[plug] Linux isn't there yet

[John Summerfield]

> 
> 
> Hi all,
> 
> I don't know if Matt covered it in the links he quoted but the
> big falling down of NT (literally) is that it and its apps (servers)
> are multi-threaded to the hilt.
> 
> In theory this makes for better performance (less time for
> context switch between threads and no need to copy
> data between processes).
> In practice, if one thread crashes the whole service dies,
> so multiple heavyweight tasks are better for stability (the
> unix approach). You then try to improve the performance
> of context switches etc -- the Linux approach.
> The need to copy data between address spaces can
> be avoided by the judicious use of shared memory
> segments (eg Apache, Oracle).
> 
> In summary of these arguments and others, in theory, NT
> is fast. In practice, well, NT tends to crash a lot.
> In theory, Linux is slower; in practice Linux is more stable, and
> the performance aint that bad.

I can say little about NT coz I do't know much, but OS/2 is 
"multi-threaded to the hilt." According to a posting I saw on a java-linux 
mailing list, java runs much better on OS/2 than on Linux for this very 
reason. I saw no counter claims, so I expect the claim's substantially 
correct.

The stability of threads depends on the quality of the code: a thread can 
end for any of many reasons without taking out the whole application.
-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
Configuration, networking, combined IBM ftpsites index.