Three questions about OSX for anyone who can answer

[dave23]

Hello,

1. Will OSX be more immune to extension conflict crashes than 9.0-9.1?

2. Will OSX run older, non OSX optimized Mac software?

3. Will Macs allow you to run multiple boots of mulitple operating systems (like having 98/ME and NT or 2000 on a Windows machine as seperate boot configurations) so I could have OSX and 9.0.4 or 9.1 under seperate boots?

4. Would I need to partition the drive to do this?

Thanks,

dave23

[ZA]

1.) When it first comes out, yes, there will be fewer extension conflicts. But only because there are fewer extensions! Every time you put another driver in there, you're more likely to crash. Sorry.

2.) Yes, you can still run Mac software that worked under 9.1, in the "Classic" environment. However, some software (apps that communicate more directly with the hardware, like ProTools) won't work.

I would expect most software developers to put out an OSX-compatible version this year though.

3.) Yes, the easiest way is just to have 2 system folders on your HD and select the one you want to boot from in the Startup Disk control panel. This is a new feature.

4.) No. (Unless you want to run OSX from a unix-style partition, but that's another story.)

If I've caught the drift of your post, you want to install OSX to play with and leave 9.x to run ProTools. This should work fine, just do a "clean install." Let us know how it goes.
--za

[ThinDave]

Actually, ZA is incorrect on the first question.

Mac OS X provides memory protection which should alleviate most, not all, crashes - Win2k still crashes.

In Mac OS 9 and earlier, any application or extension process can overwrite another app's memory in the stack, thus generally causing a crash. In Mac OS X, there is protected memory so the OS will not allow a process to write over another's memory.

Mac OS X also does not allow for "extensions" as they exist today. There is a new mechanism for patching the OS which is memory safe.

Dave

[Shawn Parr]

Dave23,

To use OS X and 9.x at the same time and boot between them you do not need to partition.

I would stongly suggest it though as OS X moves things around and makes things a little more difficult to get to folder structure wise.

Also if you need to make major changes and/or have a major OS malfunction you are better off keeping things separate.

[zavijah]

Originally posted by ThinDave:
Actually, ZA is incorrect on the first question.

Mac OS X provides memory protection which should alleviate most, not all, crashes - Win2k still crashes.

In Mac OS 9 and earlier, any application or extension process can overwrite another app's memory in the stack, thus generally causing a crash. In Mac OS X, there is protected memory so the OS will not allow a process to write over another's memory.

Mac OS X also does not allow for "extensions" as they exist today. There is a new mechanism for patching the OS which is memory safe.

Dave

Well, actually ...

OSX's kernel trades some safety for performance. There's actually a lot of stuff that runs inside the kernel's memory space, meaning that the kernel itself is more prone to crashing.

User-level applications cannot crash the system, this is true. But kernel extensions, the OSX version of Extensions, can, in fact, crash the system if they misbehave.

Fortunately, I suspect that there will be less of a need for extensions in OSX. They're only really necessary for hardware drivers. Other kinds of "Extension-like" services will probably exist as user-level daemons. So this setup is a win, overall.

Oh, and yeah, I'd suggest partitioning for each OS. It's just safer that way.



[This message has been edited by zavijah (edited February 16, 2001).]

[zavijah]

This is a cool link, if you're into this sort of thing....

http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/...ent/index.html

[ZA]

thanks for the assist, zavijah.
As for partitioning, there's really no need. I recommend burning a CD-R (or Jaz or whatever) of your system folder when you know it's working. Do this every time you do a major install, once everything is up & running. That way you can always "turn back the clock" to before the install and save your *****.
--za