It's too bad this isn't possible...

Rockrz said:

How is it decades ahead of Windows?

I thought it was just a more simple OS, and Windows was more complexed.

The Kernel is more secure, there is none to minimal bloatware (depending on the flavour you choose) - It's fully customizable, if you don't want a programme either don't install or simply remove it. 32bit Linux can see as much memory as you can throw at it, none of the artificial restrictions implemented by MS.

You do need to have a bit more of a hands on approach with Linux - Even with the 2 most popular distros, Ubuntu and Suse, they are not completely plug and play yet, but getting very close.

If you want to have a play without installing anything, check out Ubuntu Live CD:

Try Ubuntu before you install | Ubuntu

This will give you an idea of the look and feel - It will not be as fast as a real install as you will be running it off the DVD or USB stick!!

Nigsy said:

Rockrz said:

How is it decades ahead of Windows?

I thought it was just a more simple OS, and Windows was more complexed.

The Kernel is more secure, there is none to minimal bloatware (depending on the flavour you choose) - It's fully customizable, if you don't want a programme either don't install or simply remove it. 32bit Linux can see as much memory as you can throw at it, none of the artificial restrictions implemented by MS.

You do need to have a bit more of a hands on approach with Linux - Even with the 2 most popular distros, Ubuntu and Suse, they are not completely plug and play yet, but getting very close.

If you want to have a play without installing anything, check out Ubuntu Live CD:

Try Ubuntu before you install | Ubuntu

This will give you an idea of the look and feel - It will not be as fast as a real install as you will be running it off the DVD or USB stick!!

Why not Linux mint?

FuturDreamz said:

Nigsy said:

Rockrz said:

How is it decades ahead of Windows?

I thought it was just a more simple OS, and Windows was more complexed.

The Kernel is more secure, there is none to minimal bloatware (depending on the flavour you choose) - It's fully customizable, if you don't want a programme either don't install or simply remove it. 32bit Linux can see as much memory as you can throw at it, none of the artificial restrictions implemented by MS.

You do need to have a bit more of a hands on approach with Linux - Even with the 2 most popular distros, Ubuntu and Suse, they are not completely plug and play yet, but getting very close.

If you want to have a play without installing anything, check out Ubuntu Live CD:

Try Ubuntu before you install | Ubuntu

This will give you an idea of the look and feel - It will not be as fast as a real install as you will be running it off the DVD or USB stick!!

Why not Linux mint?

Ubuntu is the one people will probably heard of. I've never run Mint, so have no idea what it's like...I'm running Suse 12.1 64bit as my main OS. Might have a look at mint if you think it's worth a peak?

Well, it seems as though some companies could professionally produce a low cost version of this OS and software companies could make paid software for it... so folks could have some support, and there would be some software available to make it all a competitor to Windows and Mac

Linux Mint i used as I'm starting to use Linux but only on VMware. Linux is way more complex than windows, to some people. Plus the reason Linux isn't used in my opinion is that its just to complex but there getting there with the GUI and all that. But Linux can be dangerours,

Nigsy said:

Rockrz said:

How is it decades ahead of Windows?

I thought it was just a more simple OS, and Windows was more complexed.

.... 32bit Linux can see as much memory as you can throw at it, none of the artificial restrictions implemented by MS. ....................

Hi there
Not sure of how you arrive at that conclusion since you can only DIRECTLY address REAL storage of 2**32 bytes which is roughly 4GB.

(4,294,967,296) !!

A trick (used for example by some versions of Windows 2003 server) allows for some fiddling (or "Get around") by using the concept of "Virtual Memory" -- this splits an address into to two parts -- rather like the Area code used in phone numbers and the rest.

However complex algorithms are needed to map these "Virtual addresses" to actual Real memory addresses -- sometimes a "Swap" file will be used to dump a "Users address space" - especially in a Multi User system).

So while you are "Technically" correct it's far far better on a 64 bit system to install a 64 bit OS so you can eliminate the overhead of the "Virtual Address" management. (User address space swapping however is still required if multiple users are logged on to the system concurrently).

OS internals are always complex - however you still have to obey the laws of Maths and Physics - and a 32 bit OS can only DIRECTLY address 4GB memory. (Note DIRECTLY address -- there are tricks as outlined above to address VIRTUAL memory above this range but this comes at at a price -- called OVERHEAD) .

The concept of Virtual Memory in Windows (single user systems) is rather a "Misnomer" since it's actually SWAPPING -- what the windows system tends to do if it needs more RAM than is currently available will SWAP unused chunks of memory to first a cache and then to HDD and use the freed memory for the process it wants to do.

When the memory "Swapped" out is required again the computer has to retrieve this from Disk -- you get a condition known as "Thrashing" when the computer has to spend most of its time allocating and de-allocating memory --if your HDD disk led is on almost continuously without the computer doing anything then you are experiencing this condition.

Extremely complex algorithms are required to decide what to swap out and it's NOT a trivial solution either. The LRU (or Least recently used) algorithm tends to be the most popular - but again a lot of overhead is needed to maintain all this data.

Cheers
jimbo

jimbo45 said:

Nigsy said:

Rockrz said:

How is it decades ahead of Windows?

I thought it was just a more simple OS, and Windows was more complexed.

.... 32bit Linux can see as much memory as you can throw at it, none of the artificial restrictions implemented by MS. ....................

Hi there
Not sure of how you arrive at that conclusion since you can only DIRECTLY address REAL storage of 2**32 bytes which is roughly 4GB.

(4,294,967,296) !!

A trick (used for example by some versions of Windows 2003 server) allows for some fiddling (or "Get around") by using the concept of "Virtual Memory" -- this splits an address into to two parts -- rather like the Area code used in phone numbers and the rest.

However complex algorithms are needed to map these "Virtual addresses" to actual Real memory addresses -- sometimes a "Swap" file will be used to dump a "Users address space" - especially in a Multi User system).

So while you are "Technically" correct it's far far better on a 64 bit system to install a 64 bit OS so you can eliminate the overhead of the "Virtual Address" management. (User address space swapping however is still required if multiple users are logged on to the system concurrently).

OS internals are always complex - however you still have to obey the laws of Maths and Physics - and a 32 bit OS can only DIRECTLY address 4GB memory. (Note DIRECTLY address -- there are tricks as outlined above to address VIRTUAL memory above this range but this comes at at a price -- called OVERHEAD) .

The concept of Virtual Memory in Windows (single user systems) is rather a "Misnomer" since it's actually SWAPPING -- what the windows system tends to do if it needs more RAM than is currently available will SWAP unused chunks of memory to first a cache and then to HDD and use the freed memory for the process it wants to do.

When the memory "Swapped" out is required again the computer has to retrieve this from Disk -- you get a condition known as "Thrashing" when the computer has to spend most of its time allocating and de-allocating memory --if your HDD disk led is on almost continuously without the computer doing anything then you are experiencing this condition.

Extremely complex algorithms are required to decide what to swap out and it's NOT a trivial solution either. The LRU (or Least recently used) algorithm tends to be the most popular - but again a lot of overhead is needed to maintain all this data.

Cheers
jimbo

Jimbo, Nigsy is correct. In Windows, the 4GB limit for x86 system is absolutely arbitrary, and in fact in effect only on XP, Vista and 7, as 2008 allows more memory. The trick is that 32 bits processors actually have 36 address lines, accessed though a hardware feature called PAE (Physical Address Extension - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) that allows 32 bits systems to address up to 64GB of RAM. But the client versions of Windows deliberately disallows that, and only want up to 4GB.
The "Virtual memory" model doesn't has anything to do with this, and is part of the processes security and isolation, it exists at least since Win95, if not earlier.