Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be rebooted often enough

Re:Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be reb... by stcredzero on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @02:41PM (#2255457)

Also, just to confirm a stereotype, do you use Windows for your servers?

Related tangent: There was a time when the the US military's COTS (Civilian Off The Shelf) initiative resulted in AEGIS missile cruisers running largely on machines running Windows NT. Yes, the ships responsible for screening carrier task forces against attack -- had to be rebooted on a weekly schedule.

To be fair, the unmolested NT kernel is rock solid. I know people used to run RAID arrays with it, but for the desktop, Microsoft allowed the crossing of certain architectural lines.

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Re:Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be reb... by rst on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @03:05PM (#2255571)

And if the NT machines running your missile cruiser don't come back up, then you have real problems. During trials, the USS Yorktown had to be repeatedly towed into port after systems failures...

http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg03829.html

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Re:Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be reb... by patrickgzill on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @11:37PM (#2256923)

From what I understand the NT kernel was rock solid, if a little picky about hardware. The problem was that graphics performance suffered due to the strict isolation of the drivers from the kernel. MS relaxed those restrictions in later versions of their OS (either NT4 or Windows 2000), gaining better graphics performance at the cost of kernel stability.

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Re:Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be reb... by VladRussian on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @04:59PM (#2256005)

>the unmolested NT kernel is rock solid.

which, if memory serves me right, directly translates to "OS/2 kernel is rock solid"

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Re:Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be reb... by wmf on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @06:08PM (#2256218)

No, I don't think NT is a derivative of OS/2.

"Given these issues [with OS/2], Microsoft started to work in parallel on a version of Windows which was more future-oriented and more portable. The hiring of Dave Cutler, former VMS architect, in 1988 created an immediate competition with the OS/2 team, as Cutler did not think much of the OS/2 technology and wanted to build on his work at Digital rather than creating a "DOS plus". His "NT OS/2," was a completely new architecture." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OS/2

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Re:Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be reb... by stcredzero on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @05:10PM (#2256044)

Also closely related to "VAX kernel is rock solid"

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Re:Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be reb... by derleth on Thursday February 24, 2011 @04:39AM (#2257431)

Windows NT is more closely related to VMS than OS/2, but most directly related to DEC's unreleased Mica OS for their unreleased PRISM CPU architecture.

This is unsurprising: They're all designed by the same guy, Dave Cutler.

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Re:Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be reb... by rbanffy on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @05:13PM (#2256058)

> the unmolested NT kernel is rock solid

Too bad it resents running programs on it so much...

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Re:Mach's designers simply assumed that systems would be reb... by stcredzero on Wednesday February 23, 2011 @05:34PM (#2256114)

It's not that. It's more boneheaded stuff like injecting components supporting the GUI into the kernel.

When that happens, it doesn't resent those programs so much as that it's been violated and turned into a warped version of itself. Sort of like Jeff Goldblum's character in The Fly.

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