From: db3l@ans.net (David Bolen)
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.5
Date: Fri, 4 Sep 1992 17:19:23 GMT
	<1992Sep4.135831.4252@hellgate.utah.edu>
Organization: Advanced Network & Services, Inc. - Elmsford, NY

In article <1992Sep4.135831.4252@hellgate.utah.edu> brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) writes:

>>It seems to me that if you are going to include a point in the "OS/2 has this
>>NT doesn't" section, and then basically negate it with some comments that it's
>
>Funny, I do the equivalent down in NT section and nobody complains about
>that.  NT users are more laid back maybe? :-)

Maybe - I don't know many NT users so I can't compare :-)

Actually I guess I didn't notice such a contradiction in the NT section - I'll
go back and look again.

(just looked - I can't find any point in the NT section where you clearly
 negate the item with the discussion beneath it.  The best I found is for the
 pageable kernel:

	All but 60K kernel is pageable. (Microkernel design)
		All means All... everything but a small piece
		is pageable.

 but here even the minus part of the comment agrees with the item.  Which
 "equivalent down in the NT section" are you referring to?)

>This whole item is intended to answer the question that comes up frequently,
>doesn't OS/2 2.0 require less memory than NT. I see no reason it should
>not be where it is.  The answer is yes, but if you try to get OS/2 features
>up near NT levels then no, not really.

Ok, then maybe I'm just wordsmithing (but I think you said you'd accept that
too at the bottom), but I think it could be presented a little better.  After
all, the point is that the *base* OS/2 2.0 requires less memory than the
*base* NT.  That's true and belongs in this section.  Your document describes
what NT base has that OS/2 doesn't, so that's taken care of.  And when you
add the features, you claim they are a wash, so that point doesn't belong
in the document at all, no?

>Thread 1 is unique -- every process must have it... this is quite
>an annoying misfeature of OS/2.  NT does this right, OS/2 doesn't really...
>This is what the paragraph says.  You're picking at nothing.

The fact that every process has thread 1 is an annoying misfeature?  (sorry,
Mom's an English teacher :-)).

I guess I was trying to make two points.  First, the use of the word "general"
is simply inaccurate.  It is not the common case that threads do not have
dynamic stacks.  Second, there is nothing stopping an application from having
a dynamic stack *even for thread 1* - it's just a little more work.  As shown
in other posts in this thread, every EMX applications gets this... even thread
1's stack grows dynamically.

I'd contend I'm not picking at nothing, and that the way your point is
currently phrased can be misleading.

>                          The global VM/file buffer cache is something that
>still make people that do OS work impressed, apparently it leads to cleaner,
>easier to maintain implementations.  I again think you are just picking at
>nothing.

Maybe - but I do OS work, and having a centralized cache is nice but doesn't
really impress me all that much.  But that's ok - different people would have
different views, and I don't really mind the point - I'd just like things to
be a little clearer.  Why is trying to clarify the information picking at
nothing?

>OS/2 has neither dynamically loadable nor unloadable ones...  it has device
>drivers, and they can be loaded at boot time via changes in a configuration
>file... but even DOS does this (though OS/2 can have installable file
>systems too).

I believe my comment was specifically addressing IFSs.

>               If I were comparing it against DOS this could be considered
>a feature.  However I know of no modern OS that cannot do what OS/2 does.
>You're just being picky.

This is a comparison of OS/2 and NT.  Just because other modern systems have
something doesn't mean it should or shouldn't be included in this document.

You keep saying I'm picking at nothing or I'm being picky.  Isn't the whole
point of your putting your post up (and specifically asking for comments at
the end) in order to get people to help make this as good as it can be?  Just
what's so wrong with being picky?

My point here is that I'd like to clarify the fact that OS/2 can install
different filesystems for different partitions.  NT can do it too and takes it
one better, but NTs approach is incrementally better than OS/2's - not a
completely new concept.  Wording the point the way you did can sound like
OS/2 has no facilities even closely related.

>>> Good _documented_ debug hooks.
>>
>>How is this different than the _documented_ DosDebug interface under OS/2?
>
>Good point, it's good that not everything is you just being picky.
>I'll check futher and make appropriate changes (I was unaware of DosDebug).

I still stand by the fact that in this kind of document picky is good.  Sure,
some of the stuff may be piqayune, but what's wrong with that.  At the worst
it'll just lead to a more accurate document.  Isn't that goodness?

>>>#	NT can generically use more than 16 megs of memory.
>>>	 On ISA machines that don't support DMA above
>>>	 the 16 meg line OS/2 only uses the memory above
>>>	 16 megs as a form of fast swap.
>>
>>(This is an aside - how does NT deal with this case - disable DMA entirely,
>> or just keep buffers down in low memory for the purposes of DMA?)
>
>It does a copy to/from low memory DMA buffer.

Hmm - I wonder if this is really better or worse.  I mean, OS/2 uses the
memory as virtual swapping space, while NT lets applications run there, but
once they start it has to keep moving memory around to DMA it to places.
It might be an incrementally better use of the memory, but I'm not sold on
that.

To bring it back on track - I'm not sure that NTs use is really all that
better "use" of the memory.  Even in NTs case it can't use it just like the
remainder of memory, which it can DMA directly to, so the item is misleading.
After all - OS/2 can "generically" use the memory too - just in a different
way than NT.

		   - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

I guess I don't understand some of your responses.  I spent time on each of my
thoughts and I know they weren't (or at least weren't intended) to be taken as
frivolous or just nit-picking.  Sure, some suggestions were for more minor
issues than others, but none were made just to be annoying.  Many of my
comments were prompted by my concern that an average reader of the document
might not get an accurate depiction of how a feature compared between OS/2 and
NT just by reading the comments you have - but apparantly any of my suggested
changes were dismissed by you as "picky."

What else is proofreading, commenting and verifying a document, ensuring that
factual data is as clearly presented as possible, than being "picky?"


--
-- David
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