5 ms·

It seems silly today, but back in the 90s there was a pretty vocal (albeit small) contingent of people who didn’t like protected memory because of its performan

It seems silly today, but back in the 90s there was a pretty vocal (albeit small) contingent of people who didn’t like protected memory because of its performance impact, software compatibility issues, and reluctance to relearn some performance hacks. Not just around Netware but on the MacOS side as well.

roryirvine 4y ago
Oh yes - Amiga fans were loudly anti-protected memory, Archimedes / RiscOS users poo-poohed preemptive multi-tasking, and Mac owners claimed that neither was necessary.
_yb2s 4y ago
I’m not old enough to remember, but does anyone know if there was ever a vocal anti-OS faction? It would seem logical, since an OS has a lot of overhead vs bare metal apps, and pre task switching OSs don’t offer much that can’t be implemented directly in each program.
- andrewstuart 4y ago
  No. The biggest issue for the entire industry at the time was the operating system. Everyone knew we needed real operating systems. Everyone was sick of crashing applications stomping on each other. Servers had just started to become a thing in the corporate world and server applications were just arriving. People were very interested in operating systems and where they were headed. There wasn't even the concept of "bare metal" at the time. All DOS applications were bare metal. All Windows applications were cooperative multitasking and crashy. People were hungering for better. Everyone expected that OS/2 was the server operating system that we would all be using. And indeed it probably would have been if Microsoft hadn't killed it. Lots of server applications got ported to OS/2 before Windows killed it stone dead.
  - _yb2s 4y ago
    My question was aimed at much earlier pre-DOS times, wondering if there was resistance to simple non multitasking OSs like DOS vs booting straight into the application. I was around and remember what you are describing. Edit: for example, when I was in elementary school in the early 90s we had a lab of already antique Apple IIs, with no permanent storage or OS. We would just boot directly into programs on a floppy. Some of the programs themselves had simple features to save and open files.
bitwize 4y ago
There are people in the Amiga fandom who still believe this whole virtual memory fad is going to pass once people realize that AmigaOS EXEC was far more responsive in handling multiple tasks.

roryirvine 4y ago

Oh yes - Amiga fans were loudly anti-protected memory, Archimedes / RiscOS users poo-poohed preemptive multi-tasking, and Mac owners claimed that neither was necessary.

_yb2s 4y ago

I’m not old enough to remember, but does anyone know if there was ever a vocal anti-OS faction? It would seem logical, since an OS has a lot of overhead vs bare metal apps, and pre task switching OSs don’t offer much that can’t be implemented directly in each program.

andrewstuart 4y ago
No. The biggest issue for the entire industry at the time was the operating system. Everyone knew we needed real operating systems. Everyone was sick of crashing applications stomping on each other. Servers had just started to become a thing in the corporate world and server applications were just arriving. People were very interested in operating systems and where they were headed. There wasn't even the concept of "bare metal" at the time. All DOS applications were bare metal. All Windows applications were cooperative multitasking and crashy. People were hungering for better. Everyone expected that OS/2 was the server operating system that we would all be using. And indeed it probably would have been if Microsoft hadn't killed it. Lots of server applications got ported to OS/2 before Windows killed it stone dead.
- _yb2s 4y ago
  My question was aimed at much earlier pre-DOS times, wondering if there was resistance to simple non multitasking OSs like DOS vs booting straight into the application. I was around and remember what you are describing. Edit: for example, when I was in elementary school in the early 90s we had a lab of already antique Apple IIs, with no permanent storage or OS. We would just boot directly into programs on a floppy. Some of the programs themselves had simple features to save and open files.

bitwize 4y ago

There are people in the Amiga fandom who still believe this whole virtual memory fad is going to pass once people realize that AmigaOS EXEC was far more responsive in handling multiple tasks.