troy272 said:
true, but doesn't apple change their OS architecture every few years instead of doing what microsoft does by using the same thing for awhile such as using DOS for 95/98/ME and NT for 2000 and XP? I could be wrong but I believe I read that somewhere....
that's a little misleading...
there was DOS, windows 1, 2, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, 98SE and ME all based on DOS, that took the DOS platform from the 80's to the turn of the milleniuum
during the latter half of the 90's microsoft invented the NT platform, it went through a public release of 3.5, and 4,
but since NT wasn't as catchy as the year names they named NT5, windows 2000, and thus gained penetration into the home user market with their business platform.
after 2000 came windows XP (in october 2001), this was after there were several court casesregarding microsofts new opperating systems comming out at such speed that it was either expensive or impossible for everyone to upgrade to the latest, (releasing entier new systems on practically a yearly basis).
since october 2001 there have been no new opperating systems, the next scheduled release will be windows Vista in january 2007.
In the same period of time..., (since 2001), the (most commercial) linux release, (I'm going to say redhat) has gone through versions 7, 8, 9, fed1, fed2, fed3, fed4 and is now on fed5.
(also since 9 there has also been enterprise versions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 (total of 13 new releases in 5 years! -though that's misleading since fed core and enterprise are *almost* the same).
in that same time Mac has also seen Mac OS9, and X (two major releases), but has hidden the fact that OSX constantly changes by releaing lots of submajor versions,
Lepard, tiger etc...)...
There have been no major changes to the underlying technologies to the Linux core, (else it wouldn't be Linux anymore, as linux is named after the core that it's based around...
However you're right that microsoft have shifted from DOS technologies, to solely NT cores.
this is more for the purposes of stability and user support, (only working on one system at one time, rather than running two core products side by side).
You're wrong that Apple havn't changed anything.
Apple abandoned their own core in favour of adopting a Unix core,
Apple also abandoned their own hardware platform that all their software was written for, in favour of adopting an intel processor. -and no I never did have time to go and laugh in the faces of all those people who said that PowerPC were faster than intels, and are now saying that intels are faster than powerPC.
For the person that said that Microsoft have a much larger userbase this is true...
and the idea of hardware doesn't actually matter so much anymore...
a big part of the reason that people used to get BSOD's all the time was that drivers written by third parties would access memory that it wasn't meant to access, (illegal opperation).
with this invention of windows NT also came the invention of protected memory space, that helped a lot to try to clear up the mess of sloppy third party drivers.
with the advernt of windows XP also came the idea of privellagd hardware levels. now only level 0 drivers have direct access to hardware, that's why old programs to control things like the parallel port, or old midi programs that controlled the gameport stopped working under XP, cause they wern't allowed access to the hardware anymore.
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With regards Vista,
TBH, whilst I could get it at home, (I work for a place where staff are licensed to use microsoft products at home when there is a campus license). I probably won't...
there is nothing really new that I want, a lot of the features that I've read about seem more like tack than anything else, basically it seems more like bloatware than anything else...
I nuderstand why a lot of these things are available, but personally, I just need an opperating system, as in a system that allows me to run programs,
I don't need a DRM management system,
I don't need power tools,
I don't need fancy desktop isometric views.
I don't need app running protection.
basically.
I don't need Vista... if it wasn't for the fact that it was so insecure and no longer supported, I'd still be happily using windows 98.
