Multiplicity

by Gary D. Köhler
From the November 1998 Monitor

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A question was asked of the audience at a Congressional hearing: "How many of you own personal computers?" Many hands went up. "How many of you do not have Windows?" No hands went up. This was taken to be a sign of the monopoly that Microsloth has acquired. A better follow-up question would have been, "Do any of you run operating systems besides or in addition to Windows?", but I doubt that there would have been any more hands raised.

Something that most people don't realize is that there are other operating systems that can be used in their PCs, and that some of them may actually be better than Windows 95/98/NT. By purchasing a computer you are under no obligation to use the operating system that came with it. You may run other operating systems, and furthermore you do not have to give up Windows 95/98/NT to do so. Of course, getting a refund on your "operating system tax" from Microsloth is next to impossible.

Today hard drives are getting bigger and cheaper even faster than Microsloth can fill them up with their atrocious bloatware. What can we do with all this extra space just begging to be used? One possibility is running multiple operating systems. These could be different versions of the Microsloth products (DOS/Windows 3.1, Windows 95/8, Windows NT) or (better yet) operating systems from other companies. In this article we're going to have a look at some other places we can go today.

How to Run Multiple Operating Systems

The original reason for partitioning hard drives was support for multiple operating systems on one PC. The original IBM PC came with three choices of operating systems: PC-DOS (IBM's version of MS-DOS), CP/M-86, and the UCSD p-System. PC-DOS was already packed in the box, the others had to be ordered. When hard drives were introduced all three of these systems (and later XENIX) had mutually incompatible methods of organizing the hard drive, so partitioning was introduced as a method of giving each operating system its own section of the hard drive to format as it pleased. At first there were only primary partitions, and activating one would make the others invisible (and untouchable) by the active operating system, thereby protecting the other partitions from harm. It came to be realized that it would be desirable to have data in a common area visible to all primary partitions, and extended partitions capable of being subdivided into logical partitions were introduced for this purpose.

As far as booting is concerned, operating systems may be divided into two classes: primary partition only booters, such as DOS, Windows 95/98, and BeOS, and primary/logical partition booters that can boot from either, such as OS/2, Windows NT, and Linux.

Advantages of Running Multiple Operating Systems

Availability of Software

One problem is the availability of software for the task at hand. Some platforms have never had worthwhile software in some categories. With multiple operating systems you no longer have to worry as much about finding the software you need. If you can run the operating system, you can run the program.

New Frontiers

Perhaps a rather intangible (and possibly irrational) reason, but why not?

Disadvantages of Running Multiple Operating Systems

Installation

The most obvious disadvantage is that you have to 1: seek it out, and 2: install it yourself. Almost no national chain, independent hardware vendor, or mail-order company will install OS/2, Linux, or BeOS for you. Milwaukee PC once pre-installed OS/2 for me, but that was in 1995 before Windows 95. Installation is not always pleasant.

Storage Requirements

More space is required, usually in separate partitions. With today's explosion in hard-drive capacities this is no longer a problem. More serious is the restriction of the number of "high-level" partitions (primary and extended) to four, since most operating systems have to be booted from a primary partition. (OS/2 and Linux can boot from a logical partition provided suitable Boot Manager software is installed in--yes, you guessed it--a primary partition.) With Boot Manager type software a hard-drive can host two primary partition booting operating systems and as many logical partition booting operating systems as the hardware can hold. (There may be a limit of sixteen as the total number of logical partitions on a disk, I'm not sure.)

Not all files are accessible to all operating systems. This is not necessarily a bad thing, after all, do you really want Microsloth's latest bloatware blunder trashing your BeOS files? The only problem is there are times where you do want to copy text files from one environment to another. To some extent this problem is being resolved as more operating systems support installable file systems which can "mount" partitions formatted for other operating systems. Usually, this access is read-only, but again, see the question above.

Switching

Only one operating system can be in control at one time. Switching to another operating system usually involves rewriting the master boot record to make the appropriate primary partition active, shutting down the current operating system, and rebooting into the new operating system. Boot Manager software usually appears at boot-up time and offers the user a menu of operating systems from which to choose. The user can configure the boot manager to default to a particular operating system after some interval of time.

Unavailability of Software

It may seem contradictory to cite availability as an advantage and then turn around and cite unavailability as a disadvantage, but software availability is a two-sided coin. Unfortunately it is difficult to buy anything other than Windows software in a store. The operating system might be on the shelf, but not the software for it. This means turning your back on the chain computer stores and going with mail-order. Another consideration is that you may be likelier to get the software you want, but it might not be for your first choice of operating system.

Available Operating Systems

Below are brief capsule summaries of some of the possible alternatives to Microsloth that will run on Intel architecture systems. I have included the manufacturer's recommendation for hardware requirements, but these should always be taken with a grain of salt. In general, you should always throw memory at your system. Don't be seduced by the guys in the clean-room suits dancing to 70's disco music, buy an AMD or Cyrix microprocessor and invest the difference in RAM. It can make all the difference in the world. For example, I ran OS/2 Warp 3 on a 386SX-25 MHz system quite well with 6 MB of RAM (though not a speed demon by any means, but still usable). Other people who installed OS/2 on 4 MB systems (manufacturer's minimum!) found their computers being lapped by slugs on Valium. RAM is dirt cheap (for the time being) so BUY, BUY, BUY!

OS/2

OS/2 is perhaps the one most familiar to you, after all the "/2" was meant to signify that it was the successor to "OS/1", that is, DOS. It has a command line mode of operation and a Graphical User Interface (GUI) called Presentation Manager (PM). In addition, it can run legacy DOS and Windows 92 applications, but not Windows 95/98/NT applications. (But there is a group of people collaborating on the Win32-OS/2 project that are trying to run even these programs as if they were native OS/2 Presentation Manager applications.) Unfortunately, IBM itself appears to be abandoning OS/2 (at least for everyone except "enterprise" customers, by which they mean businesses with 200 or more employees) in favor of "Java Everywhere".

Hardware Requirements (Warp 4):
486, Pentium if you wish to use VoiceType
12-16 MB RAM (4 MB to use Voice Navigation and 8 - 12 MB if VoiceType is used)
100 to 300 MB free hard drive space.
Hardware Compatibility Lists:
http://www.software.ibm.com/os/warp/warp-client/sysreq.html

Linux

Linux is one of three UNIX clones considered here. Linux was developed by Linus Torvalds of Finland and is now being developed by dedicated programmers. It offers several different command line interfaces or shells, such as the C shell, the Bourne shell, and yes, even the Bourne-Again shell. (I'm not making this up.) The terseness of the command line is a notoriously unfriendly flaw of UNIX in general. A GUI called X-Windows is also available.

My experience is with Red Hat Linux, other versions of Linux are distributed by SlackWare, Debian, Caldera, SuSE and others. The Red Hat release comes on three CD-ROMs, one containing the operating system itself, the second with the source code (mostly in C) for the operating system, and the third with various applications. The system comes with the compilers and assemblers necessary to compile the source code, so in theory you could rewrite anything you wish, if you dare!

Hardware Requirements (Red Hat 5.1)
386SX or better
8 MB RAM (16 MB strongly recommended)
40 MB (character mode) or 100 MB (X Windows) free hard drive space.
Hardware Compatibility Lists:
http://www.redhat.com/hardware

Solaris

Solaris is a clone of UNIX developed by Sun Microsystems for their workstations, but they have developed a version of the product for the Intel architecture. Sun is the company that developed the Java language and as such Solaris is the first platform for which the development tools appear. (That is my reason for interest in Solaris).

Hardware Requirements (Solaris 2.6)
486 or better
16 MB RAM (32 MB strongly recommended)
Hardware Compatibility Lists:
http://access1.sun.com/drivers/hcl/hcl.html

BeOS

Be is a company started by Jean-Louis Gasseé (formerly of Apple). The original goal was to create a hardware platform called the "BeBox", but nothing came of that except for an operating system written for the PowerPC processor. This has now been ported to the Intel architecture. Features include an aggressively multitasking operating system (the programmer does not have to assign functions to threads, the operating system will spawn them as needed) and a GUI.

Hardware Requirements (3.1 for Intel Architecture)
Pentium or better.
16 MB RAM (More strongly recommended)
Hardware Compatibility Lists:
http://www.be.com/products/beosreadylist.html

Netware

Netware (currently at 4.1, soon to be at 5.0) is primarily intended for network servers, not for the ordinary desktop. If you have a small business with half a dozen or more terminals, Netware might be worth considering.

Hardware Requirements (Netware For Small Business)
486 or better
32 MB RAM
500 MB of server hard drive space

So, where would you rather go today?

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Updated: 11/29/98
gdkohler@execpc.com