Pocket operating systems

[Enterra]

I've been using a pocket pc for several years now, and I realized something one night. I'm working with a windows operating system that really doesn't crash! (unless you abuse it) I really hadn't been assosiating microsoft with the handhelds because of this, but I came to the conclusion that this is probably the best operating system that MS has come out with.

That being said, I was wondering who agrees and disagrees with me. Let me know

[Kaitain]

I can crash it in 15 seconds without really trying. It's only robust if you do things M$'s way

[Enterra]

If you try to, you can crash any OS.... thats really not what I'm talking about.

[Enterra]

Well then... in your opinion, what is the best OS from MS?

[dsio]

EASY!!!!

Best OS EVER from Microsoft was called Microsoft BOB

and btw, crash any os? ... install NetBSD on your pocketPC and try to crash it!

[dsio]

now THAT is a boot screen for the uber 1337.

and talk about a cool logon screen!

Want to surf the "information superhighway"? Then just like any other highway, click on the car!

[Enterra]

LOL, wow, that takes me back a ways... I actually still have that program... however, thats all it is is a program... not really an OS, and all you had to do to crash BOB was create to many lava lamps

[Enterra]

Originally Posted by dsio

EASY!!!!

Best OS EVER from Microsoft was called Microsoft BOB

and btw, crash any os? ... install NetBSD on your pocketPC and try to crash it!

Oh, and every OS has its weak points, for instance, software. Linux is not exactly a software rich OS. At least software that I would want to use. It mostly just has basic apps like office and stuff. Although, with wine making the progress that its making, there maybe a big time future for Linux. However, I just don't see it as practical yet. Oh, and you can crash any os, it would be foolish to say other wise If you don't beleave that, just talk to Pitch, apparently he can kill any thing, some times with out really doing any thing! LOL

referance to Pitch:
Good Bad or Ugly?

[dsio]

I tend to disagree with you on that. OSes should NOT crash at all. the fact that many do doesnt mean that all do. One of the reasons i use BSD is that it is very different to linux and is in many ways superior to linux. Security wise, it blows it away, and stability wise, well lol.

www.yahoo.com

thats OpenBSD.
Yahoo has a policy of rebooting their hardware every 500 days of uptime. If they didnt, it never would.

Think of embedded systems that never crash. The Cisco 2513 router i have here has been up since 1993. It runs an operating system that is much more sophicticated than most people will give it credit for. Hardware failure and OS failure are very different things, and hardware failure is what pitch does for a living. He isnt a computer enthusiast, hes a technology vandalist.

[Kaitain]

Originally Posted by dsio

I tend to disagree with you on that. OSes should NOT crash at all. the fact that many do doesnt mean that all do. One of the reasons i use BSD is that it is very different to linux and is in many ways superior to linux. Security wise, it blows it away, and stability wise, well lol.

Agreed, an OS shouldn't ever crash. If an individual app crashes, the OS should be able simply to free the memory and carry on.

My main experience with MS on portable devices is with MS Smartphone 2002, though a number of friends of mine with PDAs have found similar: for the sort of system you're looking at (cellphone/pda) WinCE is too big, too cumbersome, and too prone to being taken out by applications running on top of it. Much like its larger cousin.

Compared to my other PDA - a Palm, running (naturally) PalmOS. Said OS is totally frill-free and so has nothing like the eye-candy of a WinCE PDA, but it is very hard to crash. I managed it, but only by forgetting to check version numbers and trying to install something for OS5.1 on top of OS4. In day to day use, even serious abuse doesn't phase it. This is what an OS is supposed to do! Looking over my colleague's shoulder while he plays with his SonyEricsson P910 shows that Symbian is much the same in this regard...

I donated a cheap adsl modem/router/ap to a friend - it runs vxworks. It has run vxworks non-stop for the last couple of years without a glitch! Another fine embedded OS.

M$ should be capable of producing a small, fast and stable OS. Instead, they opt for large-scale bloatware, can't keep it internally consistent and so their product crashes.

[Enterra]

I completely agree, and am able to do so without changing my position. I beleave that OS's shouldn't crash, and I agree that Linux, especially BSD is a lot more stable than any thing that "M$" has ever put out. However, I also beleave that any thing written by a person has flaws. There is always some thing that is unforseen, so that means that there will always be some thing that the software written by a person is not ready to handle. There are a great many holes in every OS that has been put out but MS when compared to almost any other Operating system, but when I started this I was comparing operating systems created only by Microsoft that was released and used on a mass scale. Linux, or any form of it was outside that scope. Do you still disagree?

[dsio]

mmm, i see what you mean, but i consider unix in general (rather than just talking about linux) to be quite prominent in the global OS market. When people talk about unix as an OS, they make the mistake of imagining the linux box running X as a workstation / windows replacement. The fact is unix doesnt fit into that category as much as it is a category in its own right.

Simply look at the world's HTTP servers. despite their best efforts, microsoft have not been able to dent the world leader, Apache. have a look here: http://news.netcraft.com/archives/20...er_survey.html

ill include the market share graph at the bottom of this post.

consider FTP servers as well. No self respecting system administrator would use windows 2003 server. At least not it he wants to go home at night. Linux is a large part of the unix spectrum but it is by no means the extent of it. Solaris, BSD, Novell are all server OSes that not only wipe the floor with microsoft products in terms of stability and security, but also are so cost effective it makes it hard to justify buying microsoft products.

Web servers in general are stable and secure, and in normal operation are not fiddled with. They just sit and do their thing. My Mandrake Apache box has never crashed in several months. It just goes and goes. As does almost every other server on the internet. And most of those servers are running unix of some form, in many cases not linux.

MAC OSX is also a unix operating system that is definately distributed on mass throughout the world. I am not a apple person, but i do respect OSX for what it is, and i can safely say i have never been able to crash or kill it.

Oh and btw, though similar in many ways, BSD is not linux. BSD and linux were developed seperately, and though BSD seamlessly emulates linux when needed, linux does not emulate BSD very well at all. Linux was made by Linus Tourvalds (crazy looking russian bastard) while BSD was developed by the university of california Berkley, hence BSD (Berkley Software Distribution).

[Kaitain]

Originally Posted by Enterra

Linux, or any form of it was outside that scope. Do you still disagree?

To use the old cliche, you're comparing apples with oranges though. It is not really feasible to make a comparison of a collection of MS OS and say "this is the best of them" since many of them are upgrades of each other, and others are designed to do very different tasks. Especially comparing a full desktop OS with a supposedly lighter-weight embedded OS is a little bit odd.

On a feature-per-feature basis, Windows XP has phenomenally more features, greater flexibility and greater use than PockectPC. Obviously. PocketPC is smaller to fit a smaller device. It is not supposed to be as complex as full Windows, though MS have clearly used the same toolkits as far as possible. Consequently it crashes less (being smaller) but still crashes (having inherited bugs from big Windows). The two are designed to integrate, by dint of the awful ActiveSync.

A more valid comparison is of how a particular MS product lines up against its competitors: here PocketPC does not perform well at all. Compared with Symbian, PalmOS and the venerable Psion, it is overbloated, unstable, clunky and slow. It has software, but PalmOS especially is not exactly software-poor. Additionally, the ability to sync PocketPC devices with non-MS systems is rather limited. PocketPC is really not equal to its competitors, therefore it cannot be regarded as MS' best product.

Full Windows is a different matter. Much as I prefer Linux for myself, I do not recommend it as a cure-all (except for some tongue-in-cheek digs about 64 bit drivers). In the same terms as those used to compare PDA OS, Windows actually comes out on top. It is still clunky, overbloated and pi$$-poor, but in a way people seem to understand (not the case with Linux) and software-rich (not the case for desktop *nix and OSX). MS best product is, like it or not, XP.

That said I still have a fondness for 2kPro. Only that allowed me to go and have a coffee in the mornings while it booted without obviously wasting office time

[keithwalton]

pocketpc 2003se sucks, it doesnt properly support cf type microdrives! i have one it will randomly read from it when it chooses it wants to and it will not write to it period.
Apparently windows mobile 2005 fixes this, i say apparently as flash upgrading my acer n50 killed it and i'm still waiting to hear back from acer (4 days encounting since support request)