Re: Windoze 95 is not multi-tasking, it just pretends it is multitasking.
On Sat, Apr 11, 1998 at 12:40:49PM +0100, Tristan Day wrote:
> I think what they mean by *true* multitasking is:
>
> 1. Win95 is designed to make the program that you have 'active' (the top
> program you are using at the time) work fastest and gives it max power while
> the background tasks (the ones you've got open but aren't using at the
> moment) have a very small amount of CPU usage and are minimised in memory.
> This can be a complete pain if you're using lots of programs on a server or
> many important, power-demanding programs at once, and is really crummy for
> CAD/CAM and other such programs.
>
> 2. Linux seems to think it's running on several terminals, because you can
> run lots of different consoles at the same time, as if you were only using
> one (eg when you press Control-Alt-F2, F3, etc). Win95 doesn't do this.
The "true multitasking" discussion is a dangerous one. Years ago Amiga
users managed to convince everyone who didn't know better that the Amiga
was the only machine which had "true multitasking." As I see it, to
be absolutely purist about it, you can only multitask with multiple
CPUs. Anything else is done with very rapid context/task switching.
Which is just what the Amiga did then and just what Linux does now.
And just what Windows does too. Regarding point #1, so Windows prioritizes
your foreground app for whatever reason -- so what? Linux has priority
scheduling too if you want to make one app run faster than another,
or chew less CPU etc. This isn't an inherently bad feature, although
it'd be nice to be able to customize priorities.
Another problem with Windows is that Win16 has non-pre-emptive multitasking.
This means that although it still does rapid task switching, it only
task switches when each program says it has finished for that particular
time slice. Win32 is pre-emptive (as are Linux etc), which means that the
kernel just up and does it. Win95 still has to non-pre-emptively multitask
16 bit apps, but they are all run together as one 32 bit process I believe.
Re: #2 -- Windows is not multiuser in the Unix sense. Citrix make a nice
WinNT 3.51 variant called WinCenter which is multiuser.
Hamish
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