Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!psuvax1!news From: melling@cs.psu.edu (Michael D Mellinger) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.advocacy Subject: Re: NeXT software size Message-ID: Date: 5 May 91 17:36:51 GMT References: <0o9Gv_t+1@cs.psu.edu> <4d7Gypu=1@cs.psu.edu> <1991May5.124008.24559@sugar.hackercorp.com> Sender: news@cs.psu.edu (Usenet) Organization: Penn State Computer Science Lines: 29 In-Reply-To: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com's message of 5 May 91 12:40:08 GMT Nntp-Posting-Host: sunws5.sys.cs.psu.edu In article <1991May5.124008.24559@sugar.hackercorp.com> peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva) writes: But even as UNIX workstations go the NeXT is pretty wasteful of space. Plain BSD can run in 640K on an 80386. That's the latest BSD, by the way. The problem with the NeXT is they took an intermediate port of a research O/S (Mach) and used it. They didn't wait for (or do themselves) a real microkernel version, so the NeXT system image takes up 30M of VM before you load any apps. Why? It's got two operating systems in there: Mach *plus* most of BSD. Glad to see you read Chris Torek's post in comp.arch. We read the same newgroups :-). Watch out where you say SYSVR4 is easier to administer than BSD. The NeXT's swapfile is only 20MB + 8MB of real RAM. It doesn't add up. But I have heard that both Mach and BSD are in there. The version of Mach that you are talking about is 3.0? That wasn't even completed until recently. Again RAM is cheap. Take advantage of the fact that technology keeps getting better and cheaper. Would you rather wait N number of years before Commodore(or Apple) gets around to implementing virtual memory, memory protection, etc? The NeXT's performance is acceptable with only 8MB(they were originally going to ship them with only 4MB). I imagine sometime in the future, NeXT will be able to incorporate Mach 3.0 and all of the functionality will still be there but it will run more efficiently, or at least take up less memory. -Mike