[mythtv-users] OT: A major difference between Widows and Linux

Ben bkamen at benjammin.net
Thu May 12 20:39:17 UTC 2016


On 05/12/2016 04:50 AM, Another Sillyname wrote:
> Having been a windows user since 3.0 (yes there really was) and a self
> taught 'nix user since Fedora 4 (I remember the days of having to
> pretty much compile every app needed), I can say the largest
> 'debugging' difference is the level of information you can get from
> the two OSs.  In Windows often you get a BSOD and can only do post
> reboot analysis of the dump.....whereas in 'nix I very very very
> seldom see an app kill the OS....thus allowing 'real time' analysis of
> what's going on still.

I remember working at a computerLand as a teen and previewing Windows 1 (maybe it was 2.. I forget) -- on IBM PS/2 Model 80's we sold in the store.

So yea -- it really did exist... and compared to my Atari ST -- was a joke... lol... (or the Amiga or even Apple to be fair. GEM was wayyyyy ahead of Windows at the time.)

The unix we had to play with was Xenix (IIRC) and was all commandline. But I didn't mess with it much.

So -- moving forward from the days were windows was really an application under DOS (which includes EVERYTHING windows 1-3, 95,98, ME), the whole DOS affair was a mess.

And the GPF and BSoD will probably be butt-of-jokes that last for the end of Mankind.

I can't believe I'm on Win7 now and USB->Serial drivers still can crash the OS.

I never had to deal with this under Unix/Linux -- and yes, how the OS is built/designed is definitely why.

Was it possible to crash Unix? Sure. I'd seen Devs do it in the past... but when things were done properly, it was hard.

I only saw kernel panics under older Unix OSs during kernel driver development. Past that... never.

> This can be critical in identifying and solving a problem.
>
> I think it also important in your 'mindset' that you differentiate
> between app generated issues and OS generated issues......sometimes in
> Windows an app will just keep crashing until you do a reboot and it
> can be quite difficult to even identify the cause.

Amen to that.

 -Ben



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