Reply to post: Re: PC 2.0

Every major OS maker misread Intel's docs. Now their kernels can be hijacked or crashed

BinkyTheMagicPaperclip Silver badge

Re: PC 2.0

You're basically talking bollocks, it was tried before by Intel and called 'Itanium'. IBM tried it and called it 'OS/2 on the PowerPC'. Apple vaguely managed to make a go of it with PowerPC Macs but that couldn't withstand Intel either.

The PC is actually slowly (very slowly) ditching legacy code. Classic BIOS are disappearing and being replaced by UEFI (yes, people will now point out that UEFI has some issues, but BIOS really is a mess). Lots of legacy ports have been removed, and the classic physical A20 gate is disappearing from modern processors.

Pre ACPI SMP operating systems won't have run on hardware for the last few years, as practically all UEFI/BIOS now lack the MPS table needed.

There are always more dependencies than you expect, I thoroughly recommend reading both os2museum.com and TheOldNewThing to understand just how extensive backwards compatible is, why it's required, and the effort Microsoft makes to support legacy code.

A fresh break is usually not a good idea, and people do not like expense for no clear reason, this has been proven often enough it's not even a debatable point.

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