Linked by Joshua Boyles on Wed 19th May 2004 20:08 UTC
By the time Longhorn comes out I'm sure everyone will be sick of the subject "windows vs linux." Will longhorn finally destroy that pesky linux and mark another decade of Microsoft's monopoly, or will the underdog come out with a stunning upset and send a multi billion dollar company to it's grave?
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Generally progress should mean that not only does something look better, the performance is snappier as well.
What causes you to think this? It has never been the case in the past. Never. Pick any operating system, Windows, Apple, Solaris, Linux, AIX, Netware, any one. With every new version of every one of these operating systems there has been an increased system requirement, most especially with Windows. Windows 3.1 required a 286 with 4MB of RAM and 20 MB of disk space. Today you would be crazy not to have at least a 800MHz Pentium with 128MB of RAM and preferably more more more for Windows XP. As for disk space, most opearting systems today, want at least 2GB for a basic installation. All this and XP on a 2GHz processor is slower than Windows 3.1 on a 386.
Netware 3.x would allow you to serve files and printing for 25-50 users with 8-16MB of RAM. Today, Netware 6.5 won't even install with less than 100MB and good luck serving that many users with so little RAM. 500MB is more realistic.
Even Linux once famous for its stingy use of system resources, increases its system requirements with every iteration. Where once a 286 and 16MB was quite adequate today a 500Mhz Pentium and 128MB is the sane starting point. Some systems won't even start X11 with less than 92MB and at 92MB the performance will be very frustrating. Disk space? For a desktop system you better have at least 2GB but 10+ is a better start.
The fact of the matter is that with each new version of todays operating systems, new features and services are added. Naturally, these features and services consume more resources thereby requiring better hardware. Then there is the fact that developers are using higher level languages today that are less resource efficient. Where once developers would go to assembly and optimize to make the code as compact and fast as possible, today they produce bloatware and say things like "disk space is cheap" or "RAM is cheap". The hardware may indeed be cheaper than it use to be but, I don't think that this is an excuse for a web browser or mail client to require 40 megs of disk space and I won't even go into the bloated and slow office suites.