05, 2006, 09:37:51 AM »
We already know that the XP registry can make the system unstable, if meddled with, but that doesn't magically make AmigaOS better.
 
Beating the dead horse since 2002.