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RE[5]: Comment by mtzmtulivu
by ricegf on Mon 17th May 2010 10:58 UTC in reply to "RE[4]: Comment by mtzmtulivu"
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You can *feel* that the UNIX family targeted people running one single task at a time on a dumb terminal. Example : run a CPU-intensive task in some kind of virtual terminal. Open a new tab or use Ctl+Alt+Fx and log in. Noticed how long it took for the shell to be ready ? ... It's an issue for anything that's GUI-related.

OK, I've experienced GUI slowness, and agree that neither Gnome nor KDE are outstanding in prioritizing the GUI over background tasks by default (I know Windows is far worse, but I can't speak to other GUI shells, as I haven't used them). They should do better - although even since early Unix, nice has been available to manually address this.

BUT. Unlike Windows, KDE or Gnome are NOT part of Unix - they are just GUI shells.

Counter-example: Install gnu screen (it's a textual window manager, more or less). Start a CPU-intensive task. Create a new screen. Repeat as long as you like. Performance degrades nicely - I know, because I've used this to run a bazillion cross-compiles simultaneously without any real performance problems.

What's more, I've used this to run a bazillion cross-compiles *on dozens of computers on the local network*. All using nothing more than the command line. I know that Windows can't do this natively (you have to pay for special software); I don't have experience with other OSes in this regard, so I can't say if this is a Windows short-coming or a *nix strength.

My point, though, is that non-optimal GUI responsiveness aside (and the GUI is not the kernel), *nix not only handles multi-processing well from the primitive command line, but even multi-computing.

If you successfully write a new OS, I hope you layer it nicely like *nix rather than create a soup like Windows, so that the GUI shell will be portable. Unlike Microsoft and Apple, us Linux folks LIKE choice.

(I suspect writing a better shell is a LOT harder than it looks. That's why I haven't done it. :-D )

Then, think about UNIX's traditional startup process : it runs a script shell, which then sequentially runs several tasks.

Yes. I can't imagine why you want to multi-task during startup, though. If you have a hardware issue,can you image debugging it in a multi-tasking scenario??? *shudders*

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