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

[stopthegop]

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.  

[B00tDisk]

InTheSand wrote:
Click here if you think Windows is stable!  :-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

[B00tDisk]

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.

[koaftder]

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.

[stopthegop]

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.  .  

[chsedge]

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...

[whabang]

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 :-))

[Speelgoedmannetje]

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? :-?

[Speelgoedmannetje]

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.

[whabang]

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.

[Speelgoedmannetje]

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.

[tormedhammaren]

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.

[jj]

that link appears to be broken

[Piru]

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.

[tormedhammaren]

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?

[Piru]

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...).