Messages in this thread |  | | Date | Wed, 22 Jan 1997 12:00:22 -0500 (EST) | From | "Mark H. Wood" <> | Subject | Re: Good point of Linux over Windows NT |
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On Mon, 20 Jan 1997, yuri mironoff wrote:
> > > On Sun, 19 Jan 1997, Greg Alexander wrote: > > > On Sun, 19 Jan 1997, yuri mironoff wrote: > > > > > 1) First and foremost - OS features make an operating system. As examples: > > > good SMP support (scalability), async IO and security are a MUST for today's > > > servers. As poorly as those features are implemented in NT, they are practically > > > nonexistant in Linux. > > > > I can't think of any response except "bullshit". > > Linux has SMP support. I would not call it good. Neither would I > > call NT's SMP support good. > > what the hell is async IO? If you're saying that linux doesn't > > buffer _everything_ then you're just _wrong_. disk is buffered, com is > > buffered, anything can be async. You can mount disks sync, if you want. > > You are not talking to an NT supporter here. Linux SMP is in its > infancy. And NO thats not what async IO means. You have to give credit > where credit is due otherwise you're just another "Linux beats everything > because its Linux" banner boy. If we dont have the good sense to admit > Linux' shortcomings how is Linux ever going to develop further?
Since the guts of NT are basically VMS warmed over (hmmm, that would make it RSX11M mk III), "asynchronous I/O" probably means the ability to request that the kernel start an I/O and send a signal when it is complete. Meanwhile the user process goes on doing other stuff. Traditionally Unix-like systems do this by forking. Linux can do better than that, with threads. (VMS I/O forking is a special case of multithreading.) So probably the only thing that is missing is some syntactic sugar to package the I/O thread(s) conveniently.
Did I get it right?
Mark H. Wood, Lead System Programmer MWOOD@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU Those who will not learn from history are doomed to reimplement it.
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