M.L. wrote: > On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 10:04 PM, V G wrote: > =20 >> Linux never failed me. Pick your favourite distro and rock on. But if yo= u >> /have/ to use winbloze, I guess XP is the way to go since most programs = are >> known to work on it. >> =20 > > I used Linux extensively through college. I could probably still use > it now, but it's just easier to get things running on Windows. I still > use Linux on my email server. > > It may be fun to rip on Windows, but I'd guess you've never had to use > Windows 95. It's orders of magnitude better now than it was then. > > =20 Win95 was just DOS based Win3.11 with a new GUI. Win3.11 had 32bit=20 networking, graphics, disk, virtual memory options. It ran 16bit code=20 natively thus was a pig on Pentium Pro (which had no simple mechanism to=20 switch from 32bit to 16bit). The Earlier NT 3.1, 3.5 and 3.51 were real 32 bits and ran 16bit windows=20 via WOW api mapping to 32 bit and the same NTVDM used for DOS on a=20 virtual machine. They should never ever have released Win95 other than as a console.=20 NT4.0 in 1996 was far superior. It wasn't until XP that they managed to=20 recover from the poor decision to let Win95 be used for general purpose=20 windows rather than just consoles. But they were more worried about OS/2=20 Warp than doing the right thing. I had Explorer as a preview shell on NT3.51. Since unlike NT4.0 the GDI=20 was not in kernel, Explorer couldn't crash NT3.51 They made poor=20 decisions regarding NT 4.0 simply to port Direct X for games a bit=20 faster and improve video by about 10%. Stupidity since almost none of=20 the games worked on NT 4.0 (the ones that did often used OpenGL anyway,=20 not Direct X). Since 1994 it seems MS OS development has been dominated=20 by GUI considerations. But in the last few years the same is true of OS=20 X and Ubuntu. Most of the security issues are due to C and using C style string or=20 other buffers in C++. These exist in Linux and OS X too. They would not=20 exist if using a "decent" C++ string library and possibly "proper"=20 libraries in Objective J, Turbo Pascal, Modula-2 or Ada. Inherently,=20 properly applied the NT security model was one UNIX and Linux could only=20 dream of with their 3 sets of flags for r, w, x. By win 2000 of course=20 MS didn't seem to understand the security model and too many=20 applications were written in total ignorance of the security model (for=20 win9x) so would only work easily as "Administrator". COM. DCOM and=20 ActiveX of course very broken concepts totally contrary to NT Security=20 model compared to Named Pipes. When you copy stuff from one PC to=20 another there is of course no assurance the resources needed by COM,=20 DCOM, ActiveX exist. Allowing such in Web pages and supporting Browser=20 was of course total idiocy. ActiveX and similar only at all make sense=20 as an alternative to importing a DLL API and then distributing the=20 entire "thing" as a monolithic install .exe or msi or cab package such=20 that the activeX parts are always there and correct version. There are=20 and always were ways to avoid DLL Hell and the similar issues with COM,=20 DCOM and ActiveX. C style strings and buffers should not be used except in the most=20 limited circumstance where you 100% can be sure the buffer/sting is=20 always correct. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .