On of my friends, who uses Windows XP, has some crashes - driver related.
As it looks now, XP shouldn't crash unless a driver that is close to the kernel is unstable, but Microsoft has a detection system that after a restart asks to replace the faulty driver.
It should not be a problem to create a stable OS, and NT/2000/XP are all three with welldesigned kernels. The only problem is, that Microsoft sometimes makes design decisions in favor of benchmarks, like making graphics drivers run in non-user mode, and the new IIS will also have kernel level stuff. On Linux, for instance, all graphics drivers are by default user mode - kernel mode is only used for 3D accelerated drivers not defaulted to and therefore not used on servers. Unless Microsoft makes errors in the kernel-level drives and software, and they are included in an installation, it should be pretty stable.
On top of the kernel we then have all the API's, COM objects etc. Some COM objects are "global" to several applications, and Windows is known for having things sticking around in memory. It should be fairly easy to avoid that, but on most OS's, this is a problem. Applications need the ability to create background processes that are programmatically terminated, and if the program contains errors, they won't be terminated. This not only consumes resources, it can also prevent the user from starting certain applications without logging off and on again.
I believe that most software delivered by Microsoft today behaves pretty well in this regard. But since Windows is a platform for many software vendors, the problem won't disappear soon.
And lastly we have the unstability and incompatibility issues of certain applications. For instance, I cannot install Outlook 97 (danish) on a Windows 2000 (danish). I haven't succeeded yet. This also prevents me from installing Office 97, unless I choose custom install and remove the checkmark from Outlook.
There are unstable programs on all platforms, and a good OS will:
- Clean it up well, deallocating all resources as necessary.
- Do it quickly.
- Tell the user what happened.
A big difference between Windows 2000 and Linux/KDE is that the default in Linux is to clean everything up and don't tell the user. It's extremely fast, and since program restart is also extremely fast, some primitive programs even rely on this mechanism to restart. You kill the application, and 100ms later the service is running again. KDE builds on top of that - if a GUI program crashes, it tells the user. Windows has traditionally just shown a message to the user, often even though it was a system service that crashed, which resultet in non-comprehensible dialogs. But I guess they solved much of that in XP.
In order to have a stable Windows computer, you need:
- Stable hardware.
- Stable power.
- Use NTFS file system. Unavailable in the Home edition, unfortunately, this makes the computer more stable if somebody cuts power while writing to the harddisk.
- Use the software applications that are most widely used. Prefer Microsoft applications to other vendors.
- Use stable drivers. Preferrably those included with Windows XP. Don't go for the latest 3D driver in order to maximize game speed, if stability is highest priority.
Many of you probably do all the above, which give you very stable computers. But there are lots of people out there, who don't follow these rules. As long as XP is new, it doesn't matter as much, but as XP ages, the rules become more important, and more systems will see instabilities.
Lars. |
