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From: peter@sugar.hackercorp.com (Peter da Silva)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: OS/2 vs AmigaDOS
Message-ID: <3774@sugar.hackercorp.com>
Date: 30 Apr 89 14:50:19 GMT
References: <2134@iitmax.IIT.EDU> <570001@hplchm.HP.COM>
Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston
Lines: 36

In article <570001@hplchm.HP.COM>, griffith@hplchm.HP.COM (Jeff Griffith) writes:
> The two systems are quite different. Amiga does provides only two forms
> of process control; you can spawn a new TASK (which I've gotten to work yet),
> or you can EXEC a new process (via the equivalent of Un*x "system()").

The Amiga has three kinds of tasks: TASKS, PROCESSES (tasks plus a process
structure so you can call DOS), and CLI PROCESSES (processes plus an attached
terminal device). OS/2 has two: threads (like tasks), and processes (like CLI
processes). There's no concept in OS/2 of a process that's not associated with
a user-interface. If you want to write a daemon it has to be a driver.

> On the other hand, OS/2 combines the RMX notions of tasks (in the form of 
> threads with the child thread either sharing the parent's memory or having its
> own) with the Unix notions of processes and IPC; quite well done it appears.

ALL Amiga processes are effectively threads, with a lower overhead than OS/2.

> Personally, I think there is a good match of price/performance between these
> two; last time I looked (and I could be wrong by now), a ready-to-run OS/2
> system cost about twice the price of a ready to run Amiga

If you can get OS/2 running on a $1600 PC clone, I'd like to know. The RAM
you need to run OS/2 presentation manager will cost you more than that. And
that's ignoring the cost of OS/2 itself.

> but you get twice the system from the OS/2 box.

Since you still can't get the OS/2 box, that'd be kind of hard.

> Personally, I don't need the extra horsepower just yet.

Given the performance of what OS/2 we've seen so far, on faster machines than
the Amiga, you'd do better getting a 2620.
-- 
Peter "Have you hugged your wolf today" da Silva      `-_-'
...texbell!sugar!peter, or peter@sugar.hackercorp.com  'U`