mac of pc?

[Lord Kalthorn]

do you mean that because of its ease of use its actually harder for more experianced techs to use? how does that work? one can always 'hack' windows if they'd like. they do it in the WINE project and there is always the command line which is harder to use than that of Linux.

I can't actually see what is harder on Windows to use for an Expert, who by definition is better than a normal user.

Tell us one instance of this?

 

[Tulsileaf]

oh, sorry i wasn't clear. when i said the command line was harder on windows than linux i meant that it was too technical for the new user. experts who detest using easy stuff (like wizards) would find this attractive. not that linux isn't technical, but my main point was on why 'experts' would not shy away from windows.

 

[iamroot]

I meant that there is nothing in Windows which would appeal to people who want to mess around in the guts of an OS...

 

[Lord Kalthorn]

Probably not; but there is Visual Studio, and the ability to write the guts of an Operating System if need be.

Best place for messing around with the Guts of an Operating System would be though of course DOS - another Microsoft Product; not neccersarily Linux.

 

[root]

Seems a little weird how you can edit an OS from within an OS...

What came first the chicken or the egg? - the answer is obvious.

what came first, the Computer used to design an OS, or the OS used to run the computer?

(thats not put very well, but I hope you see what I'm geting at!)

 

[Tulsileaf]

funny question. editing an os from within itself is quite fine. an os can modify itself during runtime if it needs be. such a design can make one more flexible but a poorly executed one can leave wholes for viruses to wreak havoc.

as for what comes first, look at the mac. OS X was designed long before the computer it was made for was conceivably possible.

now your question does not state whether the computer the os was designed on is the same computer the os will be used on. they can be different (as with the mac world) or they can be the same (as with the unix world). obviously the computer the os was designed on must be made first. you can always compile a program to run for a completely different architecture. for an os, you can have it put onto a diskimage then have the image applied onto the actual hard disk of the other computer (for example making an os for a pc on my mac) if your a good programmer and left few minor bugs then the other computer will start up fine.

with linux, people always compile new kernels from within the old one of course its not wise (if your editing the code that is), but if you don't care about crashing the system, then by all means play around the source code and keep recompiling and restarting all day

 

[root]

yes, but what ran the computers that designed the original OS?

I mean windows 95 probably designed using win 3.11 as a platform.
win 3.1 designed using windows 1.
windows 1, built from DOS
DOS built on ???

What came before the disk opperating system, and how did they access the disk in order to store the first designs for a disc opperating system?

 

[Tulsileaf]

originally programs had to provide all the services to themselves. so you'd start up the computer with the program. then it was found it would be easier to make an os. basically the os was a program that would either stay in the memory or by some trick would come back after the running program was finished. eventually os design evolved into what we see today.
look up the history of operating systems, i'm too lazy to write it all
check out the apple][ btw. i know apple sucks now but back then (1970's) they didn't. a lot of stuff started in those days.

 

[Lord Kalthorn]

Going a little too far into Cybernetics for my liking.

However, I think we all know where the computer came from. Original ones would have been written in Binary. Assembly Code would then have been written to allow for more ease than writting all the beeps to tell something to do something; then universalised into all Computers. Then came the predesessors of DOS, then DOS, and more Graphical OSs from Higher Languages.

Unlike the Chicken and the Egg; of which the first was the Egg (because by definition the Mother of the first Chicken Egg would not have been a Chicken; but the match of her genes and the father's genes created the Chicken Egg). The Computer came before the OS; the OS was written from the Computer to eventually command the Computer.