About multitasking, what's best : AmigaOS, Linux, or Winblows XP ?

[Speelgoedmannetje]

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.

[Piru]

@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.

[Ancalimon]

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)

[DrBombcrater]

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'...

[Linde]

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.

[Tomas]

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.

[mr_a500]

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...)

[Karlos]

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?

[jj]

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

[itix]

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 :-)

[stopthegop]

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..    

[FrankBrana]

@Piru

Which will be the MorphOS position if we include it on the poll?

[Damion]

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.

 

[Dr_Righteous]

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.

[tormedhammaren]

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.

[tormedhammaren]

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.