>What do people think of this off-the-cuff statement?
>
>The Palm OS is an operating environment that sits on top of an operating
>system much in the same way that Windows 3.1 was as it sat on top of
>DOS. The distinction is important for the truly anal retentive. The
>Palm OS itself defers basic operating system services to the Kadak RTOS
>which it runs on top of much in the same way that Windows 3.1 deferred
>basic services to DOS.
I'd disagree, unless you're saying the same thing about any OS that has a
kernel, or any OS that is written in a modular fashion. Are you perhaps
drawing the distinction because it wasn't us that wrote the kernel?
I think just about any decently-written OS has a layer that deals with task
switching, and other parts of the OS don't go mucking around in the task
manager's stuff. Ditto for anything else that you might consider basic
operating system services... higher layers call the APIs exposed by lower
ones. Exactly where to draw the line between what's OS and what's an
operating environment "sitting on top" seems to me like either flame bait
or a philosophical discussion.
FWIW, I'm not trying to get into an anal retentive argument here :-) But
saying Palm OS is cobbled on top of a "real" OS seems like a strange way to
describe what I'd consider normal modularity combined with a healthy lack
of a "not invented here" mentality. And being likened to win 3.1 would
offend anyone, I'd think!
-David Fedor
Palm Developer Support
