Comment by laumars
7 years ago
I’m very confused by your post. You start off talking about desktop machines but NT was actually engineered for servers and then later ported to the desktop. You then describe a bunch of features Linux does better than Windows (eg updating drivers without a reboot).
I think a more reasonable argument is to make is just that Windows is engineered differently to Linux. There’s definitely advantages and disadvantages to each approach but ultimately it’s a question of personal preference.
NT is engineered for a different category of servers, though - it's a workgroup server first (originally its chief competitor was NetWare), and a Web/Internet server second. That drives a different set of priorities.
For example, as someone elsewhere in the comments pointed out, NT does file access in a way that works very well when accessing network shares. That's a pretty core use case for Windows on business workstations, where it's common for people to store all the most important files they work with on a network share, for easier collaboration with other team members.
NT was architected to handle high-end workstations from day one — there’s a reason why running the GUI was mandatory even when the resource costs were fairly substantial.
Check out e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1 for the history of that era. The big selling point was that your business could code against one API everywhere, rather than having DOS PCs and expensive Unix, VAX, etc. hardware which was completely different and only a few people on staff were comfortable with.
OS/2 was a high end desktop OS, but NT diverged a little and took some heavy design principles from VMS (hence it’s name, WNT) and was thusly pivoted towards back office systems rather than desktop usage.
At that time Microsoft’s server offering was a UNIX platform, Xenix, but it was becoming clear that there needed to be a platform to serve workstations that wasn’t a full blown mainframe. So Microsoft handed Xenix to SCO to focus on their collaboration with IBM so the intent there was always to build something more than just high end workstation. And Given it was intended to be administrated by people who were Windows users rather than UNIX grey beards (like myself) it clearly made sense to make the GUI a first class citizen; but that doesn’t mean it was sold to be a desktop OS.
My point was that it is misleading to say it was billed as a server OS when all of their messaging was that it was both — maybe not as far down as low-end desktops but they were very clear that any serious work could be done on NT, going after the higher end PC and lower end workstation business.
1 reply →
Drivers in Linux live in the kernel. Whenever the kernel is updated a reboot is required (in most distros). Hence your assertion that Linux updates drivers without a reboot better than windows does is questionable.
You only need to restart if there has been a kernel update (on any platform, not just “some distros”). For regular driver updates between the same kernel ABI you can use modprobe to unload and reload the drivers. This works because while drivers share the same kernel memory space (as you illuded to), they aren’t (generally) part of the same kernel binary. They normally get bundled in the same compressed archive but are separate files with a .ko extension.
This isn’t a system that is unique to Linux either. Many UNIX platforms adopt similar mechanisms and Windows obviously also has its drivers as separate executables too.
It just so happens that rebooting is an easier instruction to give users than “unload and reload the device driver”; which might also potentially be dangerous for some devices to “hot-unload” while in use. So a reboot tends to be common practice on all platforms. But at least on Linux, it’s not mandatory like it is on Windows (for reasons other than the ability to reload drivers on a live system)
It's not mandatory on Windows either. I've updated various drivers for a wide range of devices over the years without needing a reboot. From what you describe, it seems the situation on Windows is similar to that on Linux.
2 replies →