3 ms·
The context here is desktop systems, not mainframes. Though the interesting takeaway from your comparison is the fact that desktops these days run server kerne
by hnlmorg 5y ago
The context here is desktop systems, not mainframes.
Though the interesting takeaway from your comparison is the fact that desktops these days run server kernels, which is a testament to the build quality of servers.
Which segues nicely into a recap of my point: 90s desktop systems didn't have memory protection et al so one buggy application would cause the system to crash. Everything was carefully layered like a house of cards. The switch to NT and UNIX largely fixed most of those issues but later builds of macOS seem as buggy to me as Win 9x and MacOS 8 and 9 were.
- mixmastamyk 5y agoThere were a number of reliable desktop systems by the 90s, if you wanted to spend extra money for it.
- hnlmorg 5y agoYou're conflating workstations with personal computers. In the 90s systems like OS/2 and NeXT were defined as "workstations" to make a distinction between the old lineage of personal computing platforms (like Win 9x and Mac OS running on typically budget hardware) from high end systems running typically multi-user systems (often literally mainframe OSs). Post-90s and the "workstation" definition went away when NeXT became OS X and NT replaced the DOS-bootloaded Windows lineage; and dedicated workstation hardware became cost ineffective due to improvements in consumer hardware -- not least of all x86 (and later AMD64). But in the 90s the distinction was real. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workstation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workstation