>recall all my engineering friends in undergrad were in love with unix. >What are the big advantages of unix? Well, taking a machine at random >uptime 11:52pm up 35 days, 1:57, 7 users, load average: 1.09, 0.70, 0.53 In other words, it's good for the OS for my wearable computer to stay up longer than the batteries. MS Windows variants tend to fail badly often. They are also technically inferior and bloated in ways too numerous to mention. The big benefit of unix is that it has been around for a long time (1974 or some such), is stable, is very powerful, and with Linux/NetBSD/Solaris provides open source, meaning that bugs get fixed faster and you never have to worry about the manufacturer changing the OS out from underneath you or going out of business and leaving you stranded. Anyone can contribute, modify, or learn from the source code. In addition, you can run Linux in as little as 1M RAM, and it fundamentally the same OS as the Linux you are running on your 256 processor Pentium 2 system. WinCE, 95/98, NT "interoperability" is pathetic in comparison. Thad Starner MIT Media Laboratory Wearable Computing Project
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