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Feature wise, there isn't much difference anymore. Thats because Linux is not a community driven effort with volunteers sending patches. IIRC tehre was an artic
by ksk 14y ago
Feature wise, there isn't much difference anymore. Thats because Linux is not a community driven effort with volunteers sending patches. IIRC tehre was an article about how 75% of the code being contributed was by paid developers. That has caused most feature gaps to be minimized.
The primary difference that remains is that Linux has "evolved" where as NT was "designed". The reason for this is that modern linux has had to work around several shortcomings of the UNIX model. (for e.g. non-async I/O, suid crap, non pre-emptive kernel syscalls etc)
So, what that means is that NT (in design) has specific interface boundaries in the kernel. For e.g. the device driver design has specific interfaces for the I/O Manager, the Power Manager , PnP manager etc. and communication is achieved via I/O request packets in a highly structured way. Linux is much more monolithic in this way (even though both get the job done in the end) I don't have access to the source so I can't say how much this modularity exists in practice. But atleast in theory it means that major changes to the kernel become much more easier.
- drill_sarge 14y ago>Thats because Linux is not a community driven effort with volunteers sending patches. Of course it is. Find something broken and submit your fix. Try that for NT Kernel. Also it is true that a lot of GNU/Linux devs (it's not limited to the kernel) are paid by big companies. But there are a lot of volunteers who do this in their spare time and if they do a good job they may be hired by someone who pays them to do it full time. thats how I got my job.
- ksk 14y agoMy point was that commercial investment has resulted in minimizing any gap that existed between the two. If the majority of the work on Linux was done by unpaid volunteers working in their free time then Linux would have remained an obscure hobbyist OS. So yes, Linux is not community driven. Its totally commercial-interest driven. There is nothing wrong with that.
- wnight 14y agoThe company I work at employs a few open source devs and we usually hire people who are already doing things we want, but we just want more of, or to have our use case a bit better supported. We don't really get to dictate what they code,we just pick people who are already, to scratch their own itch, coding what we need. So yes, there is a lot of paid work, but it's got a very individual character to it compared to my job where theoretically I could be coding anything a customer had convinced sales we needed.
- marcosdumay 14y ago> Linux is not a community driven effort... 75% of the code being contributed was by paid developers. Altough, yes, your point was taken, you have a weard definition of community that excludes profit motivated people.