Re:Linux vs Blue Screen of Death

[Adam Williams <adam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>  Let me ask a couple of questions to the list.  Why does Windows NT blue
>screen so often, and Linux does not?  Both are protected mode operating

I believe there are three primary causes:

1.  Applications are permitted (expected) to mess with system
libraries and other critical files.  Unix application typically
take no such liberties.

2.  The integration of the GUI into the OS adds an enourmous amount
of vulnerability (and code bloat).  Unstable GUI components can trash
the enviroment.  Also there seems to be "holes" in the OLE/DDE system
whereby applications spill over each other,  enough almost to call into
question it's bieng a "protected mode" OS.  I would argue that OLE/DDE
shouldn't even be part of the OS, but a user mode OS service, such as 
CORBA is in knome.

3.  Backwards compatibilty, this forces compromises to be made in the
architecure.

>systems, so what gives?  Does anyone have any real semi-concrete ideas
>here?  I would expect an app to crash, but not the entire OS.

Yes, see above.

>OK, now that we have admitted that NT does indeed blue screen heavily
>(usually while using MS Office, go figure)  What did MS do to 2000 that
>prevents it?

For one they dropped alot of backward compatibility.  Supposedly they
reengineered alot of code from scratch.

>If this were happening to me while using Linux I would think of hardware
>failure.

Me too.  I'd suspect it under NT as well, it really isn't THAT unstable, just
no where near as stable as UNIX.  It all depends on what your used too.  I
know PC people who thing NT is great (40 days of uptime!), whereas I think
a crash every 200 days sucks.

>What can I do to diagnose those nasty bsod's?

Trial and error.  Reinstall the OS,  add applications and drivers one by
one until the OS starts to wobble.  I've found some applications simply
CANNOT coincide on the same box.  (Never had such a problem under UNIX).

>On a side note, does anybody know why Netscape6 in windows 2000 takes up
>less memory  than under Xwindows?  this is very frustrating to  me.  Is it
>in the architechture of the Xserver?  Is it because windows uses a

Sort of an architecture flaw.  X windows does not "really" provide a GUI
set to the developer (except quite low level stuff).  Most people use a
widget set like Qt, Motif, Gtk, V,  etc...  Because there is a proliferation
of such sets a developer can't assume a given platform has any given one.  So
netscape is linked statically to the Motif widget library, making it HUGE. 
The alternative is to use shared library's (*.so in UNIX, .dll in Win32),
which MOST applications choose to do, and are thus quite small.  Netscape
6 will be ALOT smaller.

>more proprietary .dll and linux uses multiple libs that vary from
>distro to distro, making it nescesary to add these components at
>compile time?  Does anybody think that one reason that windows is less 
>stable is because the 'gui' is running right there with the kernel (vs

Hell yes.

>Xwindows, which is a normal process that can be
>terminated without bringing down the system)?

Hell yes, I say again.  A GUI at the OS level is stupid, stupid, stupid.