From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill)
Subject: NT vs OS/2 features (was Re: Misinformation about os2-dos HW access)
Date: 30 Aug 92 15:40:25 MDT
Organization: University of Utah CS Dept

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.

>
>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.
	Quota and and Statistics hooks for most objects.
	Full symmetric multiprocessing support.
	Generic wait on multiple events/semaphores of different types.
	Multiple growable heaps.
	Automatic stack expansion.
	Global VM/File Cache.
	All but 60K kernel is pageable.
	Memory mapped files
	Asynchronous I/O
	Platform independent device driver support.
	Dynamic loadable/unloadable file system and device drivers.
	Generalized Registry. (database as replacement for '.ini' files)
	Pen Support.
	Windows 3.1 support.
	Fully 32-bit drivers.
	SDK has C++
	GUI
		Fully 32-bit API
		Fast client/server approach.
		Separate queues per process.
		Designed to help accellerators.
	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().
	RPC
		DCE support
		OLE integrated with RPC
		RPC has corresponding LPC
	NTFS
		Fast Recovery (CHKDSK gigabyte volumes in a few seconds.)
		High Reliability
		Hard Links
		Case-Sensitive
		Extensible Attributes
		Automatic 8.3 names
		ACLS
		B-tree directories.
		Volume striping
		UPS support.
	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.
	Fast Hyper-text Help System. (OS/2's is much slower.)
	Developers provided with a common installation program.
	More SuperVGA drivers.

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.
	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           :-) :-) :-)