life after Windows....

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
Mxsmanic wrote:
White Spirit writes:

That's why I specifically said 'GNU/Linux'.
So which is it?

The same is true for any OS.
No. Most operating systems will run out of the box.

You are playing word games, and it isn't coming off as
anything other than childish.

Linux specifically is the Kernel. GNU specifically is
the required userland toolset.

That is an OS. There are dozens of Linux distributions
that could be described as exactly that, and they *all*
run very well "out of the box". Claiming otherwise is
dishonest on your part.

The above of course does *not* describe a lot of other
necessary software that a user can expect to be in virtually
every distribution. A graphical windowing system, typical
user applications to do sound, images, text etc etc etc.

Again, virtually all Linux distributions provide a set
of such applications, but depending on what the target
use is the applications might be vastly different. (And
of course Microsoft does exactly the same with different
distributions of their current OS too.)

Rubbish. If Win32 is so complete, why are people abandoning Internet
Explorer in favour of Firefox and acquiring other software to run on it?
The browser is not part of the OS. They can run whatever applications they
want.

So what Microsoft does is right by definition and
anything different that any Linux distribution does is
wrong, by your definition!

You are being just so darned objective here that it is
overwhelming! :-) (Please do not miss that that is
a sarcastic remark which states the opposite of actual
fact.)

Not all of them. Probably around 50%.
Well-behaved MS-DOS applications still run (those that actually call MS-DOS,
instead of trying to manipulate the hardware).

A contradiction of fact. MS-DOS was a program loader,
not an OS... no application could "call MS-DOS" rather
than manipulate the hardware. MS-DOS did not provide
OS services to running applications.
Uhm, if MSDOS didn't provide OS services to applications,
what was INT 21H?



--
Have you ever noticed that all legal documents need to be
completed in black or blue pen, but we vote in pencil?

Doug Jewell wrote:
Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
Mxsmanic wrote:
White Spirit writes:

That's why I specifically said 'GNU/Linux'.
So which is it?

The same is true for any OS.
No. Most operating systems will run out of the box.
You are playing word games, and it isn't coming off as
anything other than childish.
Linux specifically is the Kernel. GNU specifically is
the required userland toolset.
That is an OS. There are dozens of Linux distributions
that could be described as exactly that, and they *all*
run very well "out of the box". Claiming otherwise is
dishonest on your part.
The above of course does *not* describe a lot of other
necessary software that a user can expect to be in virtually
every distribution. A graphical windowing system, typical
user applications to do sound, images, text etc etc etc.
Again, virtually all Linux distributions provide a set
of such applications, but depending on what the target
use is the applications might be vastly different. (And
of course Microsoft does exactly the same with different
distributions of their current OS too.)

Rubbish. If Win32 is so complete, why are people abandoning Internet
Explorer in favour of Firefox and acquiring other software to run on it?
The browser is not part of the OS. They can run whatever applications they
want.
So what Microsoft does is right by definition and
anything different that any Linux distribution does is
wrong, by your definition!
You are being just so darned objective here that it is
overwhelming! :-) (Please do not miss that that is
a sarcastic remark which states the opposite of actual
fact.)

Not all of them. Probably around 50%.
Well-behaved MS-DOS applications still run (those that actually call MS-DOS,
instead of trying to manipulate the hardware).
A contradiction of fact. MS-DOS was a program loader,
not an OS... no application could "call MS-DOS" rather
than manipulate the hardware. MS-DOS did not provide
OS services to running applications.
Uhm, if MSDOS didn't provide OS services to applications,
what was INT 21H?

An extension of CP/M's call to address 0005. It does
allow access to a standardized set of functions, most of
which are for interfacing hardware. But that isn't
really what one would call OS services, which are
virtually impossible to do with a single tasking program
loader.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
Doug Jewell wrote:
Floyd L. Davidson wrote:
Mxsmanic wrote:
White Spirit writes:

That's why I specifically said 'GNU/Linux'.
So which is it?

The same is true for any OS.
No. Most operating systems will run out of the box.
You are playing word games, and it isn't coming off as
anything other than childish.
Linux specifically is the Kernel. GNU specifically is
the required userland toolset.
That is an OS. There are dozens of Linux distributions
that could be described as exactly that, and they *all*
run very well "out of the box". Claiming otherwise is
dishonest on your part.
The above of course does *not* describe a lot of other
necessary software that a user can expect to be in virtually
every distribution. A graphical windowing system, typical
user applications to do sound, images, text etc etc etc.
Again, virtually all Linux distributions provide a set
of such applications, but depending on what the target
use is the applications might be vastly different. (And
of course Microsoft does exactly the same with different
distributions of their current OS too.)

Rubbish. If Win32 is so complete, why are people abandoning Internet
Explorer in favour of Firefox and acquiring other software to run on it?
The browser is not part of the OS. They can run whatever applications they
want.
So what Microsoft does is right by definition and
anything different that any Linux distribution does is
wrong, by your definition!
You are being just so darned objective here that it is
overwhelming! :-) (Please do not miss that that is
a sarcastic remark which states the opposite of actual
fact.)

Not all of them. Probably around 50%.
Well-behaved MS-DOS applications still run (those that actually call MS-DOS,
instead of trying to manipulate the hardware).
A contradiction of fact. MS-DOS was a program loader,
not an OS... no application could "call MS-DOS" rather
than manipulate the hardware. MS-DOS did not provide
OS services to running applications.
Uhm, if MSDOS didn't provide OS services to applications,
what was INT 21H?

An extension of CP/M's call to address 0005. It does
allow access to a standardized set of functions, most of
which are for interfacing hardware. But that isn't
really what one would call OS services, which are
virtually impossible to do with a single tasking program
loader.

Remember that MSDOS was written for single tasking CPU's. It
was most definitely an OS. Yeah it wasn't a multi-tasking,
multi-user system like Unix, but it was still an OS. It most
definitely provided OS services to interface the hardware to
the application. Of course the computers it was designed for
had very limited hardware - floppy and hard disk drives, a
text display, a keyboard, a parallel port (usually with
printer attached), and a couple of serial ports, was about
the extent of the hardware that the early MSDOS based
computers had. Every one of these items was accessible and
controllable by applications by going through the OS. INT21
calls covered full access to the file system, memory
management, Parallel & serial I/O, keyboard input & screen
output. More control could be had by using other INT
services provided by bios, but it was certainly possible to
write applications that accessed all standard hardware
through INT21 calls. In that respect DOS was most definitely
an OS that provided hardware services to applications.
Certainly not as advanced as unix and similar OS's that
existed at the same time, but certainly more advanced than
CP/M. I would call CP/M a "program loader" as you describe
it, because it did little more than that. It had a
rudimentary file management system, but did little else as
far as OS functions are concerned. Although MSDOS is
frequently described as an improvement or extension to CP/M,
even version 1 was considerably more advanced than CP/M. By
version 3 DOS was light years ahead.

--
Have you ever noticed that all legal documents need to be
completed in black or blue pen, but we vote in pencil?

Floyd L. Davidson writes:

An extension of CP/M's call to address 0005.

CP/M wasn't running. MS-DOS was.

It does
allow access to a standardized set of functions, most of
which are for interfacing hardware. But that isn't
really what one would call OS services, which are
virtually impossible to do with a single tasking program
loader.

It was done decades ago.