Is a Windows based console really a good thing?

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Bringing back an old thread here, but I was poking around a Vista console software update iso and noticed that it's actually based on Ubuntu. I was able to boot the image in VirtualBox and get it installed. Unfortunately the emulated hardware isn't a perfect match, so some things (notably the X server) don't work without some tweaking of config files and whatnot, but it's fascinating seeing the OS behind the machine. They even left Firefox installed.

CTRL-ALT-F4, sudo su, passwd
I now own root. That's all it takes on the console. It looks like sshd is running by default, too. I wonder why.

Lots of fun to be had with this.

The software that originally shipped on the Strand Pallete pre-horizon merge ran on top of knoppix. You actually booted to the desktop and launched the console frontend. You also had the ability to launch x-connect and operate that way. It ran in a frontend/backend configuration. They left firefox there for remote access to dimmers and nodes.

 

[Morpheus]

All I could think of is:
Sure, have an Apple console - you do realize, though, that if it ran OSX, Apple would have to build it, it would probably cost $80,000 and only have one button.

On the plus side, it would be about the size of a DMX terminator.

 

[tk2k]

I honestly have to agree with the origial point of this topic. I think it is pretty much inexcusable for any lighting console OS to be based off something designed for multitasking and consumers.

I've been using an Express and and Expression 3 for many years now, and nether has ever crashed, frozen, or for any reason needed to be rebooted (obvioulsy i have though). I can't say that about any modern OS.

coming from a purely technical perspective, modern desktop OSes are ill suited to the demadns of mission critical always on tasks. For example, there's a reason the vast majority of websites are run on Linux or Unix servers, and not Unbuntu or OS X, but barebones Linux dedicated to a few complex tasks and nothing more. They can stay on for a year or more and not suffer from memory leaks or creeping page files. Try leavng your PC or MAC on (sleep is fine, just not rebooted) for more than a week and you'll run into sluggist peformance.

That's how console OS's should be. It's not hard, developers are, honestly, becoming lazy.

 

[icewolf08]

I honestly have to agree with the origial point of this topic. I think it is pretty much inexcusable for any lighting console OS to be based off something designed for multitasking and consumers.

I've been using an Express and and Expression 3 for many years now, and nether has ever crashed, frozen, or for any reason needed to be rebooted (obvioulsy i have though). I can't say that about any modern OS.

coming from a purely technical perspective, modern desktop OSes are ill suited to the demadns of mission critical always on tasks. For example, there's a reason the vast majority of websites are run on Linux or Unix servers, and not Unbuntu or OS X, but barebones Linux dedicated to a few complex tasks and nothing more. They can stay on for a year or more and not suffer from memory leaks or creeping page files. Try leavng your PC or MAC on (sleep is fine, just not rebooted) for more than a week and you'll run into sluggist peformance.

That's how console OS's should be. It's not hard, developers are, honestly, becoming lazy.

First off, most consoles that came before the current generation ran on DOS. Yup, a desktop OS. Arguably the best desktop OS that Microsoft ever came up with... Then you had consoles like Obsession II which ran DOS with VXWorks on top and then the Obsession software (and people wonder why OBII was so unstable).

Just remember to look at the fact that the Embedded OS is designed to do what it is being asked to do. It should be pretty good at doing that. Also consider that what we ask most lighting consoles to is far from a major demand on processing time. If you look at the processing power of older consoles compared to todays and consider the fact that the biggest difference in how the console works is in the GUI, we aren't really demanding more today that we were 10 years ago.

 

[NickVon]

They can stay on for a year or more and not suffer from memory leaks or creeping page files. Try leavng your PC or MAC on (sleep is fine, just not rebooted) for more than a week and you'll run into sluggist peformance.

That's how console OS's should be. It's not hard, developers are, honestly, becoming lazy.

my personal home PC get restarted every oh..... 3 weeks? and thats usually become some OS update or major Sound or Video driver updates wants a reboot?.... am i bad

 

[SHARYNF]

It is not that developers are getting lazy it is just economic sense

The whole instability issue is IMO overblown IF you are using the system in a dedicated non internet connected environment. The in stability comes from the varying hardware configurations, the various additional software that people install and the downloading and visiting to various internet sites and email.

For a company today to want to start from scratch and design their own OS makes little sense, it is not economical, it means that the testing base is very limited, and it means that if you try to hire program development folks they need to learn a new system.

Most memory leak issues on the PC world went away XP.

Sharyn

 

[JChenault]

coming from a purely technical perspective, modern desktop OSes are ill suited to the demadns of mission critical always on tasks. For example, there's a reason the vast majority of websites are run on Linux or Unix servers, and not Unbuntu or OS X, but barebones Linux dedicated to a few complex tasks and nothing more. They can stay on for a year or more and not suffer from memory leaks or creeping page files. Try leavng your PC or MAC on (sleep is fine, just not rebooted) for more than a week and you'll run into sluggist peformance.

That's how console OS's should be. It's not hard, developers are, honestly, becoming lazy.

Well - Speaking as an ex Amazon.com engineer - most large websites are used on some version of Linux. The reason is not reliability, however but cost and maintenence. You don't pay a license fee for Linux. When we went to it we saved about 10 million a year. Linux is designed to be operated remotely. IE you don't have to have to be close to the machine to work on it which you tend to do in Windows.

No computer system of hardware and / or software is 100% reliable all the time. As you get more reliable costs tend to escalate. The question of how many nines of reliability do you want to buy? 99.999 percent is a lot more money that 99.9%.

When we developed mLight, we ran a version for six months with running cues. Ran find - no crashes - no hiccups, no memory leaks. This is on Windows. Over the last year at the Oregon Shakespeare festival ( Three theatres, around 800 performances) I am aware of one crash. That was due to a bug in our code that we immediately fixed.

In my experience, if you treat a Windows based console as a console, not as something to surf the web on, or do mail on, etc. IE you devote the computer to just that one function - remove virus scanning and all other extraneous programs, it is very reliable. The key is not to think of it as a general purpose computer.

 

[LeadHead]

I honestly have to agree with the origial point of this topic. I think it is pretty much inexcusable for any lighting console OS to be based off something designed for multitasking and consumers.

coming from a purely technical perspective, modern desktop OSes are ill suited to the demadns of mission critical always on tasks. For example, there's a reason the vast majority of websites are run on Linux or Unix servers, and not Unbuntu or OS X, but barebones Linux dedicated to a few complex tasks and nothing more. They can stay on for a year or more and not suffer from memory leaks or creeping page files. Try leavng your PC or MAC on (sleep is fine, just not rebooted) for more than a week and you'll run into sluggist peformance.
.

This particular copy of Windows 7 has been running for 22 days straight so far. I use it for everything from e-mail and web browsing to gaming and instant messaging. Our main "family" computer runs Ubuntu Linux, and its been up for 28 days so far. Both Windows 7 and the Ubuntu PC are running just fast as they did the minute they were booted up. I have a friend who hasn't rebooted her Macbook Pro in probably two months - still fast as ever.

Windows Server 2008? Just Windows Vista/7 with some of the fat trimmed away, and extra networking features thrown in. Server/Enterprise editions of linux? Pretty much the same Ubuntu/Fedora/Whatever we're all have come to know and love with the fat trimmed off and some networking features thrown in.

The Windows NT (Windows 2000 and after(except ME)) and Linux kernel/core are very stable very reliable things, even with a bunch of stuff wrapped around them like pretty GUIs and the like. Like JChenault mentioned, if you treat modern "consumer" operating systems like you would an enterprise/mission critical system they'll behave in much the same way with much the same reliability. This isn't the DOS based Windows 95/98/ME days that would blue screen and reset if you looked at your monitor the wrong way.

 

[Lightguy48]

Well I got to chime in as well, would I take my home computer and put a lighting console on it? Absolutely not, but I certainly use it regularly as an offline editor.

However, would I take a stripped down copy of XP and put a lighting console on it? Absolutely, wouldn't think twice about it.

As has been mentioned numerous times XP or any current Windows flavor based on the NT kernel is a good operating system and is solid when it is based on solid hardware.

Speaking from my other job in radio and TV I can tell you there are THOUSANDS of radio and TV stations on the air at this very moment running very reliably on Windows and they're handling a lot more tasks than just running some lighting cues. They're stable and reliable because we don't let people browse the internet or use email or IM on them, they do one thing, play music or video and that's it. No different than a lighting console.

Even with the monthly security updates we have to install every month and nightly virus scans they still sit there and play music every day.

Pick you favorite station... Z100 in New York, KISS (KHKS) in Dallas, or KIIS in LA, it's running Windows and NexGen and it runs.

So there's your testimonial for Windows and reliability. Perfect, no, but reliable when set up and maintained properly.