Re: Why?! [way offtopic]

[Ed Cogburn <ecogburn@greene.xtn.net>]

Hamish Moffatt wrote:
> 
> On Tue, Dec 22, 1998 at 02:36:23AM -0500, Ed Cogburn wrote:
> >  - M$'s decision to do the absurd merging of WinNT and Win95/8 into
> > Win2000 will guarantee new refugees from the M$ world, along with
> 
> Hmmm. Offtopic I know, but why do you think it's absurd? If they actually
> go with the driver scheme and hardware protection models in NT, it should
> be pretty stable. That's going to break backwards compatibility with
> DOS and Win16 apps that want hardware access, but that's what Windows
> needs to be truely stable.
> 
> Hamish


	Disclaimer:  I've never used WinNT, only Win95.

	Considering what I hear from this group and the 'debates' in c.o.l.a., 
and elsewhere on the Net, WinNT isn't that stable as it is now.  If they
really are going to break compatibility with their predecessor OSs then
that will change things, but I'm astonished that they would actually do
that.  After all, the whole world didn't rush out and upgrade from Win95
to Win98, and this upgrade was supposed to be compatible.  A lot of
people have decided Win95 is enough.  If they leave compatibility out,
M$ runs a risk of having Win2k not being a big seller.  Its the
compatibility issue that has allowed them to drag everybody along the
upgrade path, a real money maker, all this time.
	Finally, one the important things about Linux is its configurability,
especially being able to trim the kernel to just what is needed.  The
idea that they can build an OS that is not only good at being a
mainstream desktop OS while at the same time as being a strong
enterprise server, all from the same shrink-wrapped box, smells real
funny to me.


-- 
Ed C.