Operating System

[diep]

Realize the first ipad from apple with ios, that this version 1.0, still popular here and there, it can't even multithread. Everything has to be 1 thread.

Yes , of course PCs will always exist and thrive... but for 90% of people, a good tablet is much more suitable than a PC. That is what i meant to say.

I don't think it's tough to produce touch device type software.

Hmmm - i dont agree. It is what Apple have done so well, and it's the reason they are know the worlds most valuable company.

There is no 'increased quality' for what they deliver. Same problem with linux. It's a single processor concept that's monolithic. Drivers all integrate into the kernel and Linus isn't willing to ever change that. He doesn't give a clear explanation why. Just an excuse.

The excuse is that it would slow the kernel down. At the same time he doesn't want to really make it multicore capable. The important functionality like sockets still works in a centralized unsafe manner and is central locking every single action it undertakes.

No. Sorry, but i prefer Linus' technical assessment of good OS practice. OSes are a very low level thing... a very specific voodoo.

Every chinese guy who walks closeby has all your memo's instantly. By bluetooth or whatever technology you didn't realize that auto activates itself when you didn't suspect it.

Yes, but that's hardly related to Linux being a monlothic kernel.

This is a very pertinent issue. Eben Moglen: Time To Apply The First Law Of Robotics To Our Smartphones

Ok away with the Linus excuses, where windows has a clear commercial interest and just 'watches the shop', Linus has just 1 reason to not upgrade to a more modern concept.

If he's making it better multicore capable and not monolithic then he loses power he has now. Right now HE is the guy who decides which company is allowed to hack you. When the kernel is a lot better, the hacking capabilities of device drivers gets less simply. They won't be able to take over the entire kernel like they do now for every freaking small organisation on this planet who wants that. Right now Linus has the power to decide who gets in and who gets out.

When the kernel would be much safer by means of a better concept, then his power gets less of course as he's just busy software engineering then.

There is no excuse to keep the old slogan going.

A better SMP kernel would also obviously make things cheaper for industry as right now they're clocking those ARM cpu's way too high, just because 1 fast core is worth more than 16 slow cores, whereas 16 tiny slow cores is pretty cheap to produce and much cheaper than 1 high clocked dual core they produce right now.

The ARMs are just an echo from the past. They're doing what intel and AMD did do 12-13 years ago, just of course low power.

We all know already that multicore is faster, but it requires better software.

It's easy to make things touchable.

Apple is big because they make big noise and have a design BRAND. It's a BRAND name more than a quality name.

their software is not so great, yet look what surrounds them. Windows and Linux also basically have stopped.

Nowadays linux distro's eat way too much RAM and diskspace. Everything usually has debug code; maybe GCC 4.7 will improve all this a tad, but one of the fundamental weak spots besides the kernel is having a good interface.

When one specific distro is doing great, usually some big company buys it.

We had Suse and Redhat first doing great, then both got bought and VROOM were away as they are expensive and slow releasing now.

Fedora core is a total joke and bad maintained, if you install it at some computers, already 1 core is gone to it.

The only serious free distribution right now is Ubuntu, yet it's a matter of time until this guy who owns it, sells it for some big cash, like he he has done with other companies in the past.

KDE has deteriorated bigtime past few years.

Even if you try to just install some distro with KDE right now and try to remote connect to that box in a graphical way, it ain't easy to get it done.

It's just not user friendly and there is no good guide online how to do it.

From server viewpoint it's a joke.

Gnome still works with VNC. That's junk from 15 years ago. Sincethen it hardly improved.

Windows remote desktop also is very old, yet even 15 years later the linux dudes didn't improve aspects like this, which is pretty important for crunching hardware.

You don't want to lose a core when running software of course - a lot of software doesn't scale well anymore when losing a core! Not to mention chess engines...

It's still the same thing from 12 years ago, just eats more RAM and 20GB of diskspace.

I've got a bunch of P2's here and P3's and quite other old hardware. Forget graphical installs at that from major distro's. You simply NEED lots of RAM.

In case of Apple, they force you to buy every 6 months a new version of their junk OS.

Do they already have a new compiler?

Realize how cheapskate apple works. They're the largest company on the planet and everything i got here on os/x it's all GCC 4.0, a compiler apple didn't do anything for nor contribute anything to.

Not even 1 guy.

The apple imperium is based upon selling iphones and ipods and a few ipads. If they don't show up with yet another new toy, it's not gonna stay that huge.

A company is worth as much as the dividend they pay out IMHO. Market never followed that rule too much for some weirdo reason to me.

Apple had the tendency to never pay out dividend and just pile up all the cash. Investors, eager to get dividend therefore gambled it would go up for monkey reasons.

Now paying out 1.8% dividend doesn't make Apple an outperformer at all, as the S&P 500 standard is to pay 2% dividend yield a year. So apple approaches that standard yet it's not abundant at all.

They can do this for a few years with apple, but then they need new product lines. Will they manage to launch those?

You tell me.

What did they develop in software? Oh quite something, but for a company of that size it's not too much.

Not even a fraction of what m$ has produced.

[diep]

In general if i look to all OS-es, they didn't focus upon just improving what they had nor did they focus upon doing things more efficient.

Basically what happens each time is that old code gets sold, gets parked in a box that costs lots of money (RHEL or SLES) and some other guys set up something new, their new tools and way of programming eats massive RAM and doesn't have much new.

It's a disgrace.

Progress is not there unlike in computerchess.

If you'd run on that old stinking hardware todays engines, compiled for that old hardware, it'll play 600+ elopoints stronger or so, especially at 3 minutes a move and a quad Xeon.

If you try do the same with latest distro's you'll not be able to even install it, as your old harddrives from around 1999 are smaller than 20GB most likely so you are in trouble and your RAM was probably a megabyte or 64 back then. Only some company hardware had a 128+ MB, I went personally to 256MB, which was a LOT back in summer 2000. By 2001 i went to the incredible amount of 512MB ram, though during the world champs i was still busy assembling that dual k7...

Don't expect something to run well at 256MB now... ...it's a disgrace.

If you realize they do nothing new, kernel still is monlithic single processor thing, remote stuff is the same VNC junk from 15 years ago and the same slowness, where is the progress?

[diep]

Hijacking the thread.
I have a PIV with 256 mb of RAM. I want to install a Linux distro on it for a 6 year child use. (The child is already "comfortable" using basic operations in Windows).
Which distro wil you recommend?

If you have time, install gentoo. As you compile everything yourself, make sure you do that with GCC 4.7, you have some good hope that it'll eat less RAM than when you'd use the same thing compiled for some other distro and it might run faster as well.

It's a lot more work as everything is manual. In gentoo you start at nothing kind of and then keep compiling forever, but if you take care you install gcc 4.7 you might make it, just compile overnight

I might do the same thing for this laptop. Right now it has os/x but as i refuse to pay apple it's still 10.4.11, which was state of the art end 2007,
but already a few months after it was state of the art apple wanted me to pay for 10.5

Which i refused...

Though this laptop DOES have 2 GB of ram, i might just roll ubunto onto it...

[stevenaaus]

Linus has just 1 reason to not upgrade to a more modern concept.

If he's making it better multicore capable and not monolithic then he loses power he has now. Right now HE is the guy who decides which company is allowed to hack you.

Are you crazy ? Linus is a big hacker kid who cant control his mouth, and would rather be anonymous. He wanted to call Linux "Freax" , and never even trademarked Linux until others told him too. That Linux is the biggest and best kernel is all the proof anyone needs that it is also the best "design".

When the kernel would be much safer by means of a better concept,

"Safe" is doing nothing. Unplugging your ethernet. Obscurity. Sitting at home on the lounge. But even having said that, the Linux kernel is way more secure the anything Apple or Mickeysoft make, both of which are arguably *smaller* targets. Linux *runs* the web. *Runs* the stock exchange. *Runs* 90% of the worlds super computers (which are all about SMP by the way), and probably the banks too - those that aren't still with a "real" Unix. It does so because it is safe.

The only serious free distribution right now is Ubuntu

hahaha. Scidb (whose author is a brilliant coder) doesnt even support Ubuntu - it has so many serious technical failings. Granted - they have the trendiest Linux brand - which is more than something.

Apple had the tendency to never pay out dividend and just pile up all the cash. Investors, eager to get dividend therefore gambled it would go up for monkey reasons.

What did they develop in software?

Steve Job's NeXT *was* a *software* company. [edit - and hardware of course, which was a total dead end]. It's purchase turned Apples fortunes around into the megalith they are now. The software and hardware are nothing without each other. iPhones, modern iPod touch and Tablets. 100s of millions of them

I have a PIV with 256 mb of RAM.
If you have time, install gentoo.

Gentoo on a 256mb machine for a child. (btw yum install xfwm4^h^h^h^h^h xfce)

regards

[lucasart]

I haven't experienced any problems installing Windows games in Linux and I've been using 64 bit wine for at least the past half year....

The stuff that works under wine works 10-20% slower than it works in windows i measured when booting at the SAME machine windows and after that linux (so not at the same time, but just reboot to other disk).

I measured that with Diep single core.
So the other cores idled.
SMP it never worked under wine of course.

So this is the 100% same executable. Really a lot more than 10% slower.
I didn't even accurately measure it, that much slower it was.

10% is death penalty.

In fact in this nation we once fought a war against Spain, as they introduced an additional 10% tax. The so called 10th penny...

The Netherlands won that fight after 80 years by the way.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eighty_Years'_War

Of course i realize with the marxistic communists (Socialistic party) in the polls being the biggest political party here now for upcoming September elections, 10% sounds little, as they want to directly move to 75% tax,
but that's not hte issue here.

It's *considerable* slower to run applications under wine. I don't understand the statements here that it's the same speed. Maybe some people need glasses.

Can't you just case your vote, and stop writing non sense...

[Jesse Gersenson]

Wine has been able to run 64 bit programs for a few years. Many distros started offering the 64 bit capable version 2+ years ago - Ubuntu/Xubuntu were slower than others but as of 12.04 the default version of wine is able to run 64 bit programs.

For users running earlier versions of Ubuntu you can try my script which compiles 64 bit wine:
http://jesseo.com/chess/