A common gripe about Linux users is that they all hate Microsoft. While I think that this is unnecessarily harsh, I also think that some Linux users (myself included) are very well-informed about Microsoft and the technical aspects of their operating system.
I liked DOS, especially DOS 5 and 6, but it got very dated after a while. I used Windows 3.1 after Windows '95 was released, for stability, but eventually the applications moved away from my platform again. I never used Windows '95 on my personal computer, because I knew enough about it. I knew its memory requirements, and how much it crashed, and I use Linux now. The price/performance is also much better in Linux, an added bonus.
However, just so you know I'm not making this up, here are some fairly realistic system requirements taken from Microsoft's web page. Sure, it's for Office 2000, but they also list some basic OS system requirements, which are not too far from reality.
Requirements to run Office 2000 Premium are a PC with a Pentium 75 MHz or higher processor; Pentium 166 MHz or higher is required for PhotoDraw, on the Windows 95 or later operating system or Windows NT. Workstation operating system version 4.0 Service Pack 3 or later. Users of Windows 95 or Windows 98 will require 16 MB of RAM for the operating system, plus an additional 4 MB of RAM for each application running simultaneously (8 MB for Outlook). Users of Windows NT Workstation version 4.0 or later will require 32 MB of RAM for the operating system, plus an additional 4 MB of RAM for each application running simultaneously (8 MB for Outlook). The following are the hard disk requirements for Office 2000 Premium (numbers indicate typical installation; choices made during custom installation may require more or less hard disk space):
The requirements listed here for RAM are pretty accurate. I wouldn't want to run Windows '95 with less than 16 MB of RAM. The processor requirements are pretty silly. I run Windows NT 4.0 on a Pentium 133 with 32MB of RAM, and it's slow, while they are claiming a P75 as a minimum. So apparently I should have at least a P166 with 40MB of RAM as a minimum. I'd probably want more like a P][/300 with 64MB RAM.
Now, when I was running Linux on that P133, it was beautiful. Fast, responsive, using maybe a maximum of 16MB of RAM, with X... The only really bloated application I had was StarOffice, which uses 32MB of RAM, but not necessarily all at once, maybe a working set of half that. However, StarOffice integrates everything, so it's equivalent to loading all of the Microsoft Office applications at once, which would be more bloated. Also, StarOffice is written in true Microsoftian style, which is why it both looks like Windows, runs on many platforms, and is a commercial product. Of course, it also doesn't crash as much as Office. WordPerfect and ApplixWare are both less bloated, and not as integrated, both good features IMHO.
I also doubt that Word 2000 only requires an additional 4MB of RAM, but we'll see. Heck, Word 6.0 was a hog, and Word '95 and '97 (7 and 8, respectively) were worse. I bet that friggin' paperclip takes up at least 2 MB of RAM by itself. So, first argument, Microsoft products are bloated.
My mother runs Windows '95. Sometimes when she boots up, the screen goes black and mangles the icons, and then freezes up. Why is this? We suspect it has something to do with the Video Driver and the driver for her Zip-Drive, since this only happens when the video is set higher than 8bpp, and her computer detects her Zip-Drive. We aren't sure. Can we fix it? No. Will Microsoft help us? Why would they, they didn't write the drivers... Also, sometimes the machine crashes in Photoshop. Sometimes netscape gets an exception ("Illegal Operation", like that hex info will help us a lot). Sometimes you can't click and drag the icons on the desktop, and just need to reboot. In the meantime, Linux runs beautifully on the same machine. Video, Zip-drive, networking, printing, you name it...
In my computer lab at school, we have machines running Solaris and Windows NT. The NT machines need to be rebooted after a few days because they're using too much memory. Using memory doing what? We don't know, but something leaks memory. After a few days they're using 128MB of memory, and after seven days they're using up to 300MB of memory, and exhausting swap space. My linux box also has 300MB of virtual memory (64MB physical, two drives with 128MB swap on each one) but I rarely use it. After two weeks I might be using up to 20MB of RAM. Well, I'm always using all of my physical ram to cache files, and load libraries, but I'm probably only really *using* 12-16MB of RAM for the running processes. Maybe I can use swap if I use the GIMP to render a giant spinning globe of the earth (worked fine, but I had to scale it down from 1000x1000 :) or if I load 100 copies of xv or something. But generally I don't have to worry about swap, and I never have to worry about my computer crashing or leaking memory.
This is why I wrote this in the first place. The Melissa virus is in the news, and I had to laugh at the comments I've been hearing. People blame virus writers for exploiting security holes, and don't yell at the company that doesn't fix their bugs. Why does Word have a macro language that lets you execute system calls? Why does Windows give you root-level access?
While we're asking questions, let me state some facts, too. If you give me a command prompt in DOS, I am god on an unrestricted Windows system. How many lines of Word BASIC do you have to write to do this? Approximately one. I figured it out by looking through the help in Word. Normally you wouldn't have to do this much, but some systems try to restrict access by not letting users choose which programs to run. However, most of the programs they do run (EXPLORER.EXE, NETSCAPE.EXE) have enough security holes or friendly features that it just slows people down. Rarely is the find hot-key disabled in Windows, so search for your favorite program to run! If you have Preferences in NETSCAPE, change your telnet proxy to the command interpreter. This is a weird approach to security in the first place, security through denying useful features from the user. In UNIX, we just make sure you can't delete anything important, or change configuration files, that sort of thing. But regular old Windows has a pretty limited idea of file permissions and ownership, seeing as how it's inherited them from DOS. For a humorous example of the sort of limitations it works under, look at the filename for this web page. I didn't have to call it that, but it's symbolic.
One touted feature of Windows 2000 (currently delayed to October 6th, but they admit that it will probably be delayed further. This was scheduled for years earlier, back when it was NT 5.0...) is that it will do better versioning of DLL's, so that they don't share filenames. Hmm, sounds like libraries in UNIX. I'd love to sue Microsoft for using this concept or infringing on, say, AT&T patents, but the idea is so old that if anyone ever had a patent on it, it would have expired by now. This raises the question, "If this is a well-known idea in OS design, why didn't you do it in the first place?" but we save the really tough questions for people who know how to program and design operating systems.
Please send me comments, I'll be happy to post them, and maybe even post
my opinions about or responses to them.
pdbaylie@eos.ncsu.edu
Don't slaugter Microsoft too bad, after all some people do need to make a living (even if it's making other people's life hell, just look at the IRS). -- Tim Wright
Some people get what they deserve. I wish the IRS would, but that's another story. :)
Dude, that's not a good way to inspire sympathy. Especially on April 14th. -- Chris Gorski
*chuckle*
(I always chuckle at gorski. It's just funny.)
When do you want to reboot today?
Vote Microsoft!
Screw shipping on time!
Office 2000 in 1999!
Windows 2000 in 2001!
Windows 2001: A (disk) Space Odyssey (to the store to get a bigger HD).
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