3 ms·

Computers need an OS to be useful and windows is an OS.

by 1ba9115454 9y ago

noobermin 9y ago
How much "usefulness" does a microwave require? Or a airport terminal that displays flights?
- kbart 9y ago
  If you want to do that from scratch on a general purpose MCU and expect it work reliably 24/7/365 -- the answer is hell lots. Disclaimer: I'm an embedded system engineer.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Well...even then (especially then!) Windows is not the right platform for this, I would say. Too many moving parts and stuff - one would have thunk that the GWX popups were enough of an disincentive.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- pcr0 9y ago
  The microwave picture was a joke. As for airport/train station displays, I think early displays were LED matrices running on custom hardware + OS. I suppose just hooking up an LCD flatscreen to an embedded windows computer displaying a webpage allowed for easier maintenance and richer content.
  - noobermin 9y ago
    I missed that part, sort of just scanned through the images. I'm actually chuckling a little right now.
- pavel_lishin 9y ago
  How much support do you want to do for an airport terminal? How much do you want to pay for it? You can either pay for a Windows license, or you can hire someone to write an OS from scratch. (You can also use a different OS, but then - again - you have to pay for someone to support and maintain it.)
  - noobermin 9y ago
    My point is they have to then pay $300 per terminal now. You don't avoid the cost you thought you saved on in the long run. I am not making the point that anyone should write their own OS, that would be worse from a security perspective. I think though that there is a market for a stripped down OS that has less moving parts.
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      Nope. Just nuke it from orbit and repave with a clean image: cheaper, faster and safer. Those things are essentially thin clients, there is zero valuable data on them.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Not much. I've seen the same thing (transit departures) provided by a locked down, CD-booting, ramdisk-only Puppy Linux (of all the possible distros! Found out from its distinctive boot sequence messages). Since the functionality was essentially "bring up the display and network, then point a kiosk browser to an auto-refreshing URL", there was no need for the other five million extra features that come mandatory with Windows (which probably would have been XP or XP Embedded). That's not something you'd need a Linux hacker for - just configure the distro _once_, all the remaining work is webdesign.

Computers need an OS to be useful and windows is an OS.

noobermin 9y ago

How much "usefulness" does a microwave require? Or a airport terminal that displays flights?

kbart 9y ago
If you want to do that from scratch on a general purpose MCU and expect it work reliably 24/7/365 -- the answer is hell lots. Disclaimer: I'm an embedded system engineer.
- Piskvorrr 9y ago
  Well...even then (especially then!) Windows is not the right platform for this, I would say. Too many moving parts and stuff - one would have thunk that the GWX popups were enough of an disincentive.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pcr0 9y ago
The microwave picture was a joke. As for airport/train station displays, I think early displays were LED matrices running on custom hardware + OS. I suppose just hooking up an LCD flatscreen to an embedded windows computer displaying a webpage allowed for easier maintenance and richer content.
- noobermin 9y ago
  I missed that part, sort of just scanned through the images. I'm actually chuckling a little right now.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
How much support do you want to do for an airport terminal? How much do you want to pay for it? You can either pay for a Windows license, or you can hire someone to write an OS from scratch. (You can also use a different OS, but then - again - you have to pay for someone to support and maintain it.)
- noobermin 9y ago
  My point is they have to then pay $300 per terminal now. You don't avoid the cost you thought you saved on in the long run. I am not making the point that anyone should write their own OS, that would be worse from a security perspective. I think though that there is a market for a stripped down OS that has less moving parts.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Nope. Just nuke it from orbit and repave with a clean image: cheaper, faster and safer. Those things are essentially thin clients, there is zero valuable data on them.
Piskvorrr 9y ago
Not much. I've seen the same thing (transit departures) provided by a locked down, CD-booting, ramdisk-only Puppy Linux (of all the possible distros! Found out from its distinctive boot sequence messages). Since the functionality was essentially "bring up the display and network, then point a kiosk browser to an auto-refreshing URL", there was no need for the other five million extra features that come mandatory with Windows (which probably would have been XP or XP Embedded). That's not something you'd need a Linux hacker for - just configure the distro _once_, all the remaining work is webdesign.