[AZ-Observing] Re: Operating System
- From: jon <jon.m@xxxxxxxx>
- To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 29 Aug 2001 21:54:13 -0700
Microsoft Windows is notorious for "memory leaks" causing system instability
over time. A program asks for system services, Windows needs to give out more
memory, but the memory is never "reclaimed" when the services are through.
After a while, poof!
Later versions of Windows seem to get better and better but a lot of this goes
way back to the DOS roots and the memory management approach adopted by
Windows. I believe this is why Windows 2000 behaves better. I can't speak
for the "personal" editions of Windows as I haven't used any of them for many
years.
Linux uses a much different memory management system. An individual
application can grow if it is sloppy, and this is easy to detect in Linux, but
the Operating System itself survives in entirety if the application eventually
crashes. One thing Linux has going for it is the multitude of eyeballs all
reading the source code, and the basics haven't changed much over the years.
Stability is one of the strong points of Linux.
MacOS has also suffered from memory management problems though more recent
versions are much less fragile. In MacOS, buy plenty of memory and the
problems decrease. This tells me the MacOS problems are likely around
"virtual" memory management. I will say, though, I've had the most memory
management problems on MacOS using Microsoft's Office applications.
Hope this sheds some light on the subject.
Jon
"Stanley A. Gorodenski" wrote:
> I don't know if this is the correct forum for these questions, but I do
> not know where else I may be able to post them. If inappropriate,
> please direct me to another discussion group.
>
> I have been told that running imaging processing software in a Microsoft
> Windows operating system causes the pc to bog down to the point where
> the pc has to be rebooted every couple hours or days (days if the
> machine is never turned off). Also, I have been told that this problem
> does not exist with Linnex (misspelled?, syn Redhat) operating systems.
> Has anyone experienced this? Could anyone shed some light on the
> subject of preferred operating systems for astronomical software, and
> any computer resource problems in running image processing software?
>
> Stan
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