I am actually working a paper for school with the topic "Why isn't there an operating system in current use that can run both Unix and Windows applications simultaneously? (Think about both technical & political issues.)".

what are the differences between the two OS in terms of architecture, so that applications cannot run on both systems.

I would be appreciated if u have other ideas besides architecture that would make applications cant tun on both.

firts of all lets agree on something you cant comunicate with the whole world using a single language that said all the operating systems speaks or understands diffrent languages they have their own system calls and diffrent puposes. so you cant write a programme using same set of instructions you have to port it one and another and companies are there for profit if they think no one is going to buy their software on a particular platform why spent 100's of hours porting the code to another operating system. and the biggest reason windows is a closed source software so you do not know what is going on under the hood.if you are intrested in researching i saw a article about intel developing a new cpu to run diffrent os's at the same time it was on os news check it out

I'm sorry I can't help you with a nice link that would give you good information for your paper but could you please end your paper with this line:

"Linux is vastly superior to Windows and if most software was ported towards Linux their would be no such a thing as Microsoft."

Okay maybe thats pushing it but thats how I feel.

I find it interesting because I just setup a machine at my friends house that runs RedHat. He didn't have any clue about Linux but I gave him a "Linux for dummies" book, installed it for him, and set him on his way. About 3 weeks later he called me up and said "Man Vince, if I could use Dreamweaver on Linux I would put it on all my machines." This is exactly what I'm talking about. Its not that people like Windows XP its that fact that all the software that they use day to day only works on Windows XP. Its the third-party applications that aren't ported for Linux that keeps Windows where it is today.

here is your short answer GREED!! (on microsofts part).

you have a tuff paper. good luck. but never forget one is free and one is not. in that if you merge one with the other it will cost and if you completely whipe one off (so long as it is not linux) then the poor are going to suffer. either way it is dam good to have two and luckily with linux we have heaps more options again.

Other than architecture reasons only reason I can think of in the polictical sense is:

Microsoft is so dominant, that over time there it has sucked in a wealth of other parties who for financial and good old fashioned power reasons it wouldn't be in their interest for Microsoft to lose it's position.

Who knows what goes on in dark smoky rooms, who knows what the pro-Microsoft lobbyists get up to and what brown envelopes change hands on Microsoft funded junkets, expensive weekends in exotic locations in top notch hotels, for those at the top who have the power to make decisions.

As always we very rarely find out what unsavoury events go on between the so called great and good until well after the event, only history ever reveals the true facts.


Welcome to conspiracy Sunday !

(p.s obviously I can't back any of this up so it'd couldn't be put in a factual paper, a new messiah has arrived though to clean up this dirty old town, Arnold Schwarzenneger !!)

Yeah i know its a tough paper to write, so I hope that for people who have viewed this thread, at least leave a few sentences comments please, coz i really dunno where to start on my paper

First of all try to stay away from Linux references if your paper really is about Unix and Windows.Unix is not a free OS and Linux is not Unix.If go and start to tell great opensource stories you'd be way off target.

Let me quote our rules from http://www.linuxquestions.org/rules.php : " Do not expect LQ members to do your homework - you will learn much more by doing it yourself."

With this said, don't expect any members here to give you exact answers for your paper. That is really upon you and the whole point in you researching yourself for your own paper you decided to do.

Regards.

PS. Moving to General where its more suitable to be discussed, etc.

Simply put - it is money. Windows still is the dominant OS on desktop machines. To use a car analogy - petrol (or gas) stations will not put in the electrical outlets or hydrogen pumps for cars that use those for power because there simply isn't the market for it. Also, I would imagine that most of the programmers are knowledgable about Windows and can quickly write, debug (to a greater or lesser extent) and update programs for that OS. Now, each of those programmers probably is equally good in Linux or Unix or whatever, but if you were Macromedia or some other big company, would you want to risk your profits and your shareholders wrath on the chance that someone can do this? especially if you have only their word for it?

I suspect that we will see more programs released for non-Windows Oses over the next few years, but they will be the lesser programs and will probably be as a result of Governments and big businesses switching away from MS. The developers will say "hey, half of these programs aren't just specific to this customer, what if we put them out there...? We may even recoup some money fairly quickly".

If you are allowed to mention Linux without damaging your grades, don't forget to mention Wine and Codeweavers Crossover Office.

Incidentally, have you thought about contacting a software developer (one of the bigger ones) and asking them to help? - a 'real world' example or two can only help your grade.

I don't see a 'technica' hint, so I will maybe add some. Not directly (because it's homework: start from history, search for basic ideas used in Unix, find out the history of DOS. Plus search for: system calls, filesystems (that's not very important now), executable format. The results should tell you the reason.

Most of the incompatibilities rest in the libraries, which programs access through an API, or Applications Programming Interface. The libraries in Windows that a program uses to put windows on the screen, do math, handle memory, talk to devices, etc. is completely different from the libraries that accomplish the same functions in Linux. The APIs are completely different, so the functions & classes you would use to do things in Windows aren't available in Linux, and vice-versa.

Note that it is possible to run some, but not all Windows applications on a Linux machine using a program called WINE. WINE is a reimplementation of the Windows libraries and APIs within Linux, so Windows programs can use those libraries in place of the native Windows libraries. Unfortunately, the WINE implementation doesn't (yet) replicate all of the functionality of Windows, so some programs will run great, while others won't run at all. Many programs will run, but with "issues." YMMV.

Just had a thought......how long is this assignment supposed to be? It seems an incredibly open question, leaving you either writing a paper as long as a Phd thesis or a relatively short one which can barely touch on the necessary points.

Go back to your teacher/lecturer and find out what they are after exactly. For your next assignment, they may suggest Richard Stallman - Madman or Visionary? (discuss in under a week)

Personally, I'd get a bit of two by four, hit them with it and ask them to ask me a question that treats me like an adult. Personally I don't give a flying duck what platform a program runs on, I care about whether I am allowed to run that program.....welcome Patents that the US has embraced, Europe still struggling against, I am Corporate ....repeate after me...I am corporate...repeate after me...patent...patent...patent....

Are you looking for something like Sequent (now IBM) NUMA-Q?

I'll defer the technical stuff to everybody else, and the political stuff as well. I'd ask instead what the hell the question means? You can run bash and command.com on a DOS computer with djgpp and you can run bash and cmd.exe on NT with Cygwin and you can run bash and command.com on Linux with dosemu and WINE. And so with most of the other battery of GNU and MS utils and many larger applications. Even without Cygwin, you can run Lynx or Vim on Windows XP and run Mozilla or AbiWord on either. I have a hard time coming up with stuff going the other way, but there are several - stuff like SetEdit was designed for DOS and runs on Linux. If the question is, 'Why can't I install a Microsoft executable on a bare *nix box or a *nix binary on an MS box?', it's kind of an obvious question in general terms even to technically unsophisticated users like myself and if it's a question of 'Why can't I use bash as my shell on Windows?' it's plain meaningless because you can. Unless I'm even more ignorant than I think and I'm missing some fundamental point. A better question would be 'Why are there different operating systems at all?' and then you should stay away from Microsoft and *nix comparisons as even *nix lost its interoperability with itself and a variety of operating systems long predates either Unix or MS. Look more into the fact that each machine basically had its own handrolled OS and that part of the niftiness of Unix was that it was actually semi-portable. Even after that, wedging a *nix into a PC wasn't easy and DOS couldn't run a mainframe. The 'current use' is partly defined by the 'past use' which has a tendency to set like cement.