From: brian%jaguar.cs.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Brian Sturgill) Newsgroups: comp.os.os2.programmer,comp.os.os2.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.programmer.win32 Subject: OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.4 Message-ID: <1992Sep2.170400.10092@hellgate.utah.edu> Date: 2 Sep 92 17:03:59 MDT Organization: University of Utah CS Dept Lines: 426 I have decided this list is mature enough to go bother the people in the programmer groups with it. After it gets kicked around a bit more I'll post it again (in the same manner), so don't worry about missing it if you don't follow the advocacy group. FOLLOWUPS ARE REDIRECTED ONLY TO THE ADVOCACY GROUPS, PLEASE LEAVE IT THAT WAY. The list below is one we've been kicking around in comp.os.os2.advocacy for a few days. It is intended as information about the state of features between the two. While NT is not yet released, much of it's features are already in the pre-release. This list seeks to explore the difference now, and in the near future between the two systems. Relevant add-on packages for OS/2 are also discussed. Warning: I develop for both systems, but have a bias towards NT. I do try to be fair though. NOTE TO THE COMP.OS.MS-WINDOWS.ADVOCACY PEOPLE. The natural thing for you to do when you see the number of features NT has over OS/2 is to be mean to OS/2. 1) This will only provoke the c.o.os2.advocacy people to point out known points like NT's not out + favorite MS bashes. 2) OS/2 is quite powerful as it is, and stands a good chance of being slimmed down enough to run on Windows 3.X sized systems. For all users, bigger is not necessarily better. 3) If IBM starts bundling it's add-on packages at reasonable prices, OS/2 is not nearly so far behind. 4) If you really have to... please change the subject line and start another thread. ----------- OS/2 vs NT features list, Revision 1.4 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. Deletions in this revision: The request for a detailed feature list for LAN Server. Multiple growable heaps. // DosSubSetMem and friends do the same job. 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 don't want to suggest it publically, e-mail me... If I don't know for certain already, 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. Please specify the source of the information. Here is a list of 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.) OS2 LAN Server 2.0 Entry Package* $795 (Source: press release found on CompuServe.) *** 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. *********** The lists below are of features in the BASIC system package. *********** Features currently in OS/2 2.0 but not in Windows NT Object Oriented Shell (WorkPlace Shell) Great DOS support Mediocre Windows 3.0 support (NT's is currently poor). Is actually released. Runs without a GUI. @ Can boot non-DOS systems in a VDM. @ Can be configured with less features to use less memory than NT. 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 content neither has a real edge in memory usage when counting relevant add-ons. Features currently in Windows NT but not in OS/2 2.0 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. Full symmetric multiprocessing support. Generic wait on multiple events/semaphores of different types. This is helps prevent deadlocks. Consider the classic deadlock example: Two processes, P1 and P2, both want to access tape drives A and B. P1 locks A and waits for B, P2 locks B and waits for A. Deadlock. With the generic wait facility you say wake me when I have both A and B. This mechanism prevents many deadlock problems. Automatic stack expansion. OS/2 2.0 does not (in the general case) have dynamic stack extension. Someone inside IBM (and others) sent me this story. Thread 1's stack is statically sized according to the value you set in the executable at compile time. Worse, all pages of this stack are committed as the process starts, so you don't want to grossly oversize the stack. All other threads do have dynamic stack extension. Doing this somehow made compatibility with older API's easier. 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. Memory mapped files Asynchronous I/O OS/2 1.X had this feature but for unexplained reasons dropped it in 2.0. While you can do it with threads, you can also multi-task in DOS... all you have to do is write the code that intercepts the timer interrupt and swaps the processes. Apparently the 16-bit API DosReadAsynch, DosWriteAsynch still exist in thunked form. Deitel and Kogan don't mention them... anybody know why they're being phased out? ! Console API Please remain calm on this one... I am just hoping for some information. OS/2 2.0 only supports the Console API via 16-bit thunked-calls. In theory the 16-bit calls are there only for backwards compatibility. Anybody know what the future plans are? 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. 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 flys by and the window closes; often before the output can be read. 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.) Dynamic 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.j Pen Support. Windows 3.1 support. Fully 32-bit drivers. GUI Fully 32-bit API Fast client/server approach. Separate queues per process. PM and Windows 3.X have one message queue for all applications. Designed to help accellerators. The internal routines have been changes so that drawing commands are buffered and sent to the underlying graphics drivers in a manner that can take advantage of graphics accellerator cards. OLE Good _published_ debug hooks. 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 impersonate a client's identity to so that work can safely be performed on behalf of a client. RPC DCE support OLE integrated with RPC RPC has corresponding LPC NTFS 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. Volume Stripping(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 Berkely sockets. Named pipes. Event logging. 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 environment (e.g.) PATH without having to reboot for it to take effect. @ NT can generically use more than 16 megs of memory. OS/2 only uses the memory above 16 megs as a form of fast cache. @ Has seemless support for 16-bit Windows apps on XGA and 8514 displays. # changed both headers below to say "in the fall" as both companies # are now using that term in their official announcements. OS/2 2.0 will add the following in the Fall. Catch up to NT by having Windows 3.1 support. Catch up to NT by adding a 32-bit GUI. Catch up to NT by allowing 32-bit drivers. @ Catch up to NT by having seemless support of 16-bit Windows apps with XGA and 8514 displays. @ Installable from CD-ROM and diskettes. # Slim-down such that it will properly fit in 4 megs. @ Ship it's DDK (actually DAK Device Adaptation Kits). Probably will pass NT in SuperVGA support. 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) ! Remote booting (Diskless/dataless workstations) (Some say OS/2 has this now... is this in the base package?) (There is also a question as to whether or not an NT Lan Manager server will be required to be able to do this.) Remote installation and 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 it's user that it was about to shutdown... shutdown, accepted the new OS, rebooted. All without manual intervention on the client side. NTFS Symlinks Sparse File @ Ship it's 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. 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. Publically available details are sketchy. Prototypes have been demoed to a lucky few. *********** 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. ![MICROSOFT PEOPLE -- surely there's more to LM 4 NT... details?] OS/2 Multimedia (Avaliable 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 #OS/2 Lan Server 2.0 Entry Package (Avaliable 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. #OS/2 Lan Server 2.0 Advanced Package (Not available for OS/2 2.0 yet) (Includes features of Entry Package above.) Local security Higher throughput. Fault tolerance (disk duplexing and disk mirroring) 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 :-) :-) :-)