When, Oh When will we get a stable OS?? 6

[guestgulkan]

Back in Win95/Win98, I must have done hundreds (dozens really) of clean OS installs to get the OS out of a mess.
In spite of the much hyped stability of WINXP and WIN2000 and WINNT, I still hear the dreaded phrase 'I've done a clean install' or ' do a clean install' all too often.
Millions of hours must be lost each year in computer downtime because of this.

To me this is nonsense, the OS should be able to protect, detect and repair itself. In other words have some sort of builtin immune mechanism.

 

[johnwm]

That's what IBM said to Bill Gates and Gary Kildall back in nineteen hundred and goodness knows when.

Gary said "I'll get back to you when I've finished my flying"

Bill said "That must be worth a buck or two"

....... and the rest is history......
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[sleipnir214]

guestgulkan:

How much extra are you willing to pay for these features? And are you willing to buy the higher-end hardware something like that will surely require? Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!

 

[Tarwn]

Exactly. There are extremely solid systems out there, but a) they cost a lot of money to buy and b) cost a lot of money to maintain and c) cost a lot of money in terms of hardware, because just about every solid system i can think of is running at least 5 years (at least!) behind mainstream hardware, making it very expensive to get replacement parts, very expensive to get people to work on. Of course the software/OS company knows these things and knows it is supplying a system to companies that cannot afford to have even a second of downtime, so they charge it like they mean it

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[edfair]

I don't agree that they must be that expensive. And even using cheaper parts doesn't impair the abilities of the good OS.
The problem is the expensive applications. and the healthy cost of support.
You can't find a shareware wordprocessor as easily for Unix as for windows, and there isn't a comparable access as part of any office product.
Ed Fair
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[svanels]

If you want to drive a Rolls Royce don't expect to pay the same as your neighbor with his fiat. Both will bring you from A to B. Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[guestgulkan]

Maybe so svanels but I would expect pretty much the same safety and reliability from my Fiat as from the Roller.
I wouldn't expect it to spontaneously combust in a minor fender bender situation.

 

[lionelhill]

You won't.
The reason is that we expect ever more of our operating systems. That means new programming, new hazards, and new bugs - and new breakdowns. I've been using windows 95 on my home computer since I bought it, and it's a P75 so you can guess how long ago that was. I've reinstalled once when the hard disk died. The machine works as well today as the day I bought it. But I don't expect it to do any more now than I would have expected of a 486 with Win3.1 at the time I bought my Pentium with Win95...
Moral: if you stay one step behind, life may be downright boring, but you never have unknown problems.

 

[manarth]

even banks' mainframes, governments' military computers, and nuclear power stations' controlling systems break down SOMETIMES.

You may be able to find a more stable system, but nothing in life is infallible! (and computing even more so) <marc>[ul]help us help![li]please provide feedback on what works / doesn't[/li][li]not sure where to start? click here: faq581-3339[/li][/sup][/ul][/sup]

 

[flyboytim]

My Psion 3C did 90% of what I used computers for in 1995. It never crashed once. I was using OS/2 Warp at the time, which had application crashes, usually when running Windows applications, but never actually fell over itself. Before the PowerMac, and OS 7.5, the Macintoshes I used rarely had problems. Running NT, Linux, or Netware as fileservers on machines designed as servers go months without problems.
The computer is the sum of its parts. The hardware, OS and applications can only be guaranteed to work flawlessly together if they are designed, made, and tested as a unit. Any other scenario has variables which, by chance, will be unstable. We are lucky that, by and large, the PC and software manufacturing community have done so much to make our machines work properly for most of the time.

 

[CajunCenturion]

We will get a stable OS when the manufacturer can be help criminally liable, and be subject to civil penalties (money) for damages directly caused by the bugs and/or instability.

And of course they'll be expensive, for two reasons:
1) - The manufacturer will have to engage is testing and verification methodologies to insure that the latest and greatest idiot cannot find a way to cause a crash. That will cost a great deal of time and money when you consider to number and types of permutations that the OS may have to deal with. Just image what the latest and greatest idiot may try to do.

2) - The manufacturer will have to begin building an endowment for which to handler the legal wranglings and/or judgements.

The analogy to cars is a good one, because car manufacturers are being held liable (read being sued) for manufacturing defects. Last time I checked, cars aren't very cheap either. Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[Tarwn]

Actually, now that I think about it, define stable...

My home server runs Windows 2000 server and it has only crashed two times in 9 months. Once because I was writing a script in C and seriously misreferenced something (woohoo, my own personal blue screen) and once because I downloaded a piece of shareware that had some odd side effects. I haven't actualy had any problems that were the OS's fault, so I guess it could be considered stable...

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[Kjonnnn]

Yea define stable....

is stability proportional to how much junk and tweeking are on the OS you're using?

 

[CajunCenturion]

As a dovetail to my previous post - Stable is defined as that measure directly proportional to the actual cost of deficiency. The more liability that you have, the more stable you will be. Good Luck
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As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[svanels]

If I look at the computer, I can define clearly two things, The hardware and the software.

Both of them are very complex, the amount of complexity (read parts, software, dll's, executables etc..) is proportional to the amount of headache you will have.

I just checked out my windows directory (ME) the size 1.2 GB.

Once there was a time that it was almost impossible to fill a disk of 30Mb with data. Of course there was no Flash, jpeg, shockwave, audio files, mp3, ActiveX to take up the space. Wolfenstein took up 4mB DoomII 60mB. Nowaday games you need to stuff 2 or more CD's to run.

The office directory alone is almost 900 Mb leaving out the famous common files directory.

My first computer was a 4.77Mhz with 2 flopies, the only thing I couldn't load was autocad 9.0, version 2.5 just ran fine. My second was a 386-33Mhz with math-coprocessor and a hard disk of 110 Mb.

And you still wan't an OS that never crashes. If lightning strikes somewhere far away it can burn your modem!! A malfunctioning cd-writer wrecked up my OS 3 months ago. The brand was philips, the computer is Compaq. Steven van Els
SAvanEls@cq-link.sr

 

[dilettante]

Many &quot;clean installs&quot; are the result of using marginal software and/or playing around with &quot;tweaks.&quot;

The alternative requires a &quot;closed&quot; operating system... and who wants that?

 

[wolluf]

Clean installs on win9x/ME machines are usually the result of just using the system for a (unspecified) period of time, after which it doesn't work properly any more. win9x/ME is a toytown operating system IMO (somebody should have sued M$).

I do think win2k is a stable operating system. The machine I'm writing this on has been running for over 2 years with no problems (ie, I've not lost any time due to unforseen problem - all reboots done by me). I also have a 2k installation at home (some initial problems - hardware based - only thing since then was uninstalling Easy CD Creator wiped out other install information - eg for Office), which has been running for 3 years. I have reinstalled this - but only when reorganising my multi-boot set-up. I don't think I could ask more of a desktop operating system in terms of stability.
Maybe I've been fortunate.

PS. I also DO try out lots of software & occasional tweak.

 

[lionelhill]

Hm, not sure I agree, wolluf. Like I said, been using Win95 with no problems since installed, about 5 years ago I think, maybe more (i.e. when we thought a pentium 75 was nifty, cutting edge!). I don't think I've had a single blue screen... (can't remember one, anyway, and that has to be a good sign), and only reinstalled once when hard drive broke, which is hardly win95's fault. But maybe I'm just lucky. Put it this way, if I'd written win95, I'd be fairly smug about it.

 

[garwain]

I'm no fan of M$, but I must admit that their software is fairly stable now. Most of the re-installs I perform are due to either the user installing every piece of spyware/adware/useless junk they can get their hands on, and deleting files at random. The runner up for unstable systems is faulty hardware. If your memory is a bit flaky, or your CPU is running hotter thant it should the side-effects make it look like the OS.

I have a win2k machine that I reboot about once a month, unless I am updating something. My linux server has never been rebooted because of OS related problems, only for hardware problems. my win9x machines can run for a week easily without a reboot. I don't call that bad for stability.

If you want a system that is rock solid, I'd recommend trying DOS, and only well designed programs that have been well tested.

 

[xutopia]

I have a friend running an old version 3 of slackware for a few years now (installed it when it came out). Never crashed once and he only rebooted once because he wanted to change his UPS. Gary

http://www.xutopia.com

Haran
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