The Vandalisation of Windows

[Aloone_Jonez]

I quoted that from way back, and I didn't get a response.

You're wrong, I didn't comapare Windows' memory management to Linux's in the post you've quoted or anywhere else for that matter.

[piratePenguin]

You're wrong, I didn't comapare Windows' memory management to Linux's in the post you've quoted or anywhere else for that matter.

I didn't say you did.

What you did say is:

Exactly ,
Windows XP's memory managemant is the same as Windows 2000's. I run XP on 248MB and it works perfectly, I've used briefly at a computer auction on a machine with 128MB and it wasn't that bad. Anti-virus is the main problem, followed closely by Windows update, then luna and lastly the other unecasary services added in XP. The shit thing about Windows memory management is that minimised tasks are alwasys swapped to disk.

[Aloone_Jonez]

That's true but it isn't an issue if you don't minimise the tasks.

Yes it is a bug and yes it is shit but Windows' memory managment isn't that shit (alright it might not be as good as Linux's I haven't used Linux that much so I don't know). My point still holds true Windows isn't that bad or as bad as you want it to be or would like it to be, for me the wors thing about Windows is Microsoft rather than it's quality as a whole.

[piratePenguin]

That's true but it isn't an issue if you don't minimise the tasks.

You've completely missed the point.

The memory management in Windows is, infact, shit. Linux has great memory management. According to a guy in ##freebsd on freenode, the Linux guys coppied alot from FreeBSD in the memory management area, and still have a bit more work to do. Some rarely used stuff in FreeBSD, like "kernel stack swapping" isn't available on Linux. So the FreeBSD memory management probably does compete well with, and probably beats, Linux's.

Windows memory management is shit. And it's not because of the minimizing fuckup.

Memory management is important, because it allows you to do more things faster. Linux allows you to do more things faster than Windows.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I suppose I don't know any better because I've never pushed Linux to its limits.

All I know is that Windows isn't as bad as the Linux community say it is or want it to be so I'll tale what you've said very loosely.

[piratePenguin]

All I know is that Windows isn't as bad as the Linux community say it is or want it to be so I'll [take] what you've said very loosely.

Windows is really bad. You mightn't think so, because you don't do 3D rendering (infact, one of my older brothers was asking me about GNU/Linux once. He does do a loada 3D rendering and stuff. On Windows (really the only OS he uses), he mainly uses 3D Studio Max. It doesn't run on GNU/Linux, but Maya, another cool program that he'd be able to use, and that would be fit replace 3D Studio Max, did. And he'd heard that running it on GNU/Linux is somehow faster or otherwise better (can't remember exactly) than running it on Windows (which is interesting. I might look into this, someday.). Needless to say, he's still using Windows and 3D Studio Max. He seems to quite-like 3D Studio Max, and doesn't wanna switch to Maya.), and you've never opened The GIMP, Inkscape, Firefox, GAIM, AmaroK, Konqueror, Glade, monodevelop, KDevelop, KWord and KSpread all in one go.

[worker201]

The average user doesn't ever get into the serious Windows memory management problems.  Hell, the average Linux user doesn't ever really drive their machine either.  But if you do, you'll notice the difference right away.  If Windows is rendering something, forget about it doing anything else.  Data crunching, same thing.  Opening really huge files causes it to flub as well.

Real life experience: I had an Encapsulated PostScript file.  It was only about 40MB, but it was 40MB of text, like way over a million lines of code.  Using a Windows machine, with 1.5GB RAM and a Pentium4, Adobe Illustrator would not open this file.  The amount of memory taken up by Windows combined the amount of memory taken up by Illustrator probably left plenty of room in the memory.  But in order for Illustrator to interpret the file, it had to load each and every line separately.  Eventually, even 1.5GB RAM fills up, and it starts to swap, but it can't deallocate memory to accomodate moving stuff from RAM to swap.  I let it go on like this for over 8 hours before I finally gave up.  It just sat there and thrashed the whole time.

So, I put the file on a USBstick and took it home.  Loaded it onto my Mac, and attempted to open it in Illustrator.  Took about 10 minutes, but it finally came up.  And within another 10 minutes, the RAM had been cleared, and I could move around at full speed and get some work done.  My Mac has 640MB RAM and a G3 900MHz processor.

Granted, I don't get monster files like this that often.  Most people don't.  But if you do, you're going to need better memory allocation and deallocation than Windows can provide.  Issues that you take for granted, like apps taking forever to minimize/maximize, or thrashing for a few minutes before accepting responses, these things just don't happen in Linux or OSX.

[piratePenguin]

Feck that is cool. I wonder is anyone working on bringing this to GNU/Linux...

Well it looks like this OLE stuff was one of the original goals of the famous GNOME project.

"Gnome" is actually an acronym: GNU Network Object Model Environment. Originally, the project was intended to create a framework for application objects, similar to Microsoft's OLE and COM technologies. However, the scope of the project rapidly expanded; it became clear that substantial groundwork was required before the "network object" part of the name could become reality. The latest development versions of Gnome include an object embedding architecture called Bonobo, and Gnome 1.0 included a fast, light CORBA 2.2 ORB called ORBit.

I don't know exactly how this stuff works and what uses it, yet, but I'll eventually find out, and post my findings.

(At least now I have an idea of what that Bonobo Component Browser (under Applications > System Tools) thing is)

EDIT: Yes, I know this stuff wouldn't be consistent accross all GNU/Linux systems, but it would be consistent accross GNOME.

[Aloone_Jonez]

Yes, I know this stuff wouldn't be consistent accross all GNU/Linux systems, but it would be consistent accross GNOME.

That's just the problem and it will remain the case unless the majority of developers adopt Gtk as a standard or it gets integrated into KDE - I think the two desktop enviroments need to be unified.

One of the great thing about Linux is it offers people lots of choices but this is also one of tis biggest downfalls. Someone might innovate and come up with a new then another developer might think of a better way of doing it but they don't even consider making it compatabile with the other person's system.

[piratePenguin]

That's just the problem and it will remain the case unless the majority of developers adopt Gtk as a standard or it gets integrated into KDE - I think the two desktop enviroments need to be unified.

One of the great thing about Linux is it offers people lots of choices but this is also one of tis biggest downfalls. Someone might innovate and come up with a new then another developer might think of a better way of doing it but they don't even consider making it compatabile with the other person's system.

I wouldn't like to see KDE and GNOME unified. Each user has their own preference, because the enviornments are different and different people like different things. Certain things are standardized (e.g. by freedesktop.org and they usually obey these standards (*cough*unlike Windows*cough*). Things that haven't been standardized might or might not be standardized in the future, depending on their importance, and how easy/hard they would be to standardize.

[Aloone_Jonez]

I can agree to some extent but some things need to be stardardised (like packages for eaxmple) but they don't get standardised. Anyway theres no way of enforcing standards people just decide whether or not to use them.

[worker201]

I can agree to some extent but some things need to be stardardised (like packages for eaxmple) but they don't get standardised.

I disagree completely.
Mostly because I think you are misusing the term standard in a Microsofty way, ie, "standard" is really short for "what I think should be standard".

A standard for a communication protocol or file format is useful, since it helps you to share information with others through networking and file trading. Although there are like 50 different image formats, a jpeg is a jpeg on every computer.  But other solitary systems should not necessarily be standardized. For example, packages. Each system designer has decided on his/her own which packaging system to use. And now you are going to decide once and for all which is "better" better? No, you don't get to decide that. Because it doesn't affect anyone except the person installing the packages. If you don't like rpms, or whatever, you don't have to use them. You can get a system that uses deb packages instead. Making someone else use your favorite packaging system is fascistic, since it only helps you when you go to use his computer. It doesn't do a fucking thing for him.

Same with desktop managers. And window managers. And filesystems. And most other things too. Standards help people share. Making everyone use the same program/system is what Microsoft does.

[Aloone_Jonez]

By the way, object linking and embedding (OLE), which makes that possible, is one of the things that makes Windows so insecure.  A virus can propogate from Outlook to Excel to Word to Powerpoint and back to Outlook without ever leaving your inbox.  It's also a major cause of office suite bloat - an interoperability of a feature set that no one in their right mind would ever use.  Plus, having each task centrally defined and apportioned, rather than peripherally, makes MSOffice unmodular and inefficient memory users.  I'm glad that Linux doesn't have this kind of crap.

I wasn't meaning to say that Linux should copy Windows directly where OLE is concerned but provide a superiour implementation. One way would be not to link objects in documents to applications but to give each object a data type similar to MIME so when you import a gif into ABIWord and click on it up pops The Gimp or Xpaint depending on your system settings.

I disagree completely.
Mostly because I think you are misusing the term standard in a Microsofty way, ie, "standard" is really short for "what I think should be standard".

No because MS standards are closed, I'm proposing an open standard.

A standard for a communication protocol or file format is useful, since it helps you to share information with others through networking and file trading.

Just like having a standard package format would help people distribute thier software - they should have to worry about distributing it in 100 or so packages formats there should be just one or two.

Although there are like 50 different image formats, a jpeg is a jpeg on every computer.

Exactly 50 different formats but how many are used on the Internet?

But other solitary systems should not necessarily be standardized. For example, packages. Each system designer has decided on his/her own which packaging system to use. And now you are going to decide once and for all which is "better" better? No, you don't get to decide that. Because it doesn't affect anyone except the person installing the packages. If you don't like rpms, or whatever, you don't have to use them. You can get a system that uses deb packages instead. Making someone else use your favorite packaging system is fascistic, since it only helps you when you go to use his computer. It doesn't do a fucking thing for him.

But its a fucking pain in the arse, I personally couldn't give a fuck whether it's a .deb or .rpm I just want to be able to download one file and install it on many Linux distros, this also puts many developers off writing Linux software, it'd certainly put me off.

Same with desktop managers. And window managers.

They are already going through a standardisation process but no one's ever going to force you to use KDE, Gnome, Xfce.

And filesystems.

That's a biggy, fair enough there's no point in having a standard file system if all you're going to to do is format your hard drive, but putting your files on a USB stick is a completely different story.

Standards help people share.

And a standard package format will help people share software which is after all the spirit of the GPL.

Making everyone use the same program/system is what Microsoft does.

Who said about making everyone use the same program/system?

Just the same format.

Differant pieces of software could be used to read the same package you know, just like I can open an .sxw in OpenOffice or ABIWord or you could edit a .jpg in The Gimp, Adobe Photoshop, Xpaint or even MS Paint.

[worker201]

What's your beef against multiple package formats anyway?  You should be using synaptic or smart or apt-get or something like that.  If you need some program that's only available in an rpm, then you're probably not understanding what it is that you need.  Learn how to build shit from source.  The fact that many software distributors only build packages for a few distros and leave the source for everyone else is more than reasonable.

Personally, I have never been upset with packaging systems.  I use an rpm distro, and I use a package manager program (smart at the moment) to get all the updates I need.  If a package I want is not in a smart (apt, yum) repo, then I go get the source and build it myself.  Never had any problems.  So what are you doing wrong that has you so upset?

[Aloone_Jonez]

What's your beef against multiple package formats anyway?

Not being able to download one package and install it on many different distros.

Learn how to build shit from source.

Fine for small things but it's impractical for large programs especially on a low end machine.

The fact that many software distributors only build packages for a few distros and leave the source for everyone else is more than reasonable.

How about proprietary software?
Oh fuck it it's evil anyway, but shit you support Mac and it's proprietary  - just a shame that the forum software only lets me use 8 roll eyes smilies.  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:  :rolleyes:  Oh fuck I've reached my limit.

So what are you doing wrong that has you so upset?

Installing Opera and OpenOffice 2.0 on both Ubuntu and Vector Linux - I've fucked up both.