4 ms·

Great points. It is an odd fact that Microsoft generally avoided writing operating systems on or for Intel x86 processors [1], and started the development of bo

by scholia 10y ago

Great points. It is an odd fact that Microsoft generally avoided writing operating systems on or for Intel x86 processors [1], and started the development of both NT and CE on Risc processors. Meanwhile, Linus had a PC with an Intel 386 processor, so that's what he started Linux on and for... [1] MS DOS was based on code that Microsoft bought in, not having time to develop it from scratch. However, Microsoft did have some success on x86 with its PC version of Unix, which was called Xenix.

andreiw 10y ago
Not that odd. The NT group specifically wanted a portable design, and they made the right call to initially target i860, MIPS and only then i386 machines. Contrast that to OS/2 development - the (never shipped) PowerPC OS/2 port was based on top of of an IBM fork of Mach, because the kernel was too x86 specific (derived from the pre-virtual memory 16-bit protected mode code).