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Chris Maunder wrote:
so what constitues an OS?
The kernel + fancy stuff is the short answer.
I am too illiterate to give the long answer
Nish
Regards,
Nish
Native CPian.
Born and brought up on CP.
With the CP blood in him.
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AFAIK, the shell is what the user sees; the OS is what the programmer sees. (the OS is also what the user buys...)
Not that any of this matters much unless the OS is modular enough to allow programs to function when the shell is removed/replaced.
--------
I am not a connoisseur. --Shog9 --
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I think with windows the line between the shell and the OS is very blury. Because when you upgrade your version of IE, are you updating the OS or the shell. It was my understanding that when I upgrade IE, I am upgrading an application, however I get a new version of User32.dll, which is part of the OS, and sometimes the shell is also updated.
I do believe that an OS is what mamages the resources on your PC, and the Shell allows you to access and control the OS. When we are talking about Microsoft, however, they sell an OS + small software library.
Build a man a fire, and he will be warm for a day Light a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life!
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The notion that the shell and OS are separate is a holdover from Unix days, and died with the introduction of the Mac. The shell now provides fundamental services to programmers that were undreamed of in the days of pure command-line interfaces.
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I think people get way to hung up on this OS vs. GUI vs. shell stuff. It all boils down to what is expected functionallity of the OS out of the box. For most users, that is Windows with IE and media player. For us geeks, we probably could deal without a lot of the extra junk. For system managers of servers, they would probably love to hack out 50% of the junk MS ships with the OS.
Tim Smith
I know what you're thinking punk, you're thinking did he spell check this document? Well, to tell you the truth I kinda forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this here's CodeProject, the most powerful forums in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
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Command line isn't part of the OS IMHO. Many systems operate just fine without a command line.
Tim Smith
I know what you're thinking punk, you're thinking did he spell check this document? Well, to tell you the truth I kinda forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this here's CodeProject, the most powerful forums in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Colin bought up a good point about OS's vs Shells. Where does one finish and the other begin? Traditionally OS's were fairly bare-bones affairs with a command line, and the shell did the fun stuff.
OS doesn't have any relation to shell. As an example, check tcsh. It compiles with almost no changes on dozens of OSes.
The question should be stated in a different way: What user expects from OS? Scientific view of OS is easy - Common interface to hardware and standard set of protocols (the second part is late edition). The problem is that it is useless to the common user. A user expects a set of applications for its most casual uses. Those include browser, email client and media player among others. The problem isn't modularity of Windows as an OS, but Windows as a consumer product.
Windows is extremelly modular. More than Linux today. It is among the few real OSes capable providing different programming layers - Win32, DOS, OS/2 and Posix. Windows kernel can be ported to any hardware you may wish.
The problem is higher levels, which has very little to OS. Removing IE wont do any damage to Windows as an OS, but it will destroy Windows as a consumer product. I think it very important difference.
Felix.
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I think that a very simple Operating System that supports basic operations and with no UI can be used just for educational reasons (in universityes, schools). Commercial OS's like MS Windows, Apple, that are designed to be used by all users, at all evels of knowledge should include all the facilities. Let's not forget that these systems are installed by default when a computer is bought.
Of course it should be modulars, but I don't think that these systems would survive without all these facilities.
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Yet 6 people have voted for [3]
Regards,
Nish
Native CPian.
Born and brought up on CP.
With the CP blood in him.
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Thats because the survey is asking two different types of questions:
1, 2) Wouldn;t it be nice if companies did ________.
3) The law should make a company do ________.
That makes the answer only obvious depending on which question you decide to answer
Build a man a fire, and he will be warm for a day Light a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life!
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kilowatt wrote:
That makes the answer only obvious depending on which question you decide to answer
Oh! Thanks. I didnt think of that.
Nish
Regards,
Nish
Native CPian.
Born and brought up on CP.
With the CP blood in him.
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No, I disagree, it means only 6 people got the answer correct.
Regardz
Colin J Davies
Sonork ID 100.9197:Colin
More about me
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Colin Davies wrote:
No, I disagree, it means only 6 people got the answer correct.
blast!!!!!
Nish
Regards,
Nish
Native CPian.
Born and brought up on CP.
With the CP blood in him.
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Why is the middle the obvious choice?
What if you were given the choice of a modular OS vs an OS that was faster, had more functionality, had a smaller footprint and was more reliable? I'm not saying a modular OS is any worse than a black box, but think about some of the problems that may come up. Conversely - there are a ton of advantages to modular OS's as well...
cheers,
Chris Maunder
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Chris Maunder wrote:
Why is the middle the obvious choice?
Cause option(3) does not say that the applications that come with the OS are replaceable by other apps.
Nish
Regards,
Nish
Native CPian.
Born and brought up on CP.
With the CP blood in him.
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Shouldn't the creator of the OS have the ability to make the decision of whether applications could be added or not? If consumers don't like that they can't plug their choice in...they have the choice to go buy another OS!
Next time I go buy a car I'm going to ask the Ford dealer why I can't have a GM engine installed.
ed
'Love is an obsessive delusion that is cured by marriage.' Dr. Karl Bowman
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Ed K wrote:
Shouldn't the creator of the OS have the ability to make the decision of whether applications could be added or not?
Not when the OS creator is also a software creator. Microsoft has shown in the past that they will use unpublished API's to create their own software, thus allowing an unfair competitive advantage. This is what started the whole MS antitrust thing in the first place.
Ed K wrote:
If consumers don't like that they can't plug their choice in...they have the choice to go buy another OS!
Next time I go buy a car I'm going to ask the Ford dealer why I can't have a GM engine installed.
Here's a better analogy. Let's suppose your phone company is verizon and they say you can only plug phones made by verizon into your wall jack. If you don't like it, use another phone company. That's great except that there isn't usually another phone company in your area. What difference does it make which phone I put into the jack as long as it meets the standards? None, unless you unfairly want to dominate the phone market.
[By the way, up until about 25 years ago in the US, you HAD to use a phone company provided set.]
-Sean
----
"I'm a breast man."
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AT&T was under strict regulation at that time. Part of the deregulation was to allow other equipment.
In the case of MS we are going in the other direction. More regulation.
As far as those "undocumented API" go, what are they? I always hear people talk about them, but nobody seems to be able to provide a list. Then again, it isn't like undocumented API are anything new.
From the EVIL people who make perl
die() now accepts a reference value, and $@ gets set to that value in exception traps. This makes it possible to propagate exception objects. This is an undocumented experimental feature.
Tim Smith
I know what you're thinking punk, you're thinking did he spell check this document? Well, to tell you the truth I kinda forgot myself in all this excitement. But being this here's CodeProject, the most powerful forums in the world and would blow your head clean off, you've got to ask yourself one question, Do I feel lucky? Well do ya punk?
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To be honest, I don't know what the undocumented API's are. I'm just trying to play devil's advocate here.
I strongly believe however that MS should be producing Windows under the model of [2]. Have the core OS with modular applications. Load up the standard install with the extras. Let me choose a custom install and pick and choose the extras and let me install third-party extras of my own choice.
I do think it's completely fair however to let MS require one of their 'extras' such as Messenger if you want to access a particular MS-provided service. Hey, if you want to use AOL Instant Messaging you must use their client. Microsoft should be allowed to do the same.
The phone company analogy was the best that I could think of at the time.
-Sean
----
"I'm a breast man."
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Sean Cundiff wrote:
Here's a better analogy. Let's suppose your phone company is verizon and they say you can only plug phones made by verizon into your wall jack. If you don't like it, use another phone company. That's great except that there isn't usually another phone company in your area. What difference does it make which phone I put into the jack as long as it meets the standards? None, unless you unfairly want to dominate the phone market
Hey, welcome to the UK, the year is 2002 and still 75% of the country can only use 1 telephone company (BT), cause there aint no others in their area, although they will let you use an "Acme Co" phone if you want to!
Phil.
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I assume that you are referencing a 1 based index array, because otherwise your [3] choice would be out-of-bounds;)
Build a man a fire, and he will be warm for a day Light a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life!
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Yes, I used a 1-based index.
(1) (2) and (3)
Nish
Regards,
Nish
Native CPian.
Born and brought up on CP.
With the CP blood in him.
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I think a company should be able to make whatever kind of software they want and if someone doesn't like it they don't have to buy it. If the non-modular OS were so evil, MS would have never gained so many users and would be losing a lot more than they are to Linux. Don't get me wrong, I do think Linux is a better OS, but MS is obviously making a product that a lot of people like. I don't see how this is any of the government's business.
-Jack
To an optimist the glass is half full.
To a pessimist the glass is half empty.
To a programmer the glass is twice as big as it needs to be.
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Well stated.
Build a man a fire, and he will be warm for a day Light a man on fire, and he will be warm for the rest of his life!
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