Back in the days when processors were slow, and memory was scarce, it took 16 MB (sic) to run a full desktop. Like a word processor, a spreadsheet and a browser. 4 MB was a little tight, and 64 MB was plenty.
I used to have a notebook (a Sony Vaio) with 64 MB RAM, a 300 MHz CPU, and it ran Linux SO DARN FAST! With emacs, Applix Office, 20 windows of Netscape 4, while listening to MP3 files, a compile in the background was barely noticeable.
Today, I'm sitting in front of a multi-GB multi-GHz machine, and it's slow! This is some kind of sad, since I'd prefer a less feature rich system if I could run it on these slower machines that don't have a fan. E.g. on a NSLU2, you can't even open a web-browser. This thing has 32 MB memory while Firefox wants 250 MB. That's just too much for displaying a single web page, IMHO.
The reason for this slowdown is as follows:
1. the kernel
In the recent time, everybody is optimizing for the big-iron servers (EMC, google, whatever), and nobody is looking any more for memory consumption and latency. And while the benchmark may still look great, the system becomes clumsy, bloated and un-resonsive.
2. GCC / STL
While the original idea of C++ was to make an OO language that's backward compatible with C, the older C++ program's can't even be compiled with the newer compilers! The templates, especially those of STL and boost, go totally out of whack when it comes down to memory footprint. It might give you a few percent of speed advantage to have a custom version of each single data type, but only if you don't use it much. Otherwise it's just totally trashing the cache. Not even to start talking about XML and consorts.
And if you compile those programs, the compiler needs to compile 100eds of customized template versions in 100eds of source files, just to throw away most of this redundant work during linking. This is just a waste and it does not scale.
I like 80 columns because it allows me to put several editor windows next to each other and look up stuff in other files while editing. So, I find 80 columns formatted source code great.
I know that Windows people (Visual Studio) are not used to this kind of working. And with the naming conventions of Windows (e.g. 'm_pszStringWithSuperLongNameWhereIHaveToEmbedSome DescriptionHereWhyTheNameIsSoIncrediblyLong'), they long for very long file names. However, even on Windows, there is a simple solution: you can just use several Notepad editor windows. They go nicely next to each other.:)
Why does Wine not run 16-bit Windows programs? At least this API is stable. And it used to be such a hassle to write all these programs. And there are many old programs running on 16-bit Windows that I still like. E.g. Amipro.
So, is there any emulator, like dosbox for dos, that just emulates the good old 16-bit environment under Windows?
my personal dream configuration would look like this:
a) a small device, of the physical size of an iPod, and it only needs a small disc (1GB would be enough). On this device, I like to run my DNS server, DHCP server, NIS/LDAP server, netplan server, and all the tiny services that need to run on a network.
An iPod would be good for that if it only had an ethernet port. With a 10GB disc, it could also neatly run a CVS server.
b) a network attached disk. It should run NFS, Samba, FTP, and most importantly, it should work with a network authentification platform.
My personal favorite for this is currently NIS/NFS/autofs because it's so simple to set up and maintain. For a simple network (10 users), it's powerful enough.
They could just put this fancy ARM board on the harddisc, and sell it with an ethernet, instead of an IDE port.
What about a civil application of this technique. Say, if you had a massive body made from a precious resource, say, gold, and make it crash into this french pacific island where they test nuclear bombs anyway.
Well, the good thing would be that this island would finally be gone, and the bad thing would be that the asteroid would propably be somewhat radioactive when it is steered by nuclear bomb explosions.
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Back in the days when processors were slow, and memory was scarce, it took 16 MB (sic) to run a full desktop. Like a word processor, a spreadsheet and a browser. 4 MB was a little tight, and 64 MB was plenty.
I used to have a notebook (a Sony Vaio) with 64 MB RAM, a 300 MHz CPU, and it ran Linux SO DARN FAST! With emacs, Applix Office, 20 windows of Netscape 4, while listening to MP3 files, a compile in the background was barely noticeable.
Today, I'm sitting in front of a multi-GB multi-GHz machine, and it's slow! This is some kind of sad, since I'd prefer a less feature rich system if I could run it on these slower machines that don't have a fan. E.g. on a NSLU2, you can't even open a web-browser. This thing has 32 MB memory while Firefox wants 250 MB. That's just too much for displaying a single web page, IMHO.
The reason for this slowdown is as follows:
1. the kernel
In the recent time, everybody is optimizing for the big-iron servers (EMC, google, whatever), and nobody is looking any more for memory consumption and latency. And while the benchmark may still look great, the system becomes clumsy, bloated and un-resonsive.
2. GCC / STL
While the original idea of C++ was to make an OO language that's backward compatible with C, the older C++ program's can't even be compiled with the newer compilers! The templates, especially those of STL and boost, go totally out of whack when it comes down to memory footprint. It might give you a few percent of speed advantage to have a custom version of each single data type, but only if you don't use it much. Otherwise it's just totally trashing the cache. Not even to start talking about XML and consorts.
And if you compile those programs, the compiler needs to compile 100eds of customized template versions in 100eds of source files, just to throw away most of this redundant work during linking. This is just a waste and it does not scale.
I like 80 columns because it allows me to put several editor windows next to each other and look up stuff in other files while editing. So, I find 80 columns formatted source code great.
e DescriptionHereWhyTheNameIsSoIncrediblyLong'), they long for very long file names. However, even on Windows, there is a simple solution: you can just use several Notepad editor windows. They go nicely next to each other. :)
I know that Windows people (Visual Studio) are not used to this kind of working. And with the naming conventions of Windows (e.g. 'm_pszStringWithSuperLongNameWhereIHaveToEmbedSom
And please use shorter variable names, anyways.
Why does Wine not run 16-bit Windows programs? At least this API is stable. And it used to be such a hassle to write all these programs. And there are many old programs running on 16-bit Windows that I still like. E.g. Amipro.
So, is there any emulator, like dosbox for dos, that just emulates the good old 16-bit environment under Windows?
my personal dream configuration would look like this:
a) a small device, of the physical size of an iPod, and it only needs a small disc (1GB would be enough). On this device, I like to run my DNS server, DHCP server, NIS/LDAP server, netplan server, and all the tiny services that need to run on a network.
An iPod would be good for that if it only had an ethernet port. With a 10GB disc, it could also neatly run a CVS server.
b) a network attached disk. It should run NFS, Samba, FTP, and most importantly, it should work with a network authentification platform.
My personal favorite for this is currently NIS/NFS/autofs because it's so simple to set up and maintain. For a simple network (10 users), it's powerful enough.
They could just put this fancy ARM board on the harddisc, and sell it with an ethernet, instead of an IDE port.
What about a civil application of this technique. Say, if you had a massive body made from a precious resource, say, gold, and make it crash into this french pacific island where they test nuclear bombs anyway.
Well, the good thing would be that this island would finally be gone, and the bad thing would be that the asteroid would propably be somewhat radioactive when it is steered by nuclear bomb explosions.