Talk:Comparison of operating systems/Archive 1

message: FAT16 and FAT32 are very much a Windows/DOS terminology, so simply indicating "yes" for other platforms is misleading. These platforms have equivalent, but not identical file systems. As it stands the table seems to suggest that they all run the exact same file system, which just ain't so.Graham 09:18, 18 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  FAT16 and FAT32 

message: The article should try to be clear about what it means by 16-bit, 32-bit, or 64-bit filesystems.  For the FAT16 and FAT32 filesystems this seems to be simply the bit-width of the cluster number.  For the inode-based UFS-like filesystems, I'd guess 32 vs. 64 bits would either be the maximum useful offset size within a file, with the acid test being whether a single file can exceed 2GB.  Or, maybe it would refer to the maximum number of clusters in a single partition, with the 32-bit cutoff being in the low TB depending on cluster size.  (I've never used any UFS-like filesystem that could be called 16-bit, but Sun recently announced a 128-bit version.)  
If these are vague marketing terms that just don't have the precision I'm demanding of them, then IMO the article should come out and say so (or better yet, should just use more precise terms like "maximum file size" if that's what's intended). -- Saucepan 08:01, 21 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  On "n-bit" filesystems 

message: I changed FreeBSD section:
# stable version is 4.10. Next stable version will be 5.3.
# default file system is UFS (in 5.3 it will be UFS2)
# there is by definition no default Window Manager, thus changed question mark to N/A (not applicable). Przepla 21:54, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: If you install X, what is the default window manager used? Dysprosia 22:15, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Last time I did this in FreeBSD it was the XFree86 (well, startx) default of twm, unless/until you installed something else.   But I'm pretty sure I remember sysinstall making it just as easy to pick a GNOME or KDE desktop during the install as a headless system, so I'm not really sure if it's meaningful to speak of a default desktop in this case. Saucepan 22:49, 23 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  FreeBSD 

message: I added the Solaris public release date as the release date of the first version of SunOS.  SunOS was a BSDsh variant, which was used by Sun for several years until they switched to the AT&T based Solaris.  Should the release date for Solaris reflect the Solaris or the SunOS release? ElBenevolente 08:44, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Using the Windows XP/2k columns as a guide, I'd guess the date that should be used would be the first time the code was released as "Solaris". Saucepan 08:48, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Then we'll have to fix that date. ElBenevolente 08:51, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.  ElBenevolente 08:56, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Solaris 

message: Hard as it is to believe, it looks like Lisa OS may not have shared any significant code with early Mac OS in spite of the obvious resemblance.  It'd be nice to find out for sure, if anyone can find an authoritative reference one way or another.  (Or we could add a row like "Influences" which could include Lisa OS for Mac OS, Mac OS for Windows, Mach for FreeBSD and OpenBSD, and so on.) Saucepan 17:39, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Hungarian.txt  Of course they were developed kind of simultaneously (although the Lisa popped out first), so you would expect some crossover.  But I don't think you could say that Mac inhertied from Lisa, in the same sense as OpenBSD inherited from NetBSD or WindowsXP inherited from Windows2000. AlistairMcMillan 19:08, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

text: BTW FreeBSD and OpenBSD and Mach all share an ancestor in 4.xBSD.  I don't think either of the current BSDs inherited from Mach though.  AlistairMcMillan 19:29, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  There was lots of back-and-forth, but I think 4.4BSD borrowed from Mach more recently than Mach borrowed from BSD.  An ex-coworker walked away with my copy of The Book so I can't quote chapter and verse, but I'm sure I remember (and a search appears to confirm) that the 4.4BSD VM was based on Mach (the mmap semantics, the unification of file buffers and VM pages, and the vm_map structure, among other things).  But I guess this is getting a bit too nitpicky -- even for this article -- so I'll stop now.  :)  Saucepan 21:24, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mac OS and Lisa OS 

message: : Quartz is the graphics layer that sits on top of the Darwin core of Mac OS X,  (see Quartz (graphics layer))
suggests Quartz is a layer that is not in the kernel, and is thus a user-level program. Dysprosia 02:09, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think that the way it is now is pretty good, don't you? --Ctachme 02:55, 11 Oct 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Quartz 

message: I just noticed that Ctachme has split and rotated the table.  I didn't like it when this happened on the Comparison of web browsers page and I don't like it here.  I think it makes the page more confusing for readers not less.  It may appear simpler to editors who see this page regularly, but I think people who come here simply to read the content would find a single table (even if it does spill out of a browser window and require scrolling) easier to read.  AlistairMcMillan 04:57, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Ctachme also removed the helper comments, which is very annoying. I don't mind the split, but the rotation is confusing also. I'd also like them rotated back in the logical fashion, with the helper comments back. Dysprosia 08:50, 18 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  The reason I rotated the tables was because otherwise they would not fit onto the screen. As per wikipedia guidelines, content should be geared, when possible, to fit within a reasonable screen width. If the tables were re-rotated, they would certainly be too wide to fit on a screen (and my screen is 1024 wide... the most popular screen width). Additionally, it really isn't any more confusing this way than it was the other way, except you read across instead of reading down (which actually, now that I think about it, is probably better this way since most english speakers read from left to right, not top to down). The reason I removed helper comments is because the name of the OS is right there are the top of what you are seeing. You *do* have to glance up a couple of lines, but it really isn't all that inconvenient. And, like I said, this method is no more or less "logical" than the other method. --Ctachme 00:22, 30 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split tables 

message: People have added very incomplete Debian and Gentoo streams to the table. Linux is Linux is Linux - the kernel supports the same filesystems on all distros; X is X; they nearly all have GTK+ and QT for graphical API's, and so forth. Theres no need to have more than one distro listed. Kiand 15:31, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Distributions aren't the same according to their defaults. NTFS and MP3 aren't supported on Red Hat distributions because of patent issues. Some distributions come with GNOME, some with KDE, and are therefore built around gdm or kdm. And so on. [ alerante | “” 23:15, 19 Dec 2004 (UTC)

text: I've happened to notice this too and fixed the Debian entries now. It should be fairly obvious that there is sufficient variety contributed by the existence of that particular entry. --Joy [shallot] 08:33, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: We now have FIVE Linux distros. This is way, way too many for the same OS. I think the example set by Windows should be kept, with two, and no more. Kiand 12:55, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text:  Note that this is after UltimaGuy's addition of Slackware. Gentoo's entry is existent but sub-stub... --Joy [shallot] 18:22, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Do we need more than one Linux distro?