NWA-PCUG Newsletter Article, February 2003
President's Column
by Dale Oliver, President
d_oliver@swbell.net
(click to email author)


I hope each of you found Calvin Yockey's presentation as informative and interesting as I did. It was interesting to think back on some of the previous PC operating systems as Calvin gave us an historical perspective of how operating systems have changed over the years. I also appreciated his factual approach, pointing out the relative advantages and disadvantages inherent in all of the systems instead of taking a this-one-is-better- because-I-say-so approach. Interestingly enough, this reminded me of a quote from Linus Torvals' book "Just for Fun." In the book, Linus eloquently stated, "In order to hold a very strong opinion, you have to exclude all the other opinions. And that means you have to become unreasonable." How true.

Calvin's metaphor of designing and building a house was quite instructive. Using his method of explaining the situation, Linux was designed and tested by tens of thousands of architects during the design phase; in essence, blueprint and desired outcome was known and subjected to much testing and peer review. With Windows, the house was designed and built by a small team of people in relative secrecy and isolation, then once the house was built someone realized, "Man I really wanted a basement under that house!" While it's possible to dig a basement under an existing house, it takes much more effort and expense, and creates additional problems that would not be there had the basement been designed and built first.

A quick history of PC-based operating systems followed, which helped explain some of the background for Windows' highly publicized design shortcomings:

MS-DOS: Was a character-based, 16-bit operating system that supported limited memory and limited hard drive sizes. Each program that ran had to include it's own hardware interfaces and drivers, including support for video cards, pointing devices, printers, etc. In essence, each program included duplicate support for all compatible devices.

WINDOWS 3.0: Was the first Windows version that really did anything useful to speak of. The operating system itself provided hardware abstraction and support for devices so that each individual software program didn't need to include this redundant low-level support. Windows 3.0 provided some multitasking support and backward compatibility with DOS, which turned out to be a good and bad thing. The down side is that this backward compatibility ended up causing many less-than- elegant software kludges and workarounds, which eventually led to many of the problems with security and stability that have been perpetuated in subsequent versions of Windows.

WINDOWS 95 & 98: With a 32-bit architecture, much more memory and much larger hard drives could be supported with relative ease. Preemptive multitasking was now supported, but compromises in the kernel (the very core of the operating system) perpetuated many of the problematic weaknesses that Windows 3.0 had.

WINDOWS 2000 & XP: Has a better kernel (now based on NT) than previous Windows versions. Improvements include better file system support, journaling, multi-processor support, and improved security. Two major disadvantages: (1) The graphical interface has become totally inseparable from the operating system, which causes issues with remote support and administration, and (2) Poor design decisions were made because of reinventing everything from scratch instead of using proven methods such as those that have been part of Unix for decades (semaphores, multitasking methodology, etc.).

LINUX: A 32-bit operating system that is based on the Unix operating system. Unix operating systems have been around since 1969, and have been used in academic, defense, and commercial servers since that time. Unix/Linux is considered by many to be "the backbone of the Internet" due to its stability and security. Linux has an excellent, robust file structure. It supports symmetric preemptive multitasking and multiple concurrent users. It allows you to choose the look and feel of the graphical user interface based on your needs and wants. It allows you to use the operating system in graphical or character-based mode, which greatly simplifies remote administration and support, among other things.

ADVANTAGES for a typical Linux end-user: It's fast, stable and secure. It has modest hardware requirements, which means excellent performance with modest priced computer hardware. There are different "flavors" of Linux to choose from depending on what you plan to do with it (Red Hat for a popular, mainstream version of Linux that's a favorite for commercial use; SuSE for the user who wants a version that comes with excellent documentation and thousands of software programs; Mandrake for high performance and ease of use, Debian for a totally free open- source version that runs on multiple computer architectures, etc.) Linux is either free or very inexpensive when compared to operating systems created by for-profit corporations because of Linux's licensing and reselling requirements. Most software application programs available for Linux are also either free or very inexpensive, and many can be downloaded from Internet sites such as Tucows.com and RPMFind.net. Microsoft Office compatible software is available for Linux.

DISADVANTAGES for a typical Linux end- user: If you have never used a command-line operating system such as DOS or Unix, you may experience a steeper learning curve than you will with a simplified point-and-click graphical interface such as Windows or the MacIntosh OS. Not all Windows-specific software programs can be run under Linux, even when using emulators such as VMware, Wine and WineX. Microsoft Windows-based games can be more finicky than some of the other software products are. Not every type of computer hardware is supported by Linux (similar to the limitations with the Windows NT-based operating systems). Not as large of a user base as Microsoft Windows at this time, so it may take more effort to obtain helpful advice from friends.

These were the high spots presented at last month's meeting. I hope you will join us again this month to learn about setting up a cost-effective Linux system as a complement to (or replacement of) your current Windows computer.

In addition, we will start having a Linux round table discussion/support group after the regular meeting presentation topics available to our club members.

I look forward to seeing you at the meeting this month!

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