What is an Operating System (was Electronics Barn closing)

[Roger Merchberger]

Rumor has it that Fred Cisin may have mentioned these words:

>XP IS a version of NT, not just "based on it" (2000 IS NT5, XP would have
>been NT6)

Erm... not quite. 2K is NT5, XP *is* NT5.1, so the "evolution" of XP from 
2K is very slight - mainly in more security holes, tighter yet integration 
of IE, the candy-coated GUI (which you can revert to 2K-like, tho it ain't 
easy to find all the different animation settings without TweakUI) and the 
ability to play a lot more games (mostly in the 3D realm).

... Oh, and in more memory usage. I can trim most unnecessary services (for 
me) in Win2K so about 58-60Meg is used on boot - IIRC, the best I ever got 
XP down to is around 90-95Meg, with comparable services running.

[[ Contrast that with my LinuxFromScratch 4.0 install on my laptop - with 
comparable services (DHCP enabled, etc.) running, X running, animated 
background (xfishtank) and 1 terminal window open (on boot, so I didn't 
fiddle with it) -> 23Meg used. This includes apache, PostgreSQL & 
ColdFusion 4.5. On boot with no GUI (but all services) -> 15 Meg. My 
freshly compiled LFS 5.1.1 with no services running: 9.2 Meg. My wife's 
Shuttle running standard RedHat 9 & Nautilus for the GUI - a touch over 
100Meg. It goes to show that enduser linux is sometimes no better now than 
enduser Winders.]]

Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | A new truth in advertising slogan
sysadmin, Iceberg Computers | for MicroSoft: "We're not the oxy...
zmerch at 30below.com          |                         ...in oxymoron!"