NT file handling was different and still is!

On a Linux box today, and on an IRIX machine back in the day, you can run a program and then in another window delete the executable, and the program continues running just fine.

On Windows that executable is locked, needed by processes.

It took a ton of work to get windows to the point where one does not have to reboot all the time...

The power behind this difference is significant!

One time I was training on a high end solid modeler and I upgraded the class installation. Well, one user was on the old version, logged in.

When I started the next class, one computer was on the old revision, and the files were literally gone! I took a quick look at the IRIX system stats and the file cache was huge! It maintained everything for those processes without missing a beat.

When I logged that session off there was a pause, a ton of resources freed up and that student was running current on their next program start! Amazing.

Another time I was having to push a movie out the door and I had a batch render go bad. Did the math and was doomed.

Well, I used the X window system to install software all over the place on a ton of machines, many with active users who did not even know. This was done on the sophisticated IRIX software package manager that could even pause an install to allow another removal to free space and continue among many other awesome tasks. Look up swmgr one day. I did all this in the late 90s.

I pushed out the renders, set the process priority to below the users so they would not be impacted and basically used every machine in the building for many hours to get the dang movie done. Mooching every resource I could all from my desk upstairs.

Some of those machines were so buried the sysadmin came to me wondering what the hell ate up all the resources. I told him I was pissed and getting shit done and he laughed saying basically he was glad he was not on the receiving end and carried on.

I was able to do a full cleanup, left no trace, no user impacted despite me removing large parts of some of their systems that day and putting them back before too much happened.

Windows was no match at the time. Not sure it is today, but that use case is no longer a thing.

Today it is much better, but some of the really powerful things in UNIX are mostly there today in windows land. Still the better tools always are in UNIX. (Linux and BSD today)

UNIX machines running the X window system enjoy multi user graphical computing too. Nothing else does this today.

An example:

I can run an app on one machine, from files shared from another one, window manager on another one, fonts from another one, the user display being served by yet another one all seamless to that user who would have just clicked on a start program icon.

Those machines do not even have to be running the same operating system. Back then I used a mix of IRIX, Solaris and Linux just to show off running high end CAD in that crazy way.

Or, I can put a few displays on one powerful machine, set them all up with keyboards and mice and have many users logged into one machine. The SGI ONYX deskside had this option.

Other crazy things, like me launching an app on my box to be displayed on yours where you interact with it as if it were local. Pushing expensive software to another user, basically running on my machine using their display and HID proved very useful. VNC can do it as long as one does not want to use their machine too. Or Terminal Server is a big kludge along with Citrix... kludge. Nice ones, but still!

Win NT 3.5.1 was lined up to be that capable, but it all ended with NT 4 where it really is a single user graphical display to this day. A co worker actually remoted an X-window application on NT 3.5.1, running the Exceed X window server Unix style. I was impressed.

Today I largely don't care because far too many people only experienced the single user way meaning they had no idea what was possible and so today it is all forgotten.

And we have web browsers that can fill in many of these ideas well enough to work.

So I am on Win 10 or MacOS a lot of the time and it works well enough.

But damn! The 90's headed into the early 00's were an amazing time! The OS wars were in full swing and computing on UNIX was awesome, and on SGI seemingly 5 years or more in the future!