https://lunduke.locals.com/post/4037306/myth-windows-3-1-was-just-a-shell-on-top-of-dos Sign up to Follow Lunduke community logo Lunduke Comedy * Gaming * News * Science & Tech Sign up to Follow Lunduke Myth: Windows 3.1 was just a shell on top of DOS Bonus Myth: Windows 3.1 did not have real multitasking Bryan Lunduke 11 hours ago post photo preview The computer industry is filled to the brim with myths. One such myth -- a myth that just won't seem to die -- goes something like this: "Windows 3.1 was not really an operating system. It was just a shell on top of DOS." Let's just put this to bed right now. To consider Windows 3.1 to simply be simply a shell on top of DOS is wildly -- wildly -- incorrect. When Windows 3.1 is launched, DOS is unloaded. While Windows 3.1 does, most certainly, take advantage of DOS to provide some DOS-specific features... DOS is, in reality, mostly used as a boot loader to get Windows 3.1 running. In many ways -- in this scenario -- DOS is acting a great deal like GRUB does on a Linux system... acting as a boot loader that then launches the kernel. To showcase just how powerful (and misunderstood) Windows 3.1 really is... let's also dispel another myth: "Windows 3.1 did not have real multitasking" Did Windows 3.1 have "real" multitasking? You bet your bottom it did! --------------------------------------------------------------------- Before we go further, for those not in the know, here is a super fast (super high level) primer on the two types of multitasking we'll be talking about: Cooperative Multitasking -- Each application is responsible for giving up time to the other software running on the computer. This is typically viewed as less powerful as it relies on each application being "well behaved" in order for the entire system to work efficiently. Preemptive Multitasking -- The operating system itself is responsible for allocating CPU time to each application. Which means the individual pieces of software didn't even need to be designed with multitasking in mind (in many cases). This is a wild simplification. But for the sake of this topic, it'll do. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Windows 3.1 actually consists of two different "kernels" -- two virtual machines that run different types of software: * Win386 : A protected mode hypervisor * System VM : aka "The Windows 3.1 kernel" that ran individual Win16 applications Win386 ran individual "V8086" processes -- which was a key feature of the Intel 386 processor running in Protected Mode -- in a completely preemptive multitasking way. This is key: All DOS applications ran as independent "V8086'' processes. Which means that, if you were running DOS software under Windows 3.1... every single DOS application was preemptively multitasked. Seriously. Those DOS applications were designed to run in a single-tasking system (DOS) and, thanks to Windows 3.1's powerful Win386 hypervisor, were now running in a modern, preemptive multitasking system. Then that "System VM" was running, as one of those "V8086" processes, which is a cooperative multitasking kernel. Within that kernel is where each of the Windows 3.1 applications were run. These pieces of "Win16" software (aka "16 bit Windows") were cooperatively sharing one V8086. And all of this was happening with DOS acting -- more or less -- as a boot loader. So. Was Windows 3.1 merely a "Shell on top of DOS"? Heck, no. If that's the case, that means "Linux" is nothing more than a "Shell on top of GRUB". And did Windows 3.1 have "real multitasking"? You be your sweet bippy. In fact... it had both of the two types of multitasking: preemptive and cooperative. Which is a heck of a lot more than classic MacOS could say... Windows 3.1 had a lot of flaws. In fact, you could write an entire book about all of the problems with that system. But, just the same, it was an incredibly powerful OS... that was most certainly not just a "shell on top of DOS". The next time you run across someone trying to sell that tired, busted myth... send them here. community logo Join the Lunduke Community To read more articles like this, sign up and join my community today Sign Up 20 View All 14 What else you may like... Videos Podcasts Posts Articles [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke January 25, 2023 Lunduke blasted by a 9 foot tall Tesla Coil Back in 2014, LinuxFest Northwest threw a big conference party at a place called "The Spark Museum" in Bellingham, Washington. Basically a museum of retro electronics (old radios, tv sets, and whatnot). Really cool place. At the Spark Museum they had a 9 foot tall Tesla Coil -- which blasts out 4.6 million volts. This particular Tesla coil (one of the largest in the world) was originally owned by Cirque du Soleil... they were trying to incorporate it into a Vegas show. Legend has it someone got badly hurt (or worse) and that part of the show was scrapped. So the Spark Museum picked that Tesla Coil up. Then they built a big, man-sized Faraday cage that looks like something a super-villain would have, stored on his volcano island, in a steampunk novel -- complete with a battered, old-style dentist chair inside of it. The conference organizers were given the chance to put three people inside the Faraday cage at once... and blast them with the Tesla coil. Because I'm the luckiest darned ... 00:01:04 16 View All 5 Reply [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke December 02, 2022 How to Pronounce Tech Words (part 2) Curious how to properly say BIOS? WiFi? SCSI? GUID? SQL? Lunduke, the world's foremost authority on "saying stuff" (tm), will elucidate for you. 00:05:54 12 View All 17 Reply [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke November 28, 2022 TempleOS lives on -- Forked and renamed A quick look at the history of TempleOS -- including the current forked version, known as "ZealOS". It's a weird, wild ride. 00:20:22 12 View All 10 Reply [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke May 15, 2023 "Internet bots, Fedora layoffs, & C64 Games" - Lunduke's Big Tech Show - May 15th, 2023 Lunduke's Big Tech Show - May 15th, 2023 - Episode 001 Topics for today's show includes: * Taking a stand against Artificial Intelligence. * Is 47% of Internet traffic just... bots? * Fedora Linux Project Manager among the mass Red Hat layoffs. * Tech layoffs for 2023 closing in on 200,000. * Layoffs last week at Microsoft, Stack Overflow, Akamai, and LinkedIn. * Asahi Linux goes to war against Xorg. And it's very entertaining. * A brand new game (Zeta Wing 2) released for Commodore 64. "Internet bots, Fedora layoffs, & C64 Games" - Lunduke's Big Tech Show - May 15th, 2023 "Internet bots, Fedora layoffs, & C64 Games" - Lunduke's Big Tech Show - May 15th, 2023 25 View All 32 Reply [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke May 12, 2023 The Lunduke Journal of Technology Podcast - May 12, 2023 "Linux Sucks 2023", "macOS Sucks", & "Artificial Intelligence is Dumb" are on the schedule! Plus details about the daily show starting Monday, the move to Locals, and lots of other stuff. So much! The Lunduke Journal of Technology Podcast - May 12, 2023 The Lunduke Journal of Technology Podcast - May 12, 2023 12 View All 5 Reply [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke May 10, 2023 Serenity OS Week Begins! Kick the tires and light the fires! It's time to get our Serenity OS on! This is a very different beast than our previous themed weeks. To start with... Serenity OS requires that you make your own build! Luckily the process is pretty easy -- if nobody else documents it before I get around to it, I'll sit down and make a quick "how to" later today. Serenity website: https://serenityos.org/ Serenity OS build instructions: https://github.com/SerenityOS/serenity/blob/master/Documentation/ BuildInstructions.md Serenity OS Week Begins! Serenity OS Week Begins! 16 View All 18 Reply Dan Scott@retropunk 2 hours ago Not to be spamming, but I'm doing a thing. I've started taking steps to unplug from the matrix a bit more. I've still got my iPhone but took off all time wasting apps (YouTube, Hulu, Disney+, Odyssee, Rumble, etc) and this includes Locals. I've also decided to only use my AppleWatch as a fitness tracker at this point and for authenitcation. Also limiting the amount of time I'm listening to stuff (podcasts, YouTube videos in the background, music that isn't edifying) and trying to institute dedicated times of silence to pray and clear my head. It's kind of a continuation from my media purge a few months back. I hadn't really realized just how much time I'd been "plugged in" until the other day and it's really nice to go back to a simpler way of doing things. Like today, I wanted to share some of this stuff with you all, so I just waited until we got home and I had a few minutes to sit down at a computer to do so. Now I'm signing off to go make dinner. Glorious. Anyway, that ... 8 View All 3 Reply Dan Scott@retropunk 2 hours ago Had a fun day out with the boys this morning. We had to go into the city for a doctor's appointment so we hung out and finally saw the Mario movie. It was fun with a ton of easter eggs for Mario and Nintendo fans. We also went to the table top/card game store for a bit. I forgot my phone in the car so no pictures but their arcade is really getting quite good! They have a wall of pinball machines, the old 4 player X-Men cabinet, a NEO-GEO cabinet, Tekken tag, a DDR clone, 4 MarioKart ride on cabinets, Gauntlet Legacy, Marvel vs Capcom 2, and an original Donkey Kong Jr cabinet. They also just got in -- and need to repair -- an old Star Wars Episode I: Racer cabinet. Haven't seen one of those in a very long time! After that we went to the retro game shop and I found an old TI-99 in a pile in the back. Ended up picking up the last two Medal of Honor PS2 games I needed for that part of my collection. Overall it's been a really fun day. post photo preview 5 View All 3 Reply Edward Willis@encw 2 hours ago Does anyone know of a company, that they have experience with, that has good quality batteries with new cells for old laptops? I've got some old laptops I'd like to bring back into service. 5 View All 3 Reply [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke 9 hours ago post photo preview Why an iPhone makes a terrible general purpose computer (when Android makes a pretty good one) When I sat down to evaluate the viability of using an Android phone as a laptop replacement... I was, surprisingly (to me), a bit impressed. While the experience is certainly not perfect, Android possesses enough key features (and retains enough "computer-like" qualities), that an Android phone can step in and take the role of a more traditional, general purpose computer (with an operating system like Linux, Windows, or macOS). Which got me thinking... Can I do the same with an iPhone? After spending a considerable amount of time struggling to get an iPhone to perform some key taks, the answer was crystal clear: An iPhone can not take the place of a standard computer. Simply not possible. iOS, as an operating system, is purposefully (and artificially) hobbled specifically to restrict what can be accomplished by an end user. It is a rare example of an operating system designed specifically to make a computer less powerful. There are two key problems that illustrate this. Problem #1: Forbidden software The first issue is, I believe, the most obvious (and widely discussed). Apple, for whatever reason, specifically worked to make sure specific types of software cannot be installed and used on any iOS device. To accomplish this task, Apple did two critical things: 1. Apple forbade users from installing software outside of the official Apple App Store. 2. Apple then blocked segments of software from being available on the App Store. The net result is an absolutely huge number of application types that simply cannot be found or used on your typical iPhone: * Emulators & virtual machines * Powerful software development tools (including interpreters and compilers) * File managers with any significant features Those three, while only a partial list, are the three that -- in my opinion -- create the broadest negative impact. Imagine Windows, Linux, or even macOS without any of those three categories of applications available. Preposterous, right? It would cause the system to become almost unusable as a computer. Yet that is the approach that Apple has taken with iOS. Problem #2: Managing files is a nightmare While the issue with Apple forbidding software on iOS is a critical one -- and, by itself, is enough to make iOS a mere shell of what it could be -- there is another key problem with the way iOS functions that... even if you can work around the software problem... makes iOS nearly unusable for... almost everyone. File management. Because of the way file access works with iOS applications, the seemingly simple act of working with a single file using multiple applications becomes a maddeningly complex process. Want to produce a podcast? Let's say you record your podcast audio within one application. In order to edit or compress that audio... you'll need to export it from the first application. And then, depending on the specifics of each application you are using, you'll likely need an application to act as an intermediary -- to move it in and out of the global file storage. More than likely, you'll need to do this multiple times -- as it is extremely unlikely that you'll be able to do all of your podcast recording, editing, compressing, and publishing all from within a single application. You cannot simply save a file to a central location -- an SD card, a home directory, etc. -- and open / save that file from any application you wish. iOS does not allow that. The more complex your project, the more maddening and time consuming this gets. Dealing with complex graphics projects or videos (with several clips that need to be adjusted and rendered in different applications)? You can easily end up spending more time fighting with iOS's ridiculous file management restrictions than actually working on your project. It's enough to drive a man to drink. Android doesn't have theses problems Let me be clear: I am not a fan of Android. The number of complaints I have about Android is greater than all the grains of sand yadda yadda yadda. And that's not even including the privacy and security with Google's OS. But, if you want to use Android as a general computing device? It works. With annoyances, to be sure, but it works. Not only does iOS not work as a general computing device but, even if it did... even if Apple fixed the whole "forbidden software" issue... I would still want to light my iPhone on fire if I were forced to use it as such based purely on the problems with file management. For a company that used to pride themselves on building some of the best user interfaces in all of computing... it's pretty gosh darned disappointing. And, the truly terrible part is this: It doesn't need to be this way. Apple made iOS this way on purpose. Because, I assume, they hate us all. Read full Article 24 View All 25 Reply [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke May 21, 2023 post photo preview Using an Android phone as a desktop replacement (2023 edition) Because... Why not? Today, I'd like to answer a simple question for myself: Can I, personally, use an Android phone as my primary computer -- both for work and personal uses? While I'm not the biggest Android or iOS fan in the world, the alure of being able to use a single, pocket-sized computer for 100% (or nearly 100%) of my computing is simply far too compelling an idea to ignore. Plus... I rather enjoy breaking outside of my Computer Comfort Zone (TM). While I certainly enjoy using Linux (typically on a laptop) as my primary computer... are there better ways? Am I missing out on some amazing experience by limiting myself to desktop Linux on a "traditional" form factor laptop? While I push myself outside of that Comfort Zone regularly... It has been quite a long time since I've tested out the viability of using Android in such a full-time way. The last time I made such an attempt... The results were mixed. To say the least. So... Here we go. Only for Supporters To read the rest of this article and access other paid content, you must be a supporter Become a supporter Read full Article 32 View All 20 Reply [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke May 19, 2023 Funny Programming Pictures Part XXXIII I feel like mocking CSS and Agile today... The best gosh-darned Ctrl-C Ctrl-V on the whole gosh-darned Intertubes. Gosh darn it. 347624726_3308065892780232_5461523548118910972_n.jpg?_nc_cat=106&ccb= 1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc=6-prFD8NjOIAX-c8wyY&_nc_ht= scontent-dfw5-2.xx&oh= 00_AfCRzmB4oZafBYEVQyhRvpOi9L5NGTmtlkFZALv-eWY39g&oe=646C9035 CDN media CDN media CDN media CDN media 347565850_229520293103938_7388030175694355371_n.jpg?stp= dst-jpg_p180x540&_nc_cat=106&ccb=1-7&_nc_sid=8bfeb9&_nc_ohc= RxUnuzME1PoAX_sjBmt&_nc_ht=scontent-dfw5-2.xx&oh= 00_AfB9rtqa3542rZNFewrQQswxwSP9Rhan31BNBs_PzWqJng&oe=646BB429 CDN media jf6jfqij7h0b1.jpg?width=768&auto=webp&v=enabled&s= aac2d5e0814b21c7886b4bd1a9954895dd730efe BD0c57I.jpg CDN media CDN media CDN media Read full Article 36 View All 25 Reply See More Sign Up To Lunduke Sign Up for free to see more from this community or subscribe to Lunduke for $5/month to support Lunduke for more interaction and exclusive content. Login Signup Available on mobile and TV devices google store google store app store app store google store google store app tv store app tv store amazon store amazon store roku store roku store Powered by Locals About Community Lunduke 4407 Members [creator-la] Bryan Lunduke@Lunduke July 20, 2020 Welcome to Lunduke.Locals.com! In order to post or comment, you'll need to become a paying member. This supports the work I do -- and also keeps out the riff raff. ;) The rules around here are super simple: 1) Be Excellent to Each Other. 2) No cursin' or posting material you couldn't show on prime-time TV in the 1980's. That's it, really! Be cool and keep it clean so folks can enjoy this at work and around their kids. Oh, and nerdiness is encouraged. The nerdier the better. 100 View All 9 Reply Don't have a Locals account yet? SIGN UP I'm already a member Log in Please keep this window open while your file is uploading...