🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <2hn1ct$o...@aurora.engr.latech.edu> dgar...@engr.latech.edu (Don Garrett) writes:
>: > We're talking a full-featured Mach-based Unix, ...
>
>  Um, sort of. It's based on Mach 2.x (I forget, the revision).
>Unfortunatly Mach's best stuff was all added in version 3. I was
>prepping to buy NS/I until a Next representative explained this to
>me. I was really hacked, and finally ended up just running Linux. It
>was cheaper (free) and gives much better performance on the hardware I
>can afford. (486-33 with 12MB, 500M drive, ATI-GUP(2M)).

Depends on what you define as "best stuff".  Mach 3.0 was primarily a move
from a monolithic kernel to a true microkernel, with almost all processes
(swapper, pager, etc) executing in user space.  However, by separating the
kernel processes from the kernel space, you take a huge performance hit.  
I believe NeXT evaluated 3.X in-house, and determined it was more than 2X
slower than 2.X.

Since the move didn't benefit anyone but a kernel hacker, NeXT stayed with
2.X.  (For what it's worth, Microsoft took the same path with NT; NT is 
'derived' from 2.X, rather than 3.X)

You won't get any arguments from me that Linux will run faster on your
hardware than NEXTSTEP.  However, part of what makes NEXTSTEP attractive
is things like PB/IB, DPS, RenderMan and the 3D-Kit, which Linux doesn't 
have at the moment.  (I have my suspicions that some of the graphic 
development for DOOM was done with 3D-Kit, or something similar).
--
Jonathan