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RebelTech
Average Member
USA
613 Posts |
 Posted - 11 December 2003 : 05:44:20
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I am coming at this from a Mac viewpoint so be patient. With my Mac, I know that under the hood is FreeBSD Unix. If I use a command prompt I am sending unix commands to a unix OS. Mac has become a unix shell sort of.
With Windows XP, what OS is under the hood? Is it still DOS, albeit a specialized version? Is XP completely it's own OS down to the core kernal?
Just trying to keep up... |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
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laser
Advanced Member
Australia
3859 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 05:54:08
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It's still DOS though  .... really. A few of the commands have changed, but if you want *nix comparisons it's like saying "Linux is not like HP-UX". There is differences, but the core theory is the same. |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 05:58:59
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| In the pure sense of the term, any operating system that runs on Disk is a "DOS" |
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laser
Advanced Member
Australia
3859 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 06:02:35
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lol try telling that to the Unix propeller-heads ... I'll clarify by saying MS-DOS  |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 08:00:04
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quote:
Originally posted by Gremlin
In the pure sense of the term, any operating system that runs on Disk is a "DOS"
yes and no, the distinction they make is whether it runs from disk or not, with the original DOS's only a very small portion of the OS was in memory, so every time you did anything, even issue basic commands it would have to fetch the code from a file on disk, which is where XP differs, all the core os components and drivers are loaded in to ram when it boots, while I admit, some of this may indeed be virtual ram on a disk! it is no longer classed as DOS, because the os resides in memory. |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 08:58:51
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| I always thought the distinction was whether or not it handled Disk I/O or not, not neccesarily where it runs or loads from, IBM TOS systems (which partly ran in core storage also) became known as DOS once DASD became standard feature on their mainframes, as far as I know thats where the term DOS originally came from (though even IBM dropped the D eventually as well and just have an "OS" now) |
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RebelTech
Average Member
USA
613 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 08:59:36
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Would it be fair to say that, even though the operating system and interface are merged, XP is the just GUI for a modified, beefed up ms-dos?
No slam intended here. The old Mac OS (pre ten) was an operating system thats only interface was graphical. No command line. Since Mac OS X (ten)
The Mac OS is really just a GUI for a Unix core. I am trying to grasp how this compares to Windows XP. |
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davemaxwell
Access 2000 Support Moderator
USA
3020 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 09:30:24
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| The way I understood it, Win2K was the last OS built on the old NT (which was based on dos) Kernel. They revamped it heavily for the XP release (which is why it took so long to release) but kept the cmd line as a placation measure for the old hardliners. |
Dave Maxwell
Barbershop Harmony Freak |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 09:30:34
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quote:
Originally posted by Gremlin
I always thought the distinction was whether or not it handled Disk I/O or not, not neccesarily where it runs or loads from, IBM TOS systems (which partly ran in core storage also) became known as DOS once DASD became standard feature on their mainframes, as far as I know thats where the term DOS originally came from (though even IBM dropped the D eventually as well and just have an "OS" now)
Yes, that was its original intention, but you know how they change these things to suit themselves 
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 09:39:06
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quote:
Originally posted by davemaxwell
The way I understood it, Win2K was the last OS built on the old NT (which was based on dos) Kernel. They revamped it heavily for the XP release (which is why it took so long to release) but kept the cmd line as a placation measure for the old hardliners.
that's not entirely correct, NT4 was the first to use a non-dos kernel, not the last one to use it.
the command prompt you get in xp/2k an NT is just a command shell to let you run nt equivalent dos commands, but it is not dos. |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 09:39:25
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| True true .. I have a tendancy to think mainframe terms most of the time as well having basically grown up in that environment :) |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 09:41:35
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quote:
Originally posted by RebelTech
Would it be fair to say that, even though the operating system and interface are merged, XP is the just GUI for a modified, beefed up ms-dos?
No slam intended here. The old Mac OS (pre ten) was an operating system thats only interface was graphical. No command line. Since Mac OS X (ten)
The Mac OS is really just a GUI for a Unix core. I am trying to grasp how this compares to Windows XP.
Windows XP is the OS, it is not just a GUI shell like OSX |
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RebelTech
Average Member
USA
613 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 09:49:12
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| Seems like Mac and Windows have swapped positions from shell to os and so forth. I love my Mac and I think the move to unix was an improvement. If I was starting over again (started on pc/dos) I would probably go the XP route.... |
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Doug G
Support Moderator
USA
6493 Posts |
Posted - 11 December 2003 : 15:03:57
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quote:
Originally posted by HuwR
quote:
Originally posted by davemaxwell
The way I understood it, Win2K was the last OS built on the old NT (which was based on dos) Kernel. They revamped it heavily for the XP release (which is why it took so long to release) but kept the cmd line as a placation measure for the old hardliners.
that's not entirely correct, NT4 was the first to use a non-dos kernel, not the last one to use it.
the command prompt you get in xp/2k an NT is just a command shell to let you run nt equivalent dos commands, but it is not dos.
Actually, NT3.0 was the first 32bit OS. NT4 was the first one that worked reasonably well  I participated in the NT beta program and just getting the OS to install was a real adventure (this was around 1989 or so).
The primary designer of NT was the architect of VMS at DEC, and NT, 2K, and XP have grown from the original NT, NOT based on DOS. As HuwR said, the command prompt is basically a DOS emulator that runs in a 32bit OS. BTW, there are still a lot of people who think VMS was the best OS ever.
XP is not dramatically different from 2K, there are not any real significant structural differences between 2K and XP. In fact, one hack to implement IIS on XP Home is to steal the 2K Server IIS dll's.
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Doug G
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Computer history and help at www.dougscode.com |
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Gremlin
General Help Moderator
New Zealand
7528 Posts |
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