Re: FN-FORUM: [OT] can't wait till microsoft tries this....

date posted 4th January 2004 18:53

Windows just isnt capable of handling the graphical intensity as it was
never built to carry that sort of strain yet linux although isnt designed to
handle intense graphics can easily cope with it thru various avenues.. eg
editable kernel and add-ons and most of it is open source.

For instance.. TiVo uses Linux as its operating system as it can handle the
video/audio capabilites along with all the connectivity and housekeeping.

Linux uses what memory it needs not everything it has all at once "just in
case" like windows therefor much most stable and dynamic.

As for the OS being stored on the DVD games, not sure on that one.. its
possible i guess as there is the physical capacity but seems rather far
fetched as it would take a LONG while (in comparison) to load the OS
environment just to load a game.. would probably make more sense to load the
OS first and pass any variables eg game data etc to the kernel.

There would have to be a resident OS to load the base OS anyway.. just like
BIOS on a PC.
When u switch the box on it loads some form of environment to play normal
dvd's or audio cds.
Yet Linux has GUI capabilites so could either be handled by W2K or Linux.

There again there has to be some part of MS software in there as it wouldnt
be viable to call it a MS XBOX!

>
> Andy MJ:
> > The way that the xbox works is that the "base" O/S - i.e., the boot
> > loader is stored in hardware. However, each game actually has the OS on
> > the DVD so that all drivers and anything else is specific to the DVD.
> > The O/S is a core win2k with custom drivers as appropriate.
> >
> > As for the O/S of the boot loader, not sure but I'd be surprised if it
> > was linux
>
> I've never really considered a boot loader to be an OS, or even
necessarily
> part of one.
>
> I'd guess there's really only two possible cases (and I'm quoting certain
> stuff to avoid having to define it):
>
> 1. What you're calling the ' "base" O/S ' contains the 'kernel', and just
> loads all available 'drivers' on the DVD automagically. In that case, I'd
> argue that aforementioned boot OS is actually *the* OS - in which case the
> XBox runs W2K. Incidentally, I'm thinking you'd need a *really* good
reason
> to do it any other way - otherwise you'd have to duplicate *core* APIs
like
> I/O, SHM and Graphics on *every* DVD, which seems wasteful.
>
> 2. If each DVD really does contain *all* of a cut-down W2K (if that's not
an
> oxymoron), then the in-XBox boot loader simply has to pass control to the
> 'kernel' on the DVD, which *doesn't* require the boot loader to be an OS
per
> se (as an example, I boot my XP box with LILO (LInux LOader), which I
> certainly wouldn't consider to be an OS). So again, the XBox runs W2K -
just
> not the same 'image' for every game.
>
> Anyone know for sure/got any other thoughts?
>
> - Nick Grimshaw
> { if you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate. }
>
>
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