Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!texbell!uhnix1!sugar!karl From: karl@sugar.hackercorp.com (Karl Lehenbauer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.tech Subject: Re: Minix, Unix on the Amiga, and flames on AmigaDOS braindamage... Message-ID: <4107@sugar.hackercorp.com> Date: 12 Aug 89 19:20:02 GMT References: <1610@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu> <195@VAX1.CC.UAKRON.EDU> <7570@cbmvax.UUCP> Organization: Sugar Land Unix - Houston Lines: 28 In article <7570@cbmvax.UUCP>, jesup@cbmvax.UUCP (Randell Jesup) writes: > I consider any program on ANY os that doesn't > free what it allocates (memory, file locks, whatever) to be at best poorly > written. Careful, Randall, I think you've been using your Amiga too long. There is no reason a program should have to free its memory if the operating system does it. Programs written for such an OS cannot be considered "at best poorly written" if their authors did not choose to gratuitously add that redundant capability. Few multitasking operating systems have not done tracked memory, because memory leaks can crash them (cf AmigaDOS). Protection, priveledge instructions and such were created to keep rogue programs from doing in themselves, other programs and the OS. However, we have learned to live with this unprotected system, and there are certain advatages, like intertask communication is easy and high-performance, there are a million of these multitasking machines out there and people can buy them for $500. So when people come to bash, comparing the Amiga unfavorably to stripped $12,000 workstations, it gets kind of ridiculous. Anyway, the Mac's in the same boat, as is every DOS/Windows user (an absurdity considering how long the 286, with its built-in MMU, has been out.) -- -- uunet!sugar!karl "Have you debugged your wolf today?" -- free Usenet access: (713) 438-5018