Hello Neville
Can I add … free OS and free apps and freedom to use them as you wish including using the code to write new programs
Totally agree. And the bold parts can be interpreted together as: “giving freedom to fix/patch a bug and share a new feature for the community” as summary: receive and deliver … something impossible in other OS not free …
Reasons for programming in a particular language
COBOL is well suited for batch processing and reports. I would guess other languages would also do as well. The installed base is the reason it’s still around.
Cobol was excellent for business applications and somewhat easy to learn because of the English format of the programming language.
Cobol - Common Business Oriented Language
As a size note, I met Grace Hopper after one of her lecturers. She also help develop Cobol and invented the term “debugging” after finding a moth trap in a relay switch in one of the early computers.
There used to be a utility in BSD Unix called batch.
It queued jobs submitted to it and ran them one at a time at nice 20 when the system was not busy with interactive work.
Now days people pay six+ figures for products to do “batch” processing…
Insane really… But there you go… I forget the name of the IBM one…
There’s BMC “Conrol+M”? I think that was originally developed to run on Mainframes - then ported to UNIX and Linux…
Computer Associates also had a product… I remember it - stuff of nightmares!
Some ERP’s have batch processing built in… But I suspect it’s not “free” with the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning)… SAP is probably the most well known “ERP” (I don’t know if has batch processing - I do support a rival product that has “batch” features).
Batch was all there was on mainframes … the CPU was so primitive it could only do one job at a time.
They have a hide selling it as a feature
Hi Neville,
You are right. The old mainframes were a single thread CPU. But there is a BIG but.
The CPU was very fast. There might be 8 or 10 partitions in memory and all of them active.
There might be an on-line partition for customer service, one for TSO users, and 8 more partitions running batch jobs. All of them being serviced by one CPU with one thread.
The example I use to tell people was this. Image 8 desks and each desk had a different job to perform. There is only one person doing the jobs, so he has to switch from desk to desk doing the job. If you stood back and looked at all 8 desks, it would appear the man was at
each desk at the same time. That how fast the single CPU could switch between batches (jobs).
The idea that you just type the name of a program’s binary, and it loads and executes, is an original Unix innovation.
Before that, you had to invoke the loader ( it is called ld ).
Compiling code on Unix is facilitated by the make utility, which automates the compile, load, and go steps and inclusion of libraries.
Just having an operating system was once an innovation. Early computers were controlled by an operator at a console typewriter. The operator had to load a program to a specific location in memory and tell the computer to start executing from that point.
The program while executing had to control all peripherals itself … there was no OS with drivers… drivers had to be compiled into every program.
So I say we should be grateful for any operating system … life used to be difficult without one.
Amen. Add another Amen to be 10 characters.
This morning I read on ZDNet that most Linux distros do not have any plans to include any form of AI into their OS.
While “Microsoft and Apple are embedding their respective AIs into the heart of their operating systems”
Well M. cant even keep the window system separate from their OS. so I suppose they might as well chuck AI in too. Microsoft soup.
There is actually distros with AI in them DistroWatch.com: ThorOS and i have seen more of them
Well, in certain situations AI can be mighty useful.
AI, find all pictures of my dog in the my pictures folder and move them in a separate one.
When you have hundreds of pictures all thrown through one another, this can be a useful feature for a file manager.
AI, make me a dinner appointment with Ben. Find a date and time which suits us both. Here are our agendas.
Another nice use case.
AI, here’s thousands of filled out forms with open questions. Could you make a report of them?
Just some cases in which AI is mighty useful. Of course, you’d still need to check the results, but it’s something I would definitely appreciate in SOME places as something OPTIONAL. To have it shoved in my face and hard to disable, or being loaded by default and occupying gigabytes of RAM, just doing nothing or (worse) continuously watching over my shoulder is something I do not want.
Do you remember when proving you were a human you had to click the pictures containing a traffic light or similar. Finding a dog in a picture could be interesting, common phrase in englist she is a dog, or who let the dogs out , a description of ugly girls. Well I thought it made me smile
It reads like it has AI in a vocal shell?
I hope not in the kernel . Kernels have to absolutely rock solid based on scientifically established techniques.
Your examples are AI in apps.
Yes it is a good search engine and can be driven by vague commands in English text.
I hope we never see anything as vague as AI in the kernel, or in services that start automatically.
I think AI could easily pass that test of humanity.
We are going to need better tests.
I particularly like the fact that you can unplug your SSD (or HDD) from a dead PC and plug it in to any other PC (assuming both are x64 and UEFI, these days) and pick up your work/fun wherever you left off.
Unlike the MS OS which is locked to a specific PC, any installed Linux disk boots on any computer.
This is one of the most brilliant proofs of concept for freedom vs capitalism/monopolism…
So the disk partitions must retain their UUID when you move the disk?
I know that if you copy disk partitions, they change their UUID.
I agree. There is no good reason to make a disk non-portable.
I use hotplug sata disks … they can be bootable, and they still boot if removed and replugged.