[rescue] ARGH

[Patrick Giagnocavo]

On Mon, Jul 30, 2001 at 12:21:48AM -0400, joshua d boyd wrote:
> 
> I knew about about NetInfo (never messed with it though), and Mach.  I'm
> still not clear on what FreeBSDs involvement was.  Unix more or less feels
> like Unix.  The only reason solaris and irix feel that much different to
> me from linux, is because everything on linux uses readline, and almost
> nothing on the others does.  Of course, that tells you a lot about how
> deep I did into my OSs.

The core of the kernel is Mach, not Unix.  Unix is a layer on top of the
core Mach services.  The Unix layer used on OSX is FreeBSD.

> What are Dist. Objects used for?  Where to learn more?

Also called PDO - Portable Distributed Objects.  Basically, they allow you
to call an object/method anywhere on the network, transparently.  Very cool.
Think "an ORB that works".

> I've heard that acuracy is poor, and performance slow, and I've
> heard rumors (from people who might not be the most reliable) that
> GL on OSX has buffer limitations like NT, meaning that you aren't allowed
> anywhere near enough buffers for doing things like stereo double buffering
> with extra hidden buffers.  On NT, you can only do one of those 3 things
> at a time, or at least that is the way it was on 3.51.
 
Sounds like you need more info here before you make a decision.

> These complaints also apply to linux, except for the buffer complaint
> (although I believe that after the first two buffers, the rest are
> software, but that is a driver issue, I think).

It could be a "surface" related issue.  I know that under DirectX you could
have multiple surfaces, but most video card drivers only allowed you to have
one surface.  So it was technically possible but never implemented (until
bigger and faster cards came along, I guess).

Since it has been a while since I had to know about this stuff, my info is
out of date.

./patrick