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From: sdyer@bbncca.ARPA (Steve Dyer)
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: Re: Small micro OS for Education - (nf)
Message-ID: <671@bbncca.ARPA>
Date: Sat, 14-Apr-84 15:42:19 EST
Article-I.D.: bbncca.671
Posted: Sat Apr 14 15:42:19 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 15-Apr-84 01:58:00 EST
References: <2006@ihnss.UUCP> <3400039@uokvax.UUCP>
Organization: Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Cambridge, Ma.
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Much as I like OS9, I find the comment that "the decision not to swap is a
MAJOR win of OS9 over UNIX and its clones" a bit strong.  What this means
is that if you're not careful, especially in a dynamic multi-process
environment, memory gets fragmented, and processes which ran successfully
at one point in time won't have sufficient contiguous memory to start up.
Sure, this is ordinarily an intelligent decision for floppy-only based
systems wherefrom OS9 springs, but *I* would like to be able to make that
decision myself, thank you very much.  Especially with the advent of low
cost hard disks, the additional system slowness of a swapping system
might possibly be worth the increase in flexibility and predictability.
I could imagine micro-based versions of UNIX which would allow the user
to configure it to swap, or not, depending on the system-wide requirements.
As it is, OS9 avoids the problem altogether--that's not exactly a win,
that's a cop-out.
-- 
/Steve Dyer
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