From: eletanjm@nuscc.nus.sg (TAN JIN MENG)
Subject: Re: NT vs OS/2 features (was Re: Misinformation about os2-dos HW access)
Organization: National University of Singapore
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 07:11:52 GMT

brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:
: In article <1992Aug30.173536.29142@nuscc.nus.sg> eletanjm@nuscc.nus.sg (TAN JIN MENG) writes:
: ...
: >: Question, why do people expect that Microsoft should have an OS, not yet
: >: released, go through a many-month certification process.
: >: Would it not make more sense for them to do so after the OS is generally
: >: available?  Or am I just missing something?
: ...
: >: Brian
: ...
: >Well, I believe that among the many features that people mention for NT,
: >one of the more prominent is C2. It bloats up the feature list for NT
: >unecesarily in my opinion since...
: 
: C2 is not very big, see below.
: 
: >
: >1) most places don't need or would find it impractical to have C2
: >security and that includes all those UNIX sites which NT is supposed to
: >woo.
: 
: You make too much out of C2... C2 is a rather simple level of security,
: basically it entails having user ids, some form of grouping for user ids,
: logons, and logging of significant system events (logons, etc).
: Most Unix systems, even ancient ones were very close to having C2 features.
: They mainly lack logging and "shadowed" passwords.
: Recently (Thursday night I believe) I posted the entire C2 spec... read it
: for yourself... the spec is hard to read, but with a bit of patience you'll
: find it makes sense.... and in the end is not that big of a deal.
: B-level and A-level are a different matter, and things become complicated
: quickly.
: 
: Note that if you don't want C2... just don't enable the logging.

I'll pass on the above. I don't think I know enough to comment
properly. (And reading technical specs is for bedtime reading - I may
catch up tonight ;-)).
: 
: >
: >2) actual certification of any machine/NT combo is probably sometime
: >away (correct me if I'm wrong). It is thus misleading. I think that IBM
: >is probably working on C2 for OS/2 also but they aren't trumpeting that
: >(also correct me if i'm wrong).
: 
: **** WARNING THIS NEXT LINE CAME FROM BRIAN.EXE **** :-)
: My guess is a h/s combo will begin certification 6-8 months from now.
: 
: >
: >which brings me to another point. Much has been made of NT being
: >vapourware etc... While more or less true, It doesn't detract from the
: >fact that NT will come. In the meantime of course IBM isn't standing
: >still. I think a more decent comparison of the 2 OSes would be to
: >compare NT now + NT in near future( up to '95 maybe) and OS/2 now + OS/2
: >in near future.
: 
: I don't believe anyone's plan for '95 (though I like to hear it so I
: understand the direction they're headed).  What I can provide is a feature
: by feature comparison between OS/2 and NT now, and after September/October
: when they are both planning to release updates.
: 
: As to OS/2 not standing still... according to IBM both Windows 3.1
: compatibility and the 32-bit GDI were more or less "done" at the end of
: March.  I don't have them yet, do you?  As of July they had still not
: chosen the platform on which OS/2 3.0 would be based (they have since
: said Mach).  I don't think it is standing still, but it does seem to be
: running in slow motion.
: 
: Below is a comparision of the Base Packages of NT and OS/2. OS/2 has
: similiar multimedia facilities, for $149 and similar networking facilities
: for an embarrasingly high price.  (You would have to have both LanServer
: "Lite" and TCP/IP basekit to match NT, though in the TCP/IP, you would
: have extra daemons; however you don't need a special programmers kit
: for NT TCP/IP so it evens out. The two together cost over $1,000.)
: Currently NT will cost less than $500 and  OS/2 costs $199.
: (All are list prices).
: 
: Features currently in OS/2 2.0 but not in Windows NT
: 	Object Oriented Shell
: 	Great DOS support
: 	Mediocre Windows 3.0 support (NT's is currently poor).
: 	Is actually released.
: 
: Features currently in Windows NT but not in OS/2 2.0
: 	No system table limits.
Maybe you could explain this. Maybe you mean the limits for threads,
semaphores etc. Depends on what you want to do. A system may have a
limit for its system tables but if they are pretty high limits, you
effectively have "no system table limits". (unless it is a very busy,
high end server application). 

: 	Quota and and Statistics hooks for most objects.
fine for multiuser but for single user desktop? I think many users out
there are still getting used to DOS ;-).

: 	Full symmetric multiprocessing support.
I believe IBM has a Parallan server (multiprocessor) which runs OS/2. I
don't know any other details though.

: 	Generic wait on multiple events/semaphores of different types.
??? I'm not sure what you mean by this. In any case, for a multithreaded
system, I would rather have one thread per event//semaphore. More
flexibility and potentially better response (depends on the app of
course).

: 	Multiple growable heaps.

I hope you'll explain this. I'm interested.

: 	Automatic stack expansion.
I really can't believe this is also not in OS/2 since it is easy to do
once you have the basic virtual memory subsystem. Can someone confirm?

: 	Global VM/File Cache.
Can you explain this?

: 	All but 60K kernel is pageable.
Pretty good but not necessarily a 100% desired feature. Depends on your
priorities.

: 	Memory mapped files
Pretty good too. Anyone know if IBM has something similar in mind for
OS/2.

: 	Asynchronous I/O
As with the multiple wait thing above, I'd spawn a separate thread just
to manage the IO. What's the point of having a system with cheap
threading if you don't exploit it? I believe asynch IO was in OS/2 1.x but
was dropped in OS/2 2.0. I suspect it was because it proved unnecessary
and IBM wanted to reduce the number of system calls.

: 	Platform independent device driver support.
Is there really such a beast ;-).

: 	Dynamic loadable/unloadable file system and device drivers.
I don't know enough about OS/2 ifs and device driver support. Anyone
want to comment?

: 	Generalized Registry. (database as replacement for '.ini' files)
???

: 	Pen Support.
Well seeing that I still am not convinced pen computing is such a big
thing, I'll reserve comment.

: 	Windows 3.1 support.
IBM is coming out with support too (late though)

: 	Fully 32-bit drivers.
NT can never be fully 32bit because it wants to support Windows, DOS
etc. The major deficiency for OS/2 in this regard is 32 bit PM which I
believe is being rectified (late but I think will be out before NT is
released). What's HPFS386 anyway? I thought HPFS is already 32 bit or
is HPFS386 something else.

: 	SDK has C++
Borland's C/C++ is in beta now. I believe C++ is next on IBM's compiler
development list. Zortech has some (I belive) primitive OS/2 support
already. Don't forget GCC of course which (apparently - since I don't
have the toolkit |-(.) works with the IBM supplied toolkit.

: 	GUI
: 		Fully 32-bit API
: 		Fast client/server approach.
32 bit PM "coming". Fast client/server? Well I've heard of distributed
PM (shades of X) but no one has let me(us?)  in on the details yet.
also in another thread, I believe someone said OS/2 will be supporting
DCE in the future.
: 		Separate queues per process.
: 		Designed to help accellerators.
Just buzzwords to me. Are they *really* useful ? [shrug].

: 	OLE
: 	Good _published_ debug hooks.
: 	Security
: 		C2 level
: 		ACL's for all objects.
: 		Logons.
: 		E-Mail API (X.500, can use X.400 as a transport)
: 		B2 hooks
: 		Advanced form of setuid().
I've heard it said that setuid was a step backward for UNIX security
;-).

: 	RPC
: 		DCE support
: 		OLE integrated with RPC
: 		RPC has corresponding LPC
I believe IBM's working on this.

: 	NTFS
: 		Fast Recovery (CHKDSK gigabyte volumes in a few seconds.)
GB ina few seconds! possible I suppose with a rollback/journaling kind
of file system. I believe IBM's working on this too.

: 		High Reliability
I'll believe it when I see it. otherwiseI'll take it with a grain of
salt.

: 		Hard Links
: 		Case-Sensitive
: 		Extensible Attributes
: 		Automatic 8.3 names
Not necessarily good. Some strange things can happen when you let the
system do the naming for you.

: 		ACLS
: 		B-tree directories.
I believe HPFS does it similarly.

: 		Volume striping
: 		UPS support.

Comment on FS support. In both OS/2 and NT it will probably be the case
that FAT file systems will be retained in some volume of other. I think
I can garauntee that heterogenous file systems will result in problems
whether it is NTFS or HPFS. For instance, so what if NTFS supports
journaling if there is a crash in FAT partition. 

: 	Multimedia
: 		Audio
: 			Waveform
: 			MIDI
: 			CD-source
: 		Media Control Interface.
: 		High-speed file streaming.
: 		Async event controllable.
: 	Networking
: 		TCP/IP
: 		Peer-peer file and printer sharing.
: 		Ability to support multiple vendors as transports
: 			w/common admin.
: 		Good network admin facilities.
: 		SNMP
: 		Berkely sockets.
: 		Named pipes.
: 		Event logging.
I believe IBM  should have similar capabilities with LAN Server and /or
IBM TCP/IP. There is the added advantage that OS/2 has APPC.
 
: 	Fast Hyper-text Help System. (OS/2's is much slower.)

Yep. OS/2s help is slow. Do you have direct experience of this "Fast
Hyper-text system"?

: 	Developers provided with a common installation program.
: 	More SuperVGA drivers.
Yep IBM should kick ass here.

: 
: OS/2 2.0 will add the following in September/October
: 	Catch up to NT by having Windows 3.1 support.
: 	Catch up to NT by adding a 32-bit GUI.
: 	Catch up to NT by allowing 32-bit drivers.
: 	Rumored to slim-down such that it might properly fit in 4 megs.
: 
: Windows NT will add the following in September/October
: 	Catch-up to OS/2 in 16-bit Windows 3.0 compatibility.
: 	Smarter, easier to use OLE, first step toward Cairo.
: 	POSIX  (1003.1 -- the system calls)
: 	Win32s (Run NT programs under Windows 3.1)
: 	Remote booting.
: 	Remote installation and maintenance support.
I believe you forgot to add (the 2 above) this as a current feature of
IBM LAN Server.

: 	NTFS
: 		Symlinks
: 		Sparse File
: >
: >jin meng
: 
: Brian
: -- 
: C. Brian Sturgill                       *** OS/2 2.0 is for YOU! ***
: University of Utah                  Microsoft needs some competition, but
: Center for Software Science        -I- want to be one of the many using NT.
: brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373           :-) :-) :-)

You didn't mention WPS as an OS/2 feature that NT doesn't have though (
I know you praised it before though).

I believe, there is nothing revolutionary about both products and they
have a lot more in commnon than differences though NT seems to have more
"Workstation" like features. To that extent, NT is more "high end"
oriented than OS/2. OS/2 is flexible enough so that you can different
"flavours" of OS (eg the parallan server). The same of course applies
for NT.

jin meng

Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.advocacy