Phil has the money to spend on Adobe PhotoShop and expensive machines running Windows NT. The starving artists among you might consider running Linux or FreeBSD, and using a free PhotoShop clone known as the GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). You get the X server and so on, and can test CGI programs and run databases locally. You can then take the $2000 you would have to spend on Windows NT, PhotoShop, and Office, and triple your RAM and disk space. Administering modern Linux and BSD systems is not the painful torture of yore; if you installed your Linux the smart way (Red Hat) you can get all these packages installed and working with less difficulty than you would have doing the same under Windows 95.
-- Daniel Boyd, November 4, 1997
Philg writes about how Apple bought the NeXT OS and how this is essentially the same as buying 12-year-old technology as an attempt to rectify problems in a much more modern OS (MacOS).While it is correct that Apple bought the NeXT OS, the analogy is not correct, for one simple reason: Apple has not made a single substantial change to the MacOS since sometime in the mid-80's. The MacOS has 90% of the problems that it did then (philg likes to ridicule modern OS's because they are less reliable than those of the 60's and 70's, but doesn't seem to complain so much about the MacOS, which has, for the past 10 years, been the most primitive OS available, period).
Therefore to compare Apple buying the MacOS to GM buying the blueprints for the 1985 Toyota Camry is misguided; instead, he should be comparing this purchase to GM buying the blueprints for the 1985 Toyota Camry to help replace its own 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme -- in 1997.
By the way, Apple's inability to improve its OS in any material way over the course of 10+ years is the reason that they're about to give up the ghost. And they deserve it. In my humble opinion, anyway.
-- Bryan Ischo, February 2, 1998
I thought I would throw my two cents in here after experience with both NT4.0 , Linux and MacOS. I agree with Dan that the NT solution is rather expensive, and I found my NT machine regularly hung up due to memory problems with Netscape.. this on a Dell machine with Pentium II and 100 Meg of RAM. I have converted my PC to Linux running Apache, and BSCW collaborative server and IP- Masquerading to my private LAN with the design and development on MacOS Starmax PPCs. Instead of Photoshop, I use Claris Home Page, FilemakerPro 4.0 and Canvas 5.0 which is a reasonably priced alternative, although I have read good things about GIMP on Linux. Admittedly this is not an industrial strength server, but functions very reliably over a dialup PPP connection for my clients. StarOffice is also availble for Linux at no charge and has all the functions of MS Office. I would disagree that the MacOS hasnt changed ( I have used it since 85). The user interface has improved consistently and lead with introduction of features although the guts havent added the sophistication required for a good server. While you can argue that NextOS technology is "old", it adds additional capabilty for the server systems with excellent development tools and customer base. BeOS is also interesting and hopefully will provide other good alternatives. I would argue that Microsoft, by its predatory practices, has held back the OS business by driving out of business potential competitors. Supporting alternative vendors is cheaper, more effective and supports advances in the industry.
-- Jamie Ross, May 3, 1998
First off, I would like to say that nothing that I could say about Windows NT will be interesting to anyone two years from now (the criteria for adding a comment). I would like to shoot for 15 minutes.Next, I would like to say that Web consulting must be very good to Mr. Greenspun for him to consider that kind of hardware as the minimum for an NT desktop. Nice if you could get it. Now for the inflamatory part:
Windows NT has no clothes! Everyone is touting WinNT as the minimum for a serious machine: supposedly faster, supposedly crash-proof, supposedly secure.
Yes, WinNT provides isolation between processes so that if one crashes they all don't. But then Microsoft did something pretty stupid. When you install Internet Explorer, it replaces a lot of OS code as well and ties it to itself. The file manager then uses IE code, and the desktop shell uses IE code. And they are all sharing a process. So if your browser crashes (pretty easy to do), often you end up rebooting. Or that has been my experience anyway.
Supposedly, WinNT runs code faster than Win95. Not with the same amount of memory they don't. 64 Megs is the bare minimum for an NT Workstation system, and nothing is fast with that amount of memory.
There is nothing that you can do with WinNT on the desktop that you can't do with Win95 OSR2 just as well. Yes, I know there's all that legacy dos code in there, but who cares? It just helps you run games, use whatever hardware floats your boat, and save a little money, for what it's worth.
-- Noah Clements, December 3, 1998
>>Yes, WinNT provides isolation between processes so that if one crashes they all don't. But then Microsoft did something pretty stupid. When you install Internet Explorer, it replaces a lot of OS code as well and ties it to itself. The file manager then uses IE code, and the desktop shell uses IE code. And they are all sharing a process. So if your browser crashes (pretty easy to do), often you end up rebooting. Or that has been my experience anyway. <<The file mananger, desktop shell, or any other program does not use IE code unless you chose "Active Desktop" for IE4/5 installation. My NT workstation has been running 24/7 for the past year without any rebooting except when installing service packs. A few programs did force me to reboot in order for the installation process to work. Other than that, I've never had to reboot.
>> There is nothing that you can do with WinNT on the desktop that you can't do with Win95 OSR2 just as well. <<
Try running X server, Photoshop, and Illustrator at the same time. Then try opening a 50 MB TIFF file from Photoshop. Have fun. Go make some coffee. Bake some muffins while you're at it. It's SLOOOOOOOW on Win95/98. It might even crash just attempting to open that 50 MB file. With NT Workstation...opens in less than a minute on my HP Kayak XU. Now imagine rendering on 3DStudioMax on Windows 95/98...hahaha. Games? Most cool games run on Windows NT. And if you _must_ play the games that require Windows 95...try installing Win95 and WinNT on separate partitions and dual-booting.
-- Jon Lee, January 27, 1999
>>Yes, WinNT provides isolation between processes so that if one crashes they all don't. But then Microsoft did something pretty stupid. When you install Internet Explorer, it replaces a lot of OS code as well and ties it to itself. The file manager then uses IE code, and the desktop shell uses IE code. And they are all sharing a process. So if your browser crashes (pretty easy to do), often you end up rebooting.<<I would like to comment on this. This problems happen only if the "active desktop update" is active. I agree that installing the ADU is asking for trouble (a LOT of trouble as a matter of fact from my own experience). I also agree that since NT runs all explorer sessions (desktop, taskbar, NT explorer) in one process even without ADU installed, loosing one session means loosing all of them, or loosing the icons of the taskbar or hanging the machine and it all ends with a reboot.
However, a quick and harmless modification to the registry can help a lot: add the value DesktopProcess (REG_DWORD) with a value of 1 in HKEY_CURRENT_USER \ Software \ Microsoft \ Windows \ CurrentVersion \ Explorer. This will run every instance of explorer to run in a separate process. If one explorer process goes down, it doesn't affect the others. This truly improve the reliability of my machine. However, this takes more memory, so do it only if you have the memory to handle it (I have 128MB of RAM and it works fine). Also DO NOT use that trick if you use active desktop update. It will only make your machine more instable (trust me, you won't need that...)
With NT 5.0 (or Windows 2000, whatever...) coming out soon, I don't know if this will be meaningful 2 years from now, I also know that Photo.Net is no NT techies' corner but I hope you will appreciate this tip for a few months.
-- Stephane Moulec, February 27, 1999
For about a year, I have been running Exceed on top of NT to access Unix machines. At first, I was a bit uncomfortable with the small amount of real-estate on my machine. While I was spoiled by an X on Mac setup with two monitors seven years ago, I knew better to try to try the same thing with PC hardware for another few years.
Then someone pointed out Desktop Switcher to me. I was skeptical at first as I have always found virtual window managers pretty annoying. But I found Desktop Switcher quite streamlined and simple: Drag the mouse all the way to the right hand side of the screen, and click to switch to the other desktops. (Like the Macintosh menus, you can perform this gesture without ever looking at the screen at all.) I can switch between my Windows desktop and the Unix windows in an instant.
I recommend Desktop Switcher highly as an ultra-cheap replacement for a multi-monitor setup. (No screwdrivers necessary!)
-- Farshad Nayeri, March 11, 1999
I've given up on having a drawing tool. I simply can't draw.For simple schematics, I have found the Microsoft Draw program to be pretty useful. (It comes as an addition to Microsoft Office, not to be confused with PhotoDraw.) It has adequate support for gravity and a nice library of common shapes and arrows....I can't believe I am promoting a Microsoft product, but I do believe it is one of their better products....
-- Farshad Nayeri, March 11, 1999
Just a comment on integrating NT and Unix. I've used Samba with great success. Currently, I have a network that includes a couple dozen NT workstations at separate locations, one Network Appliance Filer running both NFS and CIFS (SMB), and five Samba 2.0.3 servers. One of the Samba servers functions as both a WINS server and domain master browser while another at a remote location is a local master browser. Net result: two physically and logically separate subnets appear as one "Network Neighborhood" on my NT and Win 95 boxes, and everyone talks to everyone else, sharing files and printers. All this on a "production" network.Admittedly, this took quite a while to get right. No two PCs seemed to function in exactly the same manner, and we do have to contend with some rather amazing problems, but overall the darned thing works. I'm both proud and amazed.
Philip, I'd be happy to make it work for you -- for a suitable fee. However, my cat says we should simply document this work as Frank and Una's Guide to Unix and NT Integration. :-)
-- Frank Wortner, May 3, 1999
The normal NT/Samba integration misery is to do with plaintext passwords: Samba wants them (NT has two different password hashes, neither of which is equivalent to the Unix one, so the "secure" authentication scheme in NT can't be used with Samba unless you generate a new set of password hashes). The Samba documentation (docs/ENCRYPTION.txt) has an explanation of this and how to fix NT (with an obscure registry tweak, of course) to transmit plaintext passwords. If this bothers you on a security basis, you can get tools to keep password hashes in both formats for Unix.
The other problem is getting two machines to find one another. This is a perpetual mystery to me, but the things which seem to work most often are (1) referencing machines by IP address ("\\192.168.0.42\home") and (2) putting the IP addresses of interesting machines in an LMHOSTS file, then importing it in Control Panel (and rebooting, of course).
I've managed to get this to work in a large heterogeneous network environment, and across the internet -- sometimes.
However, the thing is a bit of a joke. A better strategy is to build a secure (home) network with a Linux firewall/router, then NFS mount stuff into that (tunnel over ssh if you want) then re-publish the NFS imports as SMB exports on your private network. Break NT and 9[58] until they do what you want, then curse Microsoft a bit and away you go.
-- Chris Lightfoot, July 15, 1999
>> My NT workstation has been running 24/7 for the past year without any rebooting except when installing service packs. A few programs did force me to reboot in order for the installation process to work. Other than that, I've never had to reboot. <<
Mr. Lee, you sound like Mr. Wonderful from the Dream Land. I suppose you've been just stearing at the (blue) NT-screen all that time? Come back to earth and face it: NT needs a reboot at least once a WEEK if anything USEFUL is running on it. Win95/98 is even worse: a reboot is recommended each day a few times. Leaving Win98 idle overnight leads to the dead system by the morning .. Such things never happened to my Linux (RedHat 6.0) though, running on the same machine.
-- Valeriy Ovechkin, August 1, 1999
Not to praise Microsoft, or bash Apple, I just want to say that I run a digital imaging business (we make large prints for trade shows and exhibits) and relay some experiences.1. We use Macs to open any customer files prepared by our customers on their Mac's. Most of the files (75%+) are from artists working on Mac's)
2. Some of the technicians here really do prefer to work on Mac's.
3. The biggest problems we have with the Mac's other than crashing daily is a) they are terribly slow on the network, and b) writing large postscript files from Adobe Illustrator is painfully slow. We frequently re-open the AI files on an NT Pc to prepare the postscript.
4. The NT Workstation machines almost never crash. When they do, it's usually because disk space has run short. Lot's of temp files left around can bring them down.
5. I can't remember the last time an NT RIP crashed. We run diskeeper on them nightly to reduce fragmentation, keep on eye on the disk space, and shut them down on Friday for the weekend. That's it. Period.
6. All of the NT boxes are plain vanilla pc's locally made in CT and Mass. We stick with SCSI drives on the RIPS, SCSI on the larger of our workstations, and IDE and SCSI on the lighter duty units.
We are starting to experiment with Linux Servers, and I'll follow up in a month or two with a progress report.
-- Marc Sitkin, August 4, 1999
You no longer have to have NT as your primary operating system.Install VMWare (http://www.vmware.com/) on your Linux box and then you can run FreeBSD, BeOS, Windows95, Windows98, WindowsNT, and Windows2000 concurrently under X. This is a great way to see if your website looks right on different os/browser combinations.
You could also run Linux in a window of your NT box.
-- Michael Edwards, August 20, 1999
And if you _must_ play the games that require Windows 95...try ? installing Win95 and WinNT on separate partitions and dual-booting.
Yes, go on, try! But make sure it's a small disk, and an old version of 95, because otherwise NT won't be able to see the disk. Make sure you do it in the right order because otherwise the other-OS will refuse to install at all. No NTFS for you, sorry.To be fair, I use NT Workstation on my work PC with very few complaints, aside from a persistent wierd sound driver problem, and the lack of modern directx and multi-head support. W2K will solve at least one of those for me, if it ever arrives.
I run linux on the same machine, and it definitely feels slower, although it rarely stops completely, as NT is wont to do from time to time. I think this is due to the X drivers not being as tuned as their NT counterparts, mainly, as the actual working bits seem pretty snappy.
I just recently aquired a cheap SGI Indy, which is noticably responsive for what is theoretically a Pentium 66/100 class machine (it's a MIPS R4600/133). Having an OS that was designed for a particular machine or range, rather than next year's range, which seems to be what MS do, is definitely a Good Thing.
-- Howard Jones, November 26, 1999
Say what you like about the NeXT, but the ease of deveopment it offered helped saved Tim Berners-Lee a lot of work writing a little program called WorldWideWeb...
-- David Murphy, January 8, 2000