>what is aptitude, ive never used it?

A better version of apt-get. Try it.Very very good.

may give it a try...

Its already installed on all debian systems...

i had a go with it, i like the GUI. Its handy for searching for packages.

It's not apt-get or aptitude that are good, it's the underlying package management system that they use.

And as far as the overlying interface is concerned, I recommend using Synaptic, unless it's too slow for you. I personally prefer Synaptic except when I already know what I'm getting -- then apt-get is more convenient.
Linux and UNIX are written in C and there the most stable operating systems around IMHO so your point is invalid. Windows is only unstable as it is badly written.
Not to reply to something you wrote in April, but Linux and UNIX are absolutelynot the most stable operating systems around.
C is the best language in terms of speed (apart from maybe assembley, but thats very cryptic so c is better for writing large apps like whole oses in - i do believe that small parts of windows are in assembler though.)
While I'm replying to this old post, I'd like to point out that Fortran is faster.any modern languages (Python, Java, All of .NET) are all slower than C as they require some sort of framework or interpreter which must be made in a language such as C anyway.
You're talking about interpreted languages, so don't forget about compiled modern languages (I'd like to point out that Python, Java, and C# aren't really modern, as far as their design goes.) Some push against C, others don't. How fast "C" is of course depends on the C compiler you're using.

Linux and UNIX are written in C and there the most stable operating systems around IMHO

The important part is that i said IMHO. I have a win2003 and an NT4 server as well as a Debian Linux server and the debian box has an uptime of over 2 years whereas the 2003 server has an uptime of 23 days (seems to run really slow after 30) and the NT4 box has an uptime of 72 days (that seems to crash at 120 or so days for some reason)

I believe freeBSD is the most stable operating system.

Yes, FreeBSD is essentially UNIX

but apparently rash disagrees with me...

William Gates' claim to the "Programmers Hall of Fame" is DOS, specifically MS-DOS for the the first IBM PC. I think that was written in assembler. It was a great achievement in those early PC days. This comes from a person who used some of the alternative disk operating systems.

The graphical user interface called Windows came later, patterned after an effort at Xerox, and later the Apple Lisa computer. A graphical user interface would have been too much for the slow speed and limited memory of early PCs.

Actually, according to accounts I've read, neither Bill Gates nor any of his company wrote DOS. They bought the license from the fellow who did (I don't remember his name) for a fee based on the number of customers Gates resold it to. He did not sell it to very many customers other than IBM. He charged IBM $1.00 for each machine on which they installed it. That's how he made his first fortune. Smart guy!

DOS was written in machine language. I've seen some of the original code. It's pretty ugly. We should all thank our lucky stars that we have better languages to use today.

Hoppy

im not thinking they used basic. my guess is they used c and assembly to create windows. and maybe some c++. i couldnt find anything to prove what windows was writen in but im pretty sure it was c and assembly

Bill's original Basic was written in assembler on a Teletype machine, and saved to paper tape. I think I remember reading that the original version of BASIC for the Altair was distributed on paper tape. GW Basic and the later Professional BASIC for MSDOS were written in assembler, and maybe C.

I believe the original Windows versions 1 and 2 (ick) through 3.1 were written first in assembler and later in assembler and C. The first versions of Win NT and Win95 were probably written mostly in C++.

didnt windows 1/2/3 have some pascal in it?

NT based systems are nearly entireley assembley and C

What's wrong with being thirteen-thirty-seven?
The nice thing about Gentoo is that your applications are optimised for your system. Sometimes you need that extra speed you won't get from a downloading a binary compiled to use only the '386 instruction set.

i dont see the speed benefit of compiling optimised apps from source.I just use 386 or 686 binaries and it is fast enough

building an optimised kernel does make a diff though

Thank you for that information. My generation hoarded clock cycles like misers. I've just come back to coding after a long absence and I'm horrified at what looks like sheer carelesness and bloat. It looks like 3 megabytes is the new 16k.

My generation hoarded clock cycles like misers. I've just come back to coding after a long absence and I'm horrified at what looks like sheer carelesness and bloat. It looks like 3 megabytes is the new 16k.

*Cough* Vista *Cough*

how the hell can an OS justify being up to 18gb when installed!

Thank you for that information. My generation hoarded clock cycles like misers. I've just come back to coding after a long absence and I'm horrified at what looks like sheer carelesness and bloat. It looks like 3 megabytes is the new 16k.

That's exactly true. But it shouldn't be a surprise. Did you know that the new space suit that NASA is working on for the Mars mission has 20,000 parts and cost over $1,000,000.

That's what is known as progress. It's what keeps us all employed.

Say "Thank You".

Hoppy :)

Thank you for that information. My generation hoarded clock cycles like misers. I've just come back to coding after a long absence and I'm horrified at what looks like sheer carelesness and bloat. It looks like 3 megabytes is the new 16k.

I'm that way too -- I was agast at the bloated code that young programmers write professionally a few years ago. When I asked why not write more efficient code the response was "so what? its user interface and doesn't need to be optimized". Well, they paid dearly for that attitude about a year later when the whole program was so slow that the customer wouldn't accept it.

About Windows 1.0 and MS-DOS 1.0 -- I remember those too. DOS version 1.0 did not have any support for subdirectories and Windows 1.0 was all text based, no graphics or fonts other than the operating systems default font. It ran on top of DOS instead of integrated with it.

Actually, all versions of Windows before Win95 (not counting the versions of Windows NT) ran on top of MSDOS.

Even Win95 and Win98 (and probably even WinME) had remnants of MSDOS hidden away underneath. That's why they were far flakier and insecure than NT.

Vista got bloated because of the perceived need for more security (probably needed, but the cure is often an annoying message box asking the superuser if he really wanted to change that feature, for instance.) and user interface "BLING" (not needed).

I'm typing from a Vista machine now. The only blue screen encountered was during the initial bootup. Reinstalling took care of the problem that caused the blue screen, and it's been stable since.

If you get a Vista machine, you have a choice of how much "bling" you want in the interface. While Aero features seem stable, I got annoyed by the semi-transparent window feature, and turned that off after two weeks. FWIW I allow OS updates, and haven't had a problem with any of them.

Incidentally, I consider the Mac OS to be full of bling also, though my non-geek wife loves her Mac. Tastes vary.