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RE: Please Help!
On 05-Nov-98 Jeffrey Danowitz wrote:
> Presently the dominate platform in the world is PC using windows NT/95.
Hmm...Depends. On desktops maybe, on RealTime/Embedded systems
the traditional choice was some flavor of real-time OS:
VxWorks, RMX, LynxOS (real-time Unix brand), or
some other Unices with special extensions (e.g:
SGI/IRIX with React extension).
However, for many applications you may design the system so
the "hard" RT parts are isolated down in the hardware controllers
and/or the device drivers. This way you only need good *average*
response time which any Unix may provide (given the proper
hardware for the task).
If this is ok for you (probably so, if you mention Unix/Windows
systems) than there is a very big issue in favor of Linux.
As a "machine" producer you would have to support your customers
for quite a long time. That would be very difficult task with
Microsoft changing your OS under your feet so quickly. A possible
scenario:
1. You develop on NT4 (the current stable version)
2. One year later (on schedule - would you believe?)
you start deploying systems.
3. One year later (2 years from now) NT5 is the only sold
NT version, you have some problems buying new NT4
licenses for your new customers.
4. You start adapting your systems to NT5
5. Old customers still need support so you leave some
of your computers with NT4.
6. Now it's obvious Word-2002, Exchange-2002, etc. will
not run on NT4 (would they?). And of course the
interoperability of NT4/NT5 would diminish by than
(M$ strategy to accelerate upgrading "old" NT4 systems)
7. So in ~3 years you would have two teams: NT4/NT5 with
different tools (new M$-tools will NEVER run on old
M$-OS)
Don't worry, it won't happen. By this time M$ monopoly would be
history...
If you take Linux for the task you may support very old releases
without significant problems.
P.S: You may be interested to read Linux Journal from July-1997.
There is an article there about MYDATA automation (A Swedish
robotics company) and what was their experience.
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Oron Peled Voice/Fax: +972-4-8228492
oron@actcom.co.il http://www.actcom.co.il/~oron
We don't do windows...