NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20

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Internet Message Format | 1992-09-08 | 18.3 KB

Xref: sparky comp.os.os2.programmer:4767 comp.os.os2.advocacy:5076 comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy:2134 comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32:845 Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.programmer,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 Path: sparky!uunet!usc!cs.utexas.edu!hellgate.utah.edu!jaguar.cs.utah.edu!brian From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) Subject: OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.7 Date: 5 Sep 92 17:38:23 MDT Message-ID: <1992Sep5.173823.18105@hellgate.utah.edu> Followup-To: comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy Originator: brian@jaguar.cs.utah.edu Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 547 OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.7 FOLLOWUPS ARE REDIRECTED ONLY TO THE ADVOCACY GROUPS, PLEASE LEAVE IT THAT WAY. # Well the revision process hasn't slowed down yet... this time maybe? This list strives to document the differences in features between OS/2 2.0 and the not yet released Windows NT. This list is NOT perfect yet. While I believe I understand both fairly well, they are far too complex for anyone to know everything, and I cannot take the time to thoroughly check all the facts. This of course is why I ask for your input... please be nice! Warning: I develop for both systems, but have a bias towards NT. I do try to be fair though. KEY TO CHANGE MARKERS A "#" at the beginning of a line signifies that it has been changed this revision. An "@", signifies it is new this revision. An "!" indicates a point that definitely needs more information. One of the characters in front of a paragraph or a section title implies it is for the whole unit. (I don't mark grammar or spelling corrections.) Deletions in this revision: // The several items below will be replace with the item // stated: // Has a cleaner, more modern design than OS/2 2.0. // ... // The items individually cause a lot of controversy // as in the end they are small points. // Collectively however I feel they represent one of the most // major differences between NT and OS/2. NT can generically use more than 16 megs of memory. On ISA machines that don't support DMA above the 16 meg line OS/2 only uses the memory above 16 megs as a form of fast swap. GUI Fast client/server approach. I emphasize fast as its design is very nice in that respect. (It was covered in depth at the NT developers conference.) It's too hard to describe in one paragraph. Uses shared memory, buffering, etc. Designed to help accelerators. The internal routines have been changed so that drawing commands are buffered and sent to the underlying graphics drivers in a manner that can take better advantage of graphics accelerator cards. Global VM/File Buffer Cache. This is a common feature in most modern operating systems. It apparently makes disk consistency easier to manage. All but 60K kernel is pageable. (Microkernel design) All means All... everything but a small piece is pageable. BRIEF EXPLAINATION OF WHY I SHOW THE BASIC SYSTEM PACKAGES FIRST The base features of an OS make a lot of difference in what sort of apps will be developed for it. For example a recent freeware program for the Macintosh used sound clips from a recent Bush speech to randomly generate new speeches. If it were not the case that all modern Macintoshes have sound support in hardware and software, it would have been much less likely the author would have gone to the trouble. Another example, suppose there is a telephone package that answer/logs/places calls using a specialized board. Under NT everybody has RPC, so it would not be surprising to find such a package having a feature that could alert another system via RPC that a call has come in, likewise it could send the notification (or even a WAV file of a saved voice-message) via e-mail as there is a built-in Mail API in NT and the MM features are there to play back the message under a Windows 3.X or NT system. As OS/2 currently markets features such as MM and RPC as options, how likely do you think it is developers would use them in main-stream applications, especially low-end ones? After this set of lists, you'll find another set that shows features of OS/2 (and NT) add-ons and a price list. ************************ *** First a set of lists of the features in the _basic_ system packages. *** ************************ Features in OS/2 2.0 GA but not in the pre-beta Windows NT Object Oriented Shell (WorkPlace Shell) Great DOS support REXX NT comes with no equal script/batch language. Windows 3.0 support (NT has it too, but it is not as good). Is actually released. Except when simply comparing features, this "feature" is of course a quite important difference. I assume people realize that it means that NT does not yet have support, polished documentation, NetWare support, etc. Supports OS/2 1.X PM apps. @ Comes with more applets. # SOM (A generic object wrapper package) It is used by WPS for its objects. Those objects can also be used by other applications. Supports Windows 2.0 apps. Runs without a GUI. Installable from CD-ROM and diskettes. Can boot non-DOS systems in a VDM. Can be configured to work well in 6 megs of memory. # Explaination of memory usage with add-ons moved. Optional direct access to hardware from VDMs. Allows peformance tuning by "twiddling" parameters. (Unfortunately, sometimes you need to.) Features in the pre-beta Windows NT but not in OS/2 2.0 GA Designed to be a self balancing system. (Unfortunately, sometimes you can't "twiddle" as much as you want to.) System tables dynamically extensible. In other words no arbitrary limits of 256 processes or 1024 open files, etc. # Quota and and Statistics hooks for most system objects. System objects are things like processes, threads, files, semaphores, etc. NT has the hooks necessary to set per-user quotas on objects. It also contains monitoring facilities in each of these objects so that statistics on their use can be gathered. In many instances these "hooks" are already in use, especially in the area of monitoring facilities. Full symmetric multiprocessing support. Memory mapped files # Asynchronous I/O It turns out that NT's version of async I/O requires you to give it a data buffer at the time you issue the I/O request, so this form is only marginally better than simulating async I/O with threads. IBM is dropping the feature because their underlying implementation was using threads anyway. # 32-bit Console API OS/2 2.0 only supports a Console API via 16-bit thunked-calls. These calls are not documented in OS/2 2.0 programming literature. # DOS, (later POSIX), OS/2 1.X and NT console apps use the same window. If you bring up an NT command prompt and run a DOS program the output occurs in the same window. In other words if you run a mix of DOS, OS/2 1.X, and NT commands from the commandline, their output appears in the same window. Contrast this with OS/2 2.0... if you run the DOS "ls" command in an OS/2 window a DOS window appears... the output appears and the window closes; often before the output can be read. @ Has a cleaner, more modern design than OS/2 2.0. The Presentation Manager portion of the OS/2 2.0 API is somewhat more clean than its NT counter part. But in nearly every other area, NT's design is cleaner. NTs kernel has a much more modern design than OS/2 2.0. Platform independent device driver support. Platform independence means independent of the hardware on which NT runs. The device driver people at the NT developers conference did not seem to believe this at first either... but after a long set of questions seemed convinced this was more or less possible. (A smaller head file contains the few differences that are necessary between platforms.) Dynamically loadable/unloadable file system and device drivers. Generalized Registry. (database as replacement for '.ini' files) Rather than have a "config.sys" and other initialization files, all system data is put into a tree-structured database. Windows 3.1 support. Fully 32-bit drivers. GUI Fully 32-bit Graphics Engine. Separate queues per process. PM and Windows 3.X have one message queue for all applications. NT's implementation of this feature does not suffer from the problem of misdirected type/mouse ahead. (At least I couldn't make it mess-up on my system.) # 32-bit OLE Security C2 level (not certified) ACL's for all objects. Logons. E-Mail API (X.500, can use X.400 as a transport) B2 hooks Advanced form of setuid(). This allows servers with appropriate privileges to act as a surrogate for a client so that work can safely be performed on behalf of that client. RPC DCE support OLE integrated with RPC RPC has corresponding LPC All system API calls that take strings, take UNICODE strings. (ANSI wrappers are provided.) NTFS (Note: NTFS has all features of HPFS, NT has FAT and HPFS too.) Fast Recovery (CHKDSK gigabyte volumes in a few seconds.) High Reliability Hard Links Case-Sensitive Filenames Automatic 8.3 names NTFS supports both long names and short ones. The short one is generated automatically if the long one it does not fit the 8.3 pattern. This is done so that DOS apps can see long-named files too. In effect, a file has TWO names, one long and one short. ACLS UPS support. UNICODE file names. Volume Striping(RAID 0) (Not just for NTFS) Multimedia Audio Waveform MIDI CD-source Media Control Interface. High-speed file streaming. Async event controllable. Networking TCP/IP Peer-peer file and printer sharing. Ability to support multiple vendors as transports w/common admin. Good network admin facilities. SNMP Berkeley sockets. Named pipes. # (Both NT and OS/2 GA have non-networked ones.) Event logging. # (Both NT and OS/2 GA have this in non-networked form.) Fast Hyper-text Help System. (OS/2's is much slower.) I've used both, NT's is faster, though it has less features than OS/2's. NT's is of course a variant of Windows 3.1's help program (which is different from the Windows 3.0 one). Developers provided with a common installation program. More SuperVGA drivers. An NT user can change their initial environment without having to reboot for it to take effect. Under NT if a user want to do the equivalent of changing their PATH environment in config.sys, they go to the Control Panel, make the edit, then logout and back in again. This is much faster than waiting through a reboot. Has seamless support for 16-bit Windows apps on XGA and 8514 displays. OS/2 2.0 will add the following in the Fall. Slim-down such that it will properly fit in 4 megs. Ship its DDK (actually DAK Device Adaptation Kits). Probably will pass NT in SuperVGA support. Catch up to NT by having Windows 3.1 support. Catch up to NT by adding a 32-bit graphics engine. Catch up to NT by allowing 32-bit drivers. Catch up to NT by having seamless support of 16-bit Windows apps with XGA and 8514 displays. Windows NT will add the following in the Fall. Catch-up to OS/2 in 16-bit Windows 3.0 compatibility. Smarter, easier to use OLE (first step toward Cairo). POSIX (1003.1 -- the system calls) Tape API Win32s (Run NT programs under Windows 3.1) NTFS Symlinks Sparse Files Ship its DDK. OS/2 will add the following in 4Q92 or 1Q93: Pen API (possibly as an add-on). NT will add the following in 4Q92 or 1Q93: Catch up to OS/2 by actually being released. NT will add sometime in 1993: Support for OS/2 1.X Presentation Manager applications. OS/2 will add the following near October 1993: C2 and B1 security (RACF). Apparently there is a procedure called a PRPQ that allows you to get it now. It is not yet certified. Windows NT will add the following sometime in 1994: Cairo Cairo combines an OO shell (has a similar flavor to WPS) with an OO file system and OO networking. Publicly available details are sketchy. Prototypes have been demoed to a lucky few. Cairo will also have a BASIC-based, object oriented, visual, scripting/batch language. *********** The lists below are of features in add-on packages. *********** LAN Manager for Windows NT (Available at the time of NT's release) RAID 5 Mirroring System admin tools for support of a site up to 50,000 nodes. Remote booting (Diskless/dataless workstations) Remote maintenance support. This was demoed at the NT conference. The administrator on one machine sent a single command that told another machine it was to get a new version of the OS. The other machine told its user that it was about to shutdown... shutdown, accepted the new OS, rebooted. All without manual intervention on the client side. # Cost: Unknown OS/2 Multimedia (Available now) (As far as I can tell from the feature list descriptions the only feature below without an analog in NT is the "Multimedia Data Converter Applet".) Amp/Mixer Support CD Digital Audio Support MIDI Sequencing and Synthesizer support Media Control Interface Support Multimedia I/O Manager Multimedia drivers cross over into DOS and Windows support. Synchronization/Streaming API Videodisc control Waveform Audio Support Applets MM Setup Multimedia Data Converter Applet Player Applets Volume Control Cost: $149 OS/2 LAN Server 2.0 Entry Package (Available now) (As far as I can tell from the feature list, NT's base package has most of this + Local security + better RPC - (possibly) remote booting for clients, so let's call it even.) UPS support User Profile Management Error logging facility Remote booting Domains Limited RPC According to PC-Week does not have peer-to-peer abilities. Cost: $795 OS/2 LAN Server 2.0 Advanced Package (Not available for OS/2 2.0 yet) (Includes features of Entry Package above.) Local security Remote maintenance support higher throughput. Fault tolerance (disk duplexing and disk mirroring) # Cost: $2,295 OS/2 LAN Sever 3.0 (Due by year end) (Of course all the features from above) Clients can do peer-to-peer file and printer sharing. # Has user or share level security (similar to LAN Server Entry's security). # Support for running LAN Server over TCP/IP. Advanced version works under 2.0. # Cost: Unknown OTHER ADD-ONS IBM seems to have more specialized add-ons available for OS/2 2.0 than I am willing to type in. Please just assume that in terms of such add-on features NT will be behind for a while. Examples: X, Extended Services, Database Server, etc. @ RESOURCE USAGE Memory If you add OS/2 2.0's memory requirements for the base package + TCP/IP base + MM + LAN Server Entry you get: 6 + 1 + 1 + 3 = 11 megs. NT currently requires 12 and is targeted to use 8 megs. Thus I contend neither has a real edge in memory usage when counting relevant add-ons. Disk Space Currently OS/2 2.0 base package + TCP/IP + MM + LAN Server Entry Package requires more disk space than NT does, this is unfair to OS/2 though as NT has some of it's help files missing (or not fleshed out). Basically it is too early to say anything useful here. RELEVANT LIST PRICES NT list price < $500. (Source: NT dev conf, InfoWorld) OS/2 2.0 list price $195 (Src: Programmer's connection) OS/2 2.0 Multimedia add-on*** $149 (Source: product announcement posted to USENET.) OS2/ TCP/IP Base Kit** $200 (Source: product announcement found on ftp-os2.) OS/2 LAN Server 2.0 Entry Package* $795 (Source: press release found on CompuServe.) Total OS/2 2.0 (near-NT cnfg)****$1,339 **** This configuration is of course not 100% equivalent. This OS/2 configuration has REXX, truly excellent VDMs, and the WPS, etc over NT's base package. NT has numerous extra OS-type features, Logons, an e-mail API, Symmetric multiprocessing, NTFS, etc over the OS/2 configuration. All in all though I believe if there is error in calling this a "near-NT cnfg", then I'm giving the break to OS/2, so hopefully the OS/2 people can accept this cost comparison, however painful it may be for them to do so. *** OS/2's and Windows NT Multimedia support seem to be equivalent. I have only seen OS/2's MM feature list though, so feel free to correct this if you've seen both. ** OS/2 2.0's TCP/IP Base Kit contains more programs than comes with NT. (NT comes with only "client" programs.) However programming OS/2's TCP/IP requires a $500 programmers toolkit, and this ability comes with NT's SDK for free. Thus I pretend it's an even swap. Obviously for some, even many users this isn't the case. As NT has Berkeley sockets I suspect that freeware based on Berkeley's daemons will soon appear and make even this a moot point. * Windows NT's networking features (beyond TCP/IP) are roughly equivalent to the OS/2 LAN Server 2.0 "Entry Package". Here I only have access to a features list, so if you have experience with both please jump in. PLEASE READ BEFORE RESPONDING I hope to keep this thread having a high information content level. If you feel the need to bash either OS using this list, please do so in a separate thread. People bashing in this thread will be ignored. If you have correction/additions/deletetions please jump right in. If you're not sure and/or don't want to suggest it publicly, e-mail me... I have access to nearly all the available docs for OS/2 and NT. If you know of a feature that one or the other will add in the future AND you have a time frame. Send it and the time frame along. Time frames should be no further out than the end of '94, and preferably before the end of '93. Please specify the source of the information. To avoid things getting entirely out of hand please restrict things to the systems level sorts of stuff. For example servers such as the OS/2 DataBase Server 2.0 are not strictly speaking OS features. Unfortunately, these things are hard to define as PC OS's regularly muddy radition lines in this area. Also, things from third-parties don't count. Corrections of grammar, spelling, etc are welcomed. Brian -- C. Brian Sturgill *** OS/2 2.0 is for YOU! *** University of Utah Microsoft needs some competition, but Center for Software Science -I- want to be one of the many using NT. brian@cs.utah.edu; CIS: 70363,1373 :-) :-) :-)