On 8/22/24 4:35 AM, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
> On 22/08/2024 06:06,
186282@ud0s4.net wrote:
>> Geez, remember when DOS came on ONE floppy ?
>> You could DO STUFF with it, rather COMPLEX
>> stuff actually. Not a 'toy' system. Even the
>> smallest usable Linux requires a LOT more space.
>
> The correct counter to that is to point out that in no wise was DOS an
> 'operating system' - it was only a program loader.
Ummm ... no ... more than that - and ENOUGH for a LOT
of practical applications.
> In fact you could entirely bypass it to write directly to the hardware
> and many industrial applications did exactly that, yea even unto running
> their own multitaskers and so on.
You can write directly to the hardware in Linux too, IF
you can find the instructions. It's "not recommended"
of course ...
> concurrent CP/M was about the smallest multiuser multitasker OS that was
> ever crammed onto an 8086 platform IIRC. Or there might have been a real
> time one or two as well.
I don't remember a RTOS version of CP/M - but someone
may have given it a shot. Even way back in the day there
were a few RTOS - OS-9 being perhaps most prominent
(still being sold) which is "Unix-ish".
The diffs between CP/M and DOS were relatively few.
I think it WAS a good idea to bring 'pip' into the
OS kernel however.
> Linux by its nature sets out to be an unrestricted UNIX like system,.
> complete with all the complexity and bells and whistles needed to have
> multiple users, multiple processes , interprocess communications,
> daemons to handle single thread hardware like a disk, multi-layered
> security, and the ability to intersperse drivers in a rigorous manner to
> access arbitrary hardware.
I agree that Linux/Unix are generally "better" than DOS/Win.
However there IS a price.
> In short it is a complete multitasking multiuser general purpose
> operating system and you simply cannot compare it with DOS.
>
> SCO Unix needed a 386 to run - only Venix IIRC ran off a 286 - badly.
I remember the 286 - it was considered a big improvement
at the time - 8-Mhz clock ! The 386 was 'better' yet in
a larger number of ways.
> It was extremely successful because it actually worked. At an affordable
> price
>
> I've seen 256 users via serial cards running on a 386 running SCO.
> Extreme, but possible, but 64k users was a more normal limit with 32
> being normal.
Oh, very capable, no question - esp for the time. DID need
more CPU/Mem than DOS however. Biz/govt could afford it,
Joe User, not so much. Wasn't long after that 'terminal'
users, well, nobody wanted it anymore - they all wanted
nice GUIs.
> We ran about 150 over telnet at one point once the TCP/IP worked....:-)
>
> This was PDP/VAX territory ...at a price people could afford.
Yet sales were not enough to keep it alive. This
wasn't an M$ propaganda thing either, 'natural
selection' more instead. FEW wanted/needed what
Unix could do - on PC boxes anyhow. On larger
corp/govt/ed systems Unix did much better. Made
some guy named Linus kinda jealous .....
If you liked the 8088/86 era, there's still 'ELKS'
embeddable Linux kernel ... that IS very tiny.