Desktop platforms Toolkit 
Story: Desktop Linux wins plaudits for stability
Posted by: Philip Stephens (Friday 11 March 2005, 6:25 PM)
"But since we're talking GUI, XWindows (unlike Windows) allows apps to access hardware directly"
Absolute rubbish. Where did you get that information from? X Windows does not allow ANY direct access to video hardware.
Both Windows and Linux have a mechanism for permitting direct access to video frame buffers (DirectX under Windows and svgalib for Linux). But this is a far cry from providing "direct access" to hardware.
The weak point of any operating system are the drivers, because most of them have to run in kernel space. But even there Linux has an advantage over Windows, because Linux drivers are single-file modules, while Windows drivers tend to be spread over multiple VXD and DLL files, all piled into the system directory where they can overwrite each other if the names aren't unique.
Full Talkback thread
Story: Desktop Linux wins plaudits for stability
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Right. Because Windows applications run in Kernel... Anonymous -
And all of your business apps are going to run on... Brendon
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The apps don't run in Kernel space, but the G... Robert Myers -
Yup. They also use IO, scheduling etc. A... Anonymous -
"But since we're talking GUI, XWind... Philip Stephens -
"Having the source code doesn't mean a thing when... Trev
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Not surprising that he got good stability from Lin... Anonymous
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"Having the source code doesn't mean a thing when... Steve J
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I'm using a stripped-down, fully patched win2... The Mitch
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Desktop Linux will never succeed until s... Brian H
