Re: Project: FreeOS

[Florian Weimer <someone@deneb.cygnus.argh.org>]

Ted Dennison <dennison@telepath.com> writes:

> > On the other hand, NT includes quite a few backwards-compatibility
> > features (DOS, WoW, OS/2, POSIX).
> 
> NT's "DOS" window never struck me as anything more than a command shell
> that uses MS-DOS syntax for commands. 

Come on, it's a bit more than that.

> And POSIX and OS/2 just seemed to be tack-ons, not something that
> inflitrated the OS's design in any way.

Well, NT was designed to run on a number of RISC platforms, and the
members of the ACE consortium certainly wanted compatibility with their
current systems.  In the beginning, I think, it was important that the
system could run, say, an Ultrix subsystem, although there was never
developed one.  In the end, hardly anyone cared about non-IA32 platforms,
and support was discontinued for one after the other.  The only remaining
one, the Alpha platform, is probably kept only to have a 64 bit system
to experiment with today, given the fact that Microsoft will have to
port NT to a 64 bit RISC platform very soon. ;)

> I believe support for both has already been "phased out".

Yes, of course.  The POSIX subsystem is nothing more than a bad joke, and
the OS/2 subsystem is 1.x only, an the PM add-on was never widely used.
On the other hand, the OS/2 subsystem runs Microsoft Multiplan very well
(no more struggle with EMS ;).